ARTS
by ARTSProject
Summary: In an alternate version of Remnant from Rooster Teeth's series "RWBY", the 50th Biennial Vytal Festival Tournament has begun and Team ARTS are just one of the many teams participating! The island of Vytal is bustling with all of the festivities and Team ARTS finally feel like they're able to kick back and relax for a time with their only worry being eliminated early.
1. Orange Trailer

" _Go and make interesting mistakes, make amazing mistakes, make glorious and fantastic mistakes. Break rules. Leave the world more interesting for your being here. Make. Good. Art."_

 _-Neil Gaiman_

Draw a line, look up, draw a line, erase, redraw that line, shade here, shade there.

"God… how many times have I drawn the school?" the artist said, picking up his sketchbook and looking at the facade of Atlas Academy looking back at him from the page. He moved it slightly to the side to see the same buildings looking back at him from a few miles away, only in color and not marred by the texture of pencil marks and erasers.

Burne "Arty" Umber picked up his materials, folded his sketchbook under his arm, and stood up to go back inside, being careful not to slip on the mounds of snow and fall off of the roof of his house. He liked going outside to draw. The freezing fresh air was much better for a more relaxed drawing environment than being inside.

Climbing back into his window, he sat at the desk in the corner of his comfortably furnished attic bedroom where the air vent blew warm air over his bed. Various art supplies were scattered around the room, papers pinned up on the walls, a couple of easels stood with canvases. Some had completed works, but most had paintings that were barely even started. It was obvious that once this young creator got a new idea, he dropped his last one in order to start it and would continue to work on it until something else popped into his head.

Arty pushed his pencil behind his ear and opened his book. Under the light of the lamp, something just didn't look right with the drawing. Were the columns too spaced apart? Were the lines not straight enough? No… maybe it was the spacing...

"Agh… darn it." Arty tore the page out of his sketchbook and crumpled the paper, throwing it into the overflowing trashcan next to him. He ran his hands through his hair and huffed loudly. "I guess it's just a little different when you hate what you're drawing." He stared at the ceiling as he leaned back in his chair.

"BURNE!" he heard his dad roar his real name from downstairs.

Arty shot up, having to wave his arms around to prevent himself from falling onto the floor. "oh crap…" He repeatedly whispered under his breath. He ran down the stairs. Upon getting to the ground floor, he put his right hand up to his forehead in salute, his left arm down flat to his side, his back straight. "Sir!?"

In the living room, his parents sat by the coffee table. They both looked like they had something serious to say. Arty's dad looked up to him standing at the stairs. He was fiddling with one of the medals hanging to his white Atlas military jacket. Never a good sign.

"Come down here Burne." He gestured to an empty chair.

Arty wanted to just turn around and run back upstairs. He knew that the lecture was coming, but he knew that one way or another, he was going to hear what his father had to say.

Sitting facing his father, Arty prepared for the worst.

"Son, as you know, school is about to start up again." He opened a piece of paper. "We got your team assignment in the mail."

"Great. Who's on my team?" Arty said, now happy that the lecture had started on a lighter note for once.

"Burne, I want you to know that no matter how well you get along with these three, you are _going_ into the military after graduating."

Arty's short-lived happiness faded. "Dad, we've been over this a thousand times. I don't _want_ to be in the Atlesian military!" His voice came out louder than he expected, possibly due to the number of times he'd repeated this outburst.

"Don't start with me Burne! Now I've said a thousand times that you _are_ going into the military and that's final!"

Arty stood up. "Why can't I be a Huntsman Dad? There are Huntsmen from Atlas too!"

"That may be true, but the Umbers have been outstanding soldiers for generations! Why is it that all of the sudden that _you_ are the generation that has to refuse that?"

"Maybe it's because I'm tired of being in a place where the same people control everything! Maybe I want to go out and see the world as somebody that people can admire and look to as a protector without making them fear me because I'm one of the infinite soldiers that come from Atlas!" Arty took a deep breath and looked at his dad. He could see the anger in his eyes. His mom sat at the other end of the table, her hand over her mouth. The silence made Arty feel like he'd accidentally broken something. Slowly, his mother stood up.

"Will you two stop with all the yelling?! You're going to scare Meri," she walked down the hall towards the kitchen, "I'm going to go get some tea. When I come back, I want you two to be in a better mood." Halfway down the hall, she turned back. The look in her eyes said _I wish he'd listen too_ or at the least _I'm sorry_.

Arty's dad stood up. "Burne, I feel like you need to understand that this is Atlas. We are a military power. We have been since the Great War. And before you continue babbling on about how Huntsmen come from Atlas too, I feel like your power would be better in the military rather than off in this crazy world we live in. When you're one among thousands, your power can only be multiplied. You'll reach your end goal much faster than going off on your own as some sort of," he paused, waving his hand as he thought of his phrasing, "lonely freelancer." He glanced up to the stairs. "And sometimes I feel like your little painting hobby is getting in the way as well."

Arty was mad now. "It's not getting in the way! In fact, it's kind of the only thing keeping me sane around here! And in case you never noticed, I've been using my 'hobby' in my fighting."

This raised an eyebrow from his father. Maybe he was finally getting to him.

"Yeah. That standard military rifle was boring, so I made a new weapon. I've been training with it all summer. " He turned to go up the stairs. "I'll go get it."

Arty made it up to his room, dragged a big metal box out from under his bed and flipped the lid. He smiled when he saw his one true masterpiece. He reached down and pulled out his hand-made paintball gun. The shining orange and silver metal gleamed in the late afternoon sun. He quickly grabbed a vial of bright red paintballs out of the box and ran back downstairs.

He waved his paintball gun when his dad turned. "See?" He handed the gun and the vial of paintballs to his father. "I call it Palette. Midas and Curie helped me make it," He watched as his dad turned the gun over in his hands, inspecting each little detail in the craftsmanship. "The paintballs are filled with my own paint made with Dust. Each color does something different." He smiled. "Pretty cool, huh?" _My art's not so useless now, huh Dad?_

"I must admit, it's very well made." He mumbled as he turned. He disappeared into the kitchen, past his wife as she poured tea.

"Wait… Dad? What are you doing? Dad!" Arty yelled as he ran after him.

Mrs. Umber called out to him, but he didn't stop.

Arty continued to chase his father out of the side door and into the alley next to the house. His breath formed white clouds in front of his face as he breathed heavily. Arty froze as he watched his father throw his paintball gun into the dumpster. "What did you do that for!?" Arty's heart was racing. He couldn't tell if he was more scared or angry.

"This, Burne, is a waste of time." He said pointing to the rusted metal box behind him. "Your enemies aren't going to sit around and entertain you while you paint a picture for them." He held up the vial of red paintballs.

"Dad! Don't!" Time seemed to slow down as the glass tube flew through the air towards the dumpster where his gun now sat. The explosion shot out and the fire flared from within its metal container. Arty fell to his knees, unwilling to accept what had just happened. His work. His entire summer - gone. He could tell his dad was standing next to him, but his vision tunneled to the point he could only watch the fires burning within the dumpster.

"Come on Burne." His father said, looking down at him.

Arty turned and ran back inside. He stormed up the stairs. He was pretty sure he could hear his parents calling for him and his little sister start crying, but he didn't care. He was furious. He gripped at his messy blonde hair and looked at the various materials around him. He hated his dad. He hated how he didn't even try to understand. He hated the military. He hated _Atlas_. He turned to his desk, seeing the open sketchbook, the torn edge of a page could be seen. In the trash bin, he could see bits and pieces of his sketches of Atlas Academy among the wads of paper. That's when the idea came to him. He had to make a statement.

He was standing on the roof when he heard his dad beginning to storm up the stairs. His one-strap backpack thrown over his shoulder, the icy wind biting his nose. He felt the weight of the materials in his backpack weighing down. He looked at the roof across from him. For a split second, he considered going back in and humoring his father, but then the smoke rising from the alley below reminded him of his work literally going up in flames. He jumped and ran. Leaping over the rooftops as he made his way towards the school in the distance.

Not too long later, the sun began to set, Arty stood next to the front of the school. Luckily, there weren't any soldiers guarding the front, but that could easily change. He had to work fast.

Arty threw down his backpack and quickly unzipped it. He pulled out the cans of spray paint he had grabbed on his way out of his room. "Time to get to work." He muttered as he began taping cut sheets of plastic onto the bricks in front of him.

Arty tore down the plastic before stepping back. He gazed up at Atlas Academy's newest mural. Depicted was a battalion of Atlas soldiers dressed in their stark white uniforms. The center one was painted much larger in a bright orange, almost seeming to glow with a bright light as he stood out from the crowd without his helmet. Arty smiled as he gazed at his 'statement'.

"HEY! You there!"

Arty spun around to see two Atlesian soldiers, one male, one female. Their helmets glowed eerily in the glare of the streetlights. They had their rifles drawn and their hulking white armor shuffled as they ran towards him..

"Oh crap!" He raised his arms. The can of spray paint he was holding fell to the ground and began to roll away from him towards the building.

"What do you think you're doing!" the male asked gesturing to the wall.

"Alright kid, you're coming with us," the female said as she advanced towards him.

Arty was terrified. He was finally starting to see the rashness of his decision. Despite his panic, the one thing on his mind was the fact that he could smell smoke. The image of Palette burning in the dumpster next to his house returned to his mind. He turned, trying to find where it was coming from. He saw one of the _real_ soldiers walking up to his mural - where the _orange paint_ soldier had wisps of smoke curling off of it. Arty's eyes widened as he watched the can roll nearer to the orange soldier's right foot.

"Get away from there!" he yelled to the soldier, who was slowly raising his hand to examine the red paint.

It seemed to happen all in slow motion. When the can made contact with the wall, a loud blast launched the three of them away from the school. Arty and the two soldiers landed flat on the ground. Arty looked up, his ears ringing. Dazed and confused, Arty pushed himself up with his elbows. The black sleeves of his t-shirt were visibly coated in dust and debris. He tasted a little bit of blood. He ran his tongue around the inside of his mouth and found that one of his teeth had been knocked out as a result of the blast. When the smoke cleared, Arty saw the new 30-foot wide entrance to Atlas Academy. He could have sworn he had regular orange spray paint, but obviously that wasn't the case. Paint infused with pure magma Dust had activated, causing the explosion that almost killed him and the two soldiers.

Arty was in shock. How could he have made such a stupid mistake? The two soldiers were starting to stir and get up. He didn't know what to do, so he just ran. As he headed towards the front gate, he reached down, grabbed his bag and swung it over his shoulder.

He could hear the soldiers yelling. Some new arrivals were beginning to mutter about the commotion. His boots slammed against the ground as he hurried away from the scene. _Almost there!_ He thought to himself as he neared the gate. The vandal had just exited school grounds when he felt the blunt end of a gun slam right between his eyes.

Arty woke up in his bed, his head throbbing as morning light flooded through his windows. _What happened?_ The last thing he could remember was the… front of Atlas Academy exploding into rubble and dust. He tried to get up, but the pain in his head forced him back onto his bed.

"Hey, don't try to get up so fast," A comforting voice said.

Arty turned and, through his double vision, saw his mother sitting next to his bed. He turned away in shame when he saw the shining trails that tears had left on her face.

"You've been out cold all day," She said with a weak smile.

"He's lucky he didn't wake up in a prison cell."

Arty looked towards the stairs. With the most disapproving look he'd ever seen, his dad stood there, his arms crossed as he leaned against the wall. Arty turned away from him too.

"I hope you're happy Burne. While you were sleeping off your headache, I had to go meet the General at four in the morning and have spent a large majority of today getting berated because of your actions," he threw down a folded piece of paper onto Arty's bed, "the last thing she said to me before she slammed the door in my face was that she was going to personally ban you from returning to Atlas Academy," he turned to go back downstairs, but stopped at the edge of the first step, "You've finally done it, you got your wish. She said she'd never allow someone as disobedient and destructive as you to wear the title of soldier." His boots stomped down the stairs.

Normally, Arty would have been elated to hear that news, but the tone of his father's voice made him feel like dirt. He'd caused damage to the school. He'd nearly killed two soldiers, along with himself. There was no telling how much his dad had to give up to prevent him from going to prison. He'd gone and ruined everything. And his mother…

Another realization dawned on him. Not only had he made it impossible for joining the military, it was impossible for him to get Huntsman training too. He felt like screaming. Not only was his summer ruined, but all of his effort leading up to this moment was wasted too. He felt tears welling up in his eyes.

"I'm going back downstairs, Arty," his mother said.

He sat there dumbfounded. It wasn't very often he heard either of his parents use his nickname. He guessed it was because his dad wasn't there in the room anymore. That almost broke him.

Before she turned to leave, she reached under Arty's bed and pulled out Palette's case. Arty watched as she pulled out the molten framing of the prized masterpiece he had worked with all summer.

"I pulled it out of the dumpster when the flames finally died down… when your father was off talking to General Leon. I know it looks bad, but maybe… maybe you could fix it and we'll… we'll figure out another option for..." She choked back tears. Arty hated seeing her like this.

He took the paintball gun from her and put a hand on hers. "Thank you, mom."

She leaned in and kissed his forehead before heading back downstairs.

Arty took some deep breaths until he felt the heat in his face recede. He sat in silence for a minute until he remembered the paper his father left on his bed. Through the aching soreness in his sides, Arty reached over and picked it up. Through his headache, he read over it. It was his team assignment sheet. The circular gear and spear emblem of Atlas was printed at the top. Across the entirety of the paper, stamped in all caps and red ink, was the word "ANNULLED". He skimmed through it until he found the list of team members.

Student Name: Umber, Burne

Team Assignment: Team MLBC (Malbec)

Midas Ankara

Ledning Coyle

Burne Umber

Curie Geiger

He had just finished reading the list when the throbbing pain in his head made his vision blur. Arty leaned back and just stared at the ceiling. He had let his future team down. How can there be a team with only 3 people? He was lucky enough to be on the same team with his best friends Midas and Curie. Midas was a little obnoxious at times and Curie may have been a little… reclusive, but they were his closest friends nonetheless. Midas's cousin, Ledning, however, was always pretty distant. Maybe he would be happy to hear of Arty getting kicked out of the Academy. After being stuck alone with his thoughts for a few hours, he fell asleep again.

A few days later, his headache gone, Arty sat in his room staring at the paintings around him. He hadn't so much as touched a pencil or paintbrush since the incident. He had been contemplating throwing it all away. As he stood up and looked to the window, he was startled by his father calling him from downstairs. Arty had flashbacks to his dad calling him to lecture him a few days before. His socked feet padded down the stairs. Out of habit, he repeated his salute to his father. There in the living room, was his mother, his father, and a man with salt-and-pepper hair in a checkerboard-pattern jacket. Arty had never seen this man before and had no idea who he could have been.

"There's somebody here to talk to you, son." His dad said, not sounding happy.

"Good day, Mr. Umber," the man said as he tapped his cane on the floor, "Please, have a seat. We have much to discuss."

 _Great_ , Arty thought to himself, _somebody else coming to scold me..._


	2. Violet Trailer

_"Don't bend; don't water it down; don't try to make it logical; don't edit your own soul according to the fashion. Rather, follow your most intense obsessions mercilessly."_

 _-Franz Kafka_

 _ **-CLICK- -CLACK- -CLICK- -CLACK-** _ A constant rhythm of miniature hammers clacked away at a seemingly endless sheet of paper. For a moment, the noises ceased. Following the pause, the cracking of knuckles could be heard before the clicking continued at a pace that made the individual sounds indistinguishable from the others. The pinging sound of the reel resetting itself began to mimic the rhythm that the individual hammers previously made. Once again it stopped. Fingers throbbed from the workload thrusted upon them, but the dull pain was worth the product of his labor. The words were still damp in the sockets stamped into heavy paper. This was not to be read. No. This was a corruption of written word, meant to bring more harm than any other piece conceived by man.

A soothing voice came from behind the user of the typewriter, "Now Roland, show me something even greater. Writer's Block allows you to get as much as you need as fast as you need. That is, as long as you type fast enough." Her finger was angled at the device on her protégé's arm as she spoke, "The lance was great, but I think a sword would still suit you better." She went on. The voice belonged to the Faunus woman that paced beside a high red brick wall. Her thick brown tail hung inches from the ground, flicking around as she thought. A few different shapes popped into her head, but none of them quite fit what she was envisioning for his next construct.

The writer looked back at her with a long ribbon of paper trailing off of the typewriter affixed to his arm. Written along it was a few Mistral fables from memory. Not a single word was misspelled or out of place. He did not need to read over it to find out, for he already knew. The writer, Roland, had to know the words by heart to control them with any kind of prowess, and ensured that he did with the thousands of hours that he spent rehearsing them. "That's easier said than done, mom," he complained to no avail, "I don't have enough ink out to make that."

The woman cursed beneath her breath. Though disappointed with her son's lack of confidence, she understood it. She too had been nervous when mastering her bizarre semblance, and even still became nervous when she pushed her limits. Words were, by nature, rebellious. To wield them, the writer must accept that they are as they are. She knew that he could figure out at least that much. She giggled while straightening his vest and patted the wrinkles out of his ink spotted sleeves, knowing full well that he could overcome this challenge. "You always have enough ink. Don't go on wasting it." She smiled and waved her hand over the sheet, but allowed him to do most of the work. She simply lent her abilities to guide him, but the results were his.

The paper contorted into a three foot long blade running parallel to his arm. It was curved with a razor sharp edge facing away from him. The words condensed into the cutting edge of the newly formed weapon. The corruption was complete. What was once of pen had become of the sword.

He nodded and held the weapon up as if he was about to strike. "I suppose you're right. Minimize ink consumption and give stronger form to the bigger constructs. Use ink grenades for when things get hairy," he listed off the tips that his mother gave him for using his Semblance. All of these were drilled into him starting with the day that he discovered his semblance, "And… it doesn't matter how ridiculous something is, use that string of words to your advantage. Basically, use the cake recipe if I can't remember anything else." What he referred to was an abnormally detailed recipe for a cake that gave the user enough paper and ink to make a reasonably sized construct. For Roland, this was the one piece that could remain in mind even when nothing else would come to him.

"Perfect, though you are forgetting one thing," his mother noted.

His eyes were focused on a nearby oak tree, one of the few that dotted the field that they stood in. Striking it down would be easy, and it would surely have had a place to fall. That would cause his father to be even more disappointed in him, so he restrained himself. His mother's words finally registered in his mind, but he was perplexed. What had been forgotten? Nothing came to mind while slicing the blade off the reel using the built-in paper cutter. "What's that?" He was an effective killer as far as Grimm were concerned. Had a Beowolf been in front of him, he had no doubt that he could take the monstrosity out with ease.

"Enjoy yourself when you fight. You want to be a Huntsman, but you need to do that for yourself as much as you need to for others," she explained while packing up a few textbooks into a worn out satchel, one with an even coating of ink splotches.

The semblance that they shared stuck out in her mind. Sure, they shared so many traits that she was thankful for. Her violet eyes, for instance. They served as a constant reminder that Roland was of her blood. The tail on the other hand, it came with a curse that she had not wished upon him. Still, she had made sure that he cherished his Faunus heritage as much as she did. The semblance, on the other hand, was the greatest gift that she could have given him with her blood.

He gave a fleeting laugh and picked up the mass of paper and ink to begin heading back to his home. That wretched fortress was just beyond the massive brick wall beside the pair. It was only a short walk around to the front gates. "I… don't know that I'll end up taking that route with my life anymore. I could just work for the company. I mean, it wouldn't be bad. That, and Shirley won't let me even train on the grounds unless it's with her. You know how that goes." His stepmother was a full-time Huntress before settling down with his father, but she still took a mission every now and then when she had the time. She held a high standard that Roland, no matter how much he tried, could never reach. Her children, Ahab and Dante, were always able to outshine him in every way. Humans, the both of them.

"Don't talk like that. Believe in yourself and love yourself, and you'll find the way," but this little flash of optimism fell on deaf ears. She knew that she couldn't say anything to change his mind. He was stubborn like that. He got that from his father. Instead, she decided to refrain from telling him exactly what to do. It wasn't her place.

Only the crunching of grass could be heard over the silence between the two Faunus. No words, no signals, no communication. There was a certain strained peacefulness that surrounded them. When they reached the gates, Roland went on and put in the code to get in. They came open with a high, ear piercing creak, but the silence quickly settled back between them.

"Thanks," Roland finally told her, "I'll keep pushing on because you're the one that comes around to coach me." He stopped and turned to face her as the gates swung closed again. Through the bars, he actually mustered a smile. "I love you, mom," those odd words came from his mouth accompanied by a sigh of relief. Maybe he could make it as a Huntsman. She sure thought that he could.

Her mouth turned up in a smile while she waved goodbye. "I love you too. Stay safe!" she called to him and began walking towards one of the two motorcycles parked by the garden tucked into the curved brick wall that connected to the gate. She hopped onto a royal purple motorbike. Unlike Roland's older café style bike, hers was sleeker and required the rider to lean forwards.

"Don't hesitate to visit while Shirley is out of town!" and with that, she zipped down the road back to Mistral.

Roland began making the trek up the hill on a path lined with violet alliums and crimson roses. Atop that hill was a white brick building surrounded by marble columns. The sun was low enough to turn the sky to various shades of yellow, pink, orange, and purple, and the pristine white of the mansion reflected those hues back out. Unfortunately, this tremendous home was more of a prison to him. This was also the home of his wardens: a hateful stepmother, two half siblings, one a merciless bully and one a bystander, and a weak-willed father. Being a "dirty" Faunus, he had the western wing of the structure to himself. Every bone in his body told him to run, but his curfew said that he should've been in there an hour ago.

His eyes narrowed on the mansion. Today was different. His decision to follow a sense of rebellion had been made. His stepmother wasn't going to win, nor was she there to stop him from leaving if he wanted to. He glanced back at the gates. His own, lighter purple motorcycle was parked beside where his mother's was. The geometric pen nib spray painted on the front served to mark it as his own. "Screw it," he put in the code to the gates once again, "I will visit her place while Shirley isn't around."

As soon as they opened, he hopped on the bike and sped off towards Haven. Sure, it would be a surprise to his mother, but she had been the one to invite him. Sure, she probably didn't expect him to come immediately, but she certainly wouldn't complain. She would be willing to cover for him when his father came knocking, if he even did in the first place.

The trip to Mistral didn't take too long. Purples and oranges still mingled within the darkening of the sky. It couldn't have been past eight o'clock. He called his mother to let her know that he was arriving in the city and was heading over, but he received no answer.

Again he called, but no answer. "What's going on?" he whispered to himself. She was probably just cooking. She did have a habit of accidentally contorting the ink on food labels, so perhaps she was concentrating on fixing it. _That's ridiculous, of course she's not. She doesn't know that I'm coming, so she's not going to cook much,_ he thought while calling again. No answer. He doubled his speed and reached the rundown apartment complex in a matter of a few minutes.

His heart pounded in his chest. Something wasn't right. This place was where a lot of Faunus made their homes, and they tended to make a lot of noise. Not even a murmur could be heard from the parking lot. No greeting from someone hearing him pull in, no music vibrating his chest as he approached, and no sound of an argument unfolding down one of the halls. There was something else wrong. There was a subtle metallic smell in the air. "Is that… blood…?"

While replacing his helmet with his wide brimmed hat, he ran straight for the stairwell. The smell was stronger here, but it now seemed more fleshy and organic. It had to be blood, and a lot of it. Every door was shut. Not a soul could be seen in the halls. Normally he could hear kids playing ball on the court out back, but not now. All that he could hear was some bird cawing in the distance.

"Hel-" he covered his own mouth to keep from making noise. If someone or something came for these people, then he didn't want them to know that he was there. Sanctum taught him that a Huntsman could maximize the survival rate of innocents if they could take out the enemy without them knowing that they were there. Sticking to those lessons was the only thing keeping him from panicking. It somehow made it all feel less real.

Somewhere down the hall before him, he could hear a window sliding open. It was in the direction of his mother's room, and upon reaching it he found that door was open. The smell from inside was fresher than the rest. "Mom! Answer me!" He scrambled for the door, not caring that his steps might be heard. He slid into the doorframe only to find the grisly scene. His mother was lying face down in a pool of her own blood. Her tail was disconnected from her, and had been thrown to the other side of the room. Her eyes were frozen in a hollow gaze of helpless fear.

Roland backed up and fell against the adjacent door. His mind couldn't process what was happening. There was no way that this was happening. It was a dream. Yeah, that's what it was, a dream. It had to be. There was no way that his mother had been killed. She was a trained warrior, after all. The best on her team. The leader of her team. She couldn't be killed. She was safe in her apartment. She was cooking.

He didn't notice the tears streaming down his cheeks, or how badly his legs shook. He couldn't think beyond what he had just witnessed. "It's fine. Everything is okay. I'll come back when she's around. She's probably just out getting groceries." Denial of what was happening felt better than the alternative. Losing her wasn't an option. She couldn't just die like that.

Going home and apologizing to his father and stepmother would be the easiest thing to do. He would just call the next day and check on his mother. She would surely answer that time. To his dismay, a murderous caw brought him back to reality.

Maybe a bird? No chance. This was bigger. He ran to the end of the hallway that connected to the parking lot to investigate. A mid-sized Nevermore soared overhead, seemingly focused on the complex that he occupied. It screeched as it took a nosedive, forcing Roland to retreat farther back into the hall. The monstrosity landed dead center in the parking lot, facing him. This was a protected city. How did it get in? "Negativity…" he whispered while staring down the roaring bird.

 _I can't do this._ He projected his rage onto the bird. He couldn't deny what was happening. It wasn't a choice of whether or not he would fight. He had to. His mother was dead, and this _thing_ was the only thing that he could inflict every ounce of his hate upon. Pings began coming from his left arm. He hadn't even realized that he was typing. The instincts of a Huntsman kicked into action, and so he had begun writing. The Nevermore's head was wedged into the hallway, snapping its beak only a few feet away from him, and he locked eyes with it in defiance. The words that were making their way across Writer's Block's reel of paper were made for this monstrosity.

"You think that you can just come here out of the blue, huh…?" He growled. Fingers flew about keys. The reel reset itself over and over, faster and faster. In a matter of seconds, three feet of paper and ink was produced. It was the cake recipe that his mother drilled into his head. It was detailed to the point of being ridiculous, but it was getting the job done. The noises stopped, and the paper contorted into a blade identical to the curved blade that his mother made. It was razor sharp and came to a microscopic point. Rage fueled the preciseness of this blade. Hatred was about to guide it.

"Well, you're wrong." He pulled off a black frag grenade of his belt and hurled it at the Nevermore's open mouth. It exploded into a mist of ink, but condensed into a sticky black web within the creature's mouth and caused it to slam closed. "You need to keep quiet while I put an end to you," his voice rang out with raw hate and murderous intent behind it.

Rushing the beast as it pulled its head out wasn't the best idea, but it didn't seem too bad while blinded by rage. It attempted to crane its head up, but a wave of his hand sent it plunging to the ground from the tug of ink in its beak. **"DON'T YOU DARE TRY TO LEAVE!"** he screamed while driving his blade into the beak of the Nevermore. The muffled screech and flapping of wings said that it had to have hurt. His blade came out with a wet pop as he prepared to drive it in again. At the apex of his strike, the wing of the monstrosity slammed into his middle.

He fell to his bottom, the strike making him lose his balance and focus. The ink inside the Nevermore's beak liquified once again. The toll that was being taken on his aura was immense. His blade wasn't taking up much of it, but sustaining a large mass of straight ink certainly was. Still, he found the strength to keep fighting. Despite the ache in his middle, he stood and rushed it once again. This time, he sliced at the thing with no direction or purpose other than harming it. Being liberated, the Nevermore pecked at him and made an effort to kill its attacker. It finally got its chance and made a quick jab into Roland's sternum.

The strike sent him flying into a nearby car. The car alarm nearly drowned out the beeping coming from his pocket. It was his scroll, probably telling him that his aura levels were getting low. Upon touching his chest, he felt a stabbing pain. His newly cracked sternum wasn't healing.

"Try and hurt me, huh?" Roland pulled himself up and spat blood on the ground. His aura was failing. _I can't hold out for very long_ , he thought, but then quickly pushed the worry to the back of his mind. "No." His fists clenched and his ink suddenly became much denser than before. His anger was fueling him now. His aura was going to accommodate him whether it liked it or not.

 **"I WILL KILL YOU!"** he screamed while dashing towards the Grimm that was at least three times his size. He batted away the feathers flying at him with the flat of his blade. His heart thumped harder as he neared the thing and buried the blade deep in its breast. It writhed, unable to move its head from the spot that he held it in with ink.

The beast slowly stopped moving and began to fade to what looked like soot flying up to join the clouds. What he had just pulled off was incredible, but it came at a serious cost. He collapsed with a trail of blood leaking from his mouth and nose. His aura lost its protective properties as soon as he began pushing it with the preciseness of his blade and using so much ink to force a creature of that size down. The blade flopped down in a mass of paper and ink as his aura bottomed out. The web of ink from the Nevermore's mouth made a puddle on the asphalt.

He was in disbelief. Had he really just killed a Grimm like that on his own? It was probably the rush of adrenaline that helped him hold on long enough to do it, but it still was as if his body switched into autopilot. His thoughts slowly became more clouded until everything finally went black.

Roland awoke with a start. It was morning. He was in his bed, covered up by layers of violet sheets and quilts. He felt feverish, but it seemed that his fever had already broken in his sleep. Just as soon as he could, he pushed the covers off of him and onto the floor. What had happened to him?

He gazed up at the ceiling, only to feel the cold press of wet rag against his head. A glance to the right showed him that a woman in all red was sitting in a chair next to his bed. Her blood red hair flowed over the armored shoulders of her crimson dress. This woman was the reason that he hated the color red,

She began what Roland saw as a pitiful attempt at sympathy, "Roland, you're awake. I was so worried that-"

"Get out," Roland croaked. He attempted to sit up, but his body wouldn't allow it, "Get out of my room now, Shirley."

She tried to keep her act up, "Roland, I was just so worried about you. You're my stepson. I love you. I was concerned for your li-"

 ** _"I SAID NOW,"_** he shouted at her. If she hadn't complied that time, then he would have screamed at her even more. Thankfully, he didn't have to.

A throbbing pain came from the center of his chest, but he forced himself to get up and get dressed anyway. The way to the kitchen was painful. He thought that maybe he'd at least find his father there making breakfast as he always did. Instead, he found him sitting on a barstool by the counter, fast asleep.

His father still wore his business attire, but it was wrinkled and disheveled as if he'd worn it for days. Beside him sat a bottle of fine sake that was three-fourths empty. If Roland hadn't known better, then he might have mistaken his father for a hobo. His bloodshot eyes shot open as if on instinct as soon as Roland stepped in.

"Roland!" He shot to his feet and ran to his son. He latched onto his shoulders and looked him over. His breath reeked of alcohol, "You're okay! Thank goodness. You've been asleep for three-"

His son cut him off. "What the hell happened?" his voice was low and quiet. He was starting to remember, but it was still all hazy. "Mom, is she…?"

"I'm so sorry. No one knows exactly what happened. The police are still investigating the murders. I'm just thankful that you're alive." His father spouted off. There wasn't even a moment's thought put into his words. That, or he was avoiding mentioning his mother directly all together.

But it was true. None of it was dreamt up. Roland felt a knot form in his stomach. Why had this happened to him? How could someone just kill all of those people? He had heard of violence against Faunus, but never so locally or on this… scale.

His thoughts were broken as another voice came from the dining area. A man, a _Huntsman_ , had graced the Wells estate with his presence. His unwanted, unappreciated, and unwelcome presence, "Care to tell me how you stayed conscious long enough to do what you did?"

Roland turned to face a sandy haired man leaning against the china cabinet. He hadn't even noticed him before, but seeing him instantly set something off in his mind. Hate. The latent hate that still resided in his mind lasered in on the newcomer, "I don't know what you're talking about, and I don't really care. Get out of my home."

"Oh boy…" The man shook his head. He seemed displeased with the answer that he was given, but not particularly surprised. "I'll excuse the not-so-warm welcome. I'm still gettin' paid either way," his grin showed off his less than perfect teeth. That was to be expected with a Huntsman, though that didn't make them any less repulsive, "You ever heard of Beacon Academy?"


	3. Green Trailer

_"Music expresses that which cannot be said and on which it is impossible to be silent."_

 _― Victor Hugo_

Heart racing. Palms sweating. Short breaths.

The show was about to begin.

"Ma, ma, ma, blah, blah, blah," the singer flexed her lips in the mirror. She tucked a hand under her chin and stretched her jaw, "Hey guys! Heard that you all- no, that's not it," she licked her lips, "You guys ready to get this party start- no, that's not it either…"

"I'll just wing it," she told herself. Winging it was her specialty, so it wasn't like she was willing to just let that talent go for the final show. Telling herself that helped ignore the terror boiling in her mind. When she got up to finish preparing for the show. When she turned to go speak with the stage manager, she found her father walking towards her from the backstage exit door.

"Dad. What is it? I have to be out on the stage in five minutes!" Maybe if she could stall him long enough to be forced onto the stage, then she might not have had to endure the coming pleas from her father.

He didn't say a word while he handed her a bottle of water. A few moments of silence came and went while he waited for her to guzzle it all down. He took a deep breath once she was finished, "Timbre, this doesn't have to be your last show. You can keep doing this. I'm just… I'm afraid you're going to end up thinking you've made the wrong choice if you go through with this," he kept his gaze down towards the ground, "I'm worried about you."

"Can't blame you there," Timbre really did not want to have this conversation. Unfortunately, she was about five minutes away from being pushed onto the stage. There was no way out of this, "But I've made up my mind."

Fans whistled and hollered to the stage. Maybe that would bring their idol out faster. Those chants and cheers always gave Timbre a bubbly feeling in the pit of her stomach. It reminded her that there were expectations in the crowd that only she could live up to.

Still, she had another talent that could better the world in a way that was needed. There was a role that few could fill, and she was one of those few, "I _am_ going to Beacon and I _am_ picking up my training where I left off," she put down the water bottle on a nearby table with a loud thud, "and you're not going to stop me."

"I know, but your mother wo-"

"My mother would have supported me in whatever I chose to do," she held up her balled up hands. "She's the one who inspired me to start fighting in the first place. She even let me use her weapon to get through preparatory school when I had trouble making my own."

Her father sighed. "Yes, but… look at what you've built up. All of this work-"

"All of _this_ really doesn't mean that much to me. What about combat training? What about all of _that_ work?" She fought harder than anyone else in combat school. She took pride in her prowess as a warrior, "This isn't what I _want_ to do for the rest of my life!"

"You can't keep following in her footsteps Timbre! Just look at where that got her!" he snapped. Did he honestly think that her mother became a Huntress with the notion that her life would be perfectly peaceful and safe? He couldn't have been that naive.

Timbre sat and stared at him, her eyes widening from the sudden outburst. She decided that she wasn't going to listen to someone who apparently did not have the faintest clue about the duty of a Huntress, and stomped down towards the stage.

"Timbre! Timbre!" he called after her, "I didn't mean it like that! I just don't want you to end up like her!" He ran after her and grabbed her shoulders, turning her around to look at him, "I can't lose you too."

She turned her head away, unable to face him as tears welled up in her eyes. Silence surrounded them in a small bubble as the nearby cheers continued. "I'm not going anywhere unless it means that I can make a difference. Singing won't let me do that, at least, not in the way she would have wanted me to." She turned back to look at him, tears streaming down her face, "My music may make people feel better and entertain them, but it's not going to help when the Creatures of Grimm start ripping them to shreds," she broke his grasp, "I've made up my mind," she sighed, "I've already been working with my new weapons."

"Timbre… you… what…?"

"Yes dad! I did! I finally made my own weapons! That's how serious I am about this! Because _Mom_ would've wanted me to! I can't rely on her weapon forever!" She turned back to him. While keeping their eye contact locked, she whipped her arms downwards. A few feet of thick cable came out of her wrists from under her sleeves. She grabbed them and held them up. Her sleeves fell to reveal black and red gloves with tubes connected to what looked like large reels wrapped around her upper arms. "I was going to show them off at the end of the show."

Her father was dumbfounded. "When did you...?"

She shook her head. "You really don't understand," The wires retracted with a crack. The star turned around and continued her trek to the stage, but stopped when she felt her dad's hand on her arm.

"Timbre… please. Listen to me."

She turned her head and glared at him coldly, "Let. Go."

Slowly, her father removed his hand from her shoulder. He stepped away silently. The sorrow on his face reminded Timbre of the day that he lost the love of his life. She was young, but she remembered.

In that moment, he felt that he had lost their daughter to the same fate. The fear of that had weighed down on his heart for all of his daughter's days. Seeing it come to fruition was devastating.

Timbre didn't look back. When she disappeared through the curtains, the cheers intensified.

Thousands of faces looked back at her in the venue's massive stadium. Screams and cheers echoed out as she looked over the smiling fans waving at her. Out of all of the places she'd performed, Koruss Stadium at the edge of Vale had always been her favorite. It was where she held her first big show and it was also the closest to home. She found it fitting that her last performance would be here. As she stepped up to the microphone, her nervousness faded.

"Ladies and gentlemen," the announcer boomed through the stadium, "back home in Vale for her last and _final_ show, please welcome, Timbre Forté!"

Timbre grabbed the mic and the band behind her began to play. Drums beat loudly and guitars blared through the large amps as brightly colored lights turned and flickered in the darkness of the vast room.

"Hello-o-o-o Vale! How are you guys doing tonight!?" The smile on her face grew as she pushed the conversation with her father to the back of her mind. After a few seconds of cheering, she began to sing along with the music.

Almost two full hours later, Timbre returned to the backstage area. She was laughing and smiling as she pushed her bangs out of her eyes. Her fans were still yelling loudly, demanding an encore. She looked around for her dad, whom she found sitting in a chair not too far away near some of the control panels. The smile on her face faded a bit as she walked over to him.

"Timbre!" he stood up and gave a weak smile, "You were fantastic out there!"

"Dad, I'm sorry about earlier," she cut in.

He looked down to her and nodded. He put a hand on her shoulder, "Timbre, I may not like your decision, but… after giving it some thought, maybe you're right. Your mother would be proud knowing that you want to go to Beacon," he looked her in the eyes, "if it will make you happy, I'll support it. Just know that I'll be worried about you every second you are not within my sight."

A tear rolled down her cheek, "Thanks dad," she placed her hand over his, "Hey, maybe in four years, I could do a return show when I'm a Huntress," she giggled.

He laughed along with her, "You know, I'd like that very much, Timbre."

The tender moment was suddenly cut off when a one of the stagehands came from around the corner saying Timbre had to go back out onstage for the encore.

 _I don't even get a break on my last show?_ she thought. It seemed strange that she was being asked to go back out onstage for the finale already, but it seemed to make sense since it was her final show. She nodded to the worker before turning back to her father.

"Go on, honey. Go give them a finale they'll never forget," he kissed her forehead, "Knock 'em dead."

She smiled and bounced her way back to the stage. The cheers once again intensified, but before she could say anything into the mic, the excited cheers were replaced with terrified screams as an explosion rang out. The shockwave sent her tumbling back against the drumset. The world around her jerked when her head bounced off of the bass drum.

Timbre watched as figures in dark hoods and shiny metallic helmets descended from the fresh hole near the base of the dome. Luckily, the seating up there was undergoing renovations. The fans began to run to the exits, trampling over one another and screaming the entire time. She could only sit there, numb with horror as she saw large black shapes moving through the hole with them: Grimm.

"Timbre!" Her dad ran out onto the stage and yanked her to her feet, "You have to get out of here!"

She fumbled backward, "Who… who are these people?... Why do they have Grimm with them?" She clenched her fists, drawing her gloves down her arm and around her fingers. Anger slowly replaced her numbness. She spun around, "Dad, get out of here."

"But Timbre! You-"

"Go!" she commanded.

The man before her shuddered a bit, looking back and forth between her and the various dark figures nearing them as she drew lengths of wire from under her wrists. He looked to her and nodded. Following a moment of stunned silence, he mouthed 'okay,' before running backstage.

Timbre looked into the seating, determined to put an end to this chaos. No fans were left, and there seemed to be no injured or dead among them. Of course, she couldn't be completely certain, but she pushed that possibility out of her mind. Her eyes followed the hooded figures as they walked down the aisles towards the stage. Her anxiety from before the show had returned. She felt her hands slip against the thick woven cables. She waited, but quickly found that standing her ground wouldn't help much when she saw the metallic glint of guns. All of them were aimed at her.

Gunshots rang across the stadium. She ducked to the side as a hail of bullets scattered around her. The thought of her mother's life. The danger that she faced. The bravery she had. She could be that too.

She retracted the long wire from her right glove and pointed her fist at the ceiling above her. Thinner wires from the knuckles of each of her fingers launched upwards, trailing off towards the darkness above. When she felt them snap taut, she began reeling them back in.

The hooded soldiers and creatures watched Timbre fly high into the air above them. When they saw her beginning to fall towards them, they began shooting again.

Timbre could feel bullets whizzing past her, but she deflected what she could with the thicker cables. She reeled her arms back above her head, and then crashed the braided cables into the ground between two of the shooters. A flick of the wrist caused the cables whip sideways, knocking both of the shooters off of their feet before arcing them back and delivering a pair of knockout blows.

Fear sunk into her chest. Two of the opponents were down, but there were a dozen more running towards her. She launched wires forward. They wrapped around two more soldiers, effectively tying them up. She whipped them towards each other, incapacitating them. With them wrapped up, she clipped the wires, leaving the bindings to do their job.

Before she could find her next threat, her breath was knocked clean out of her as something heavy slammed into her back. She landed on the ground on her stomach. The beast on top of her was breathing heavily, the heat from its face blowing against her neck. Its weight shifted onto her spine. It was rearing back to give her a killing blow.

 _"STOOOOOOP!"_ she yelled.

The weight was suddenly gone. She pushed herself up, shaking from the near death experience. Timbre scanned the area around her to try to find the Grimm that had tried to kill her, but only found the body of a Beowolf lying a few feet away, a hole blown through its bone-plated head. It slowly vanished into nothingness.

"Tsk tsk tsk. Bad puppy. We need this one alive," a mechanically distorted voice echoed from the aisle in front of her.

Timbre looked back to see one of the hooded figures walking towards her. Due to their slightly bulkier and unique appearance compared to the others, she figured that they were the boss. The black cloak was fractured with red fissures, similar to a Grimm's mask, and the metallic helmet was much more ornate with detailed curves and points. This was their undoubtedly the leader.

"Who are you!?" she demanded with as much courage as she could muster and held lengths of wire out. Four of the shooters were down because of her actions, and she would take down a fifth if it meant putting an end to this madness.

The rest of the soldiers pointed their guns at her. The last of the Grimm were killed off. Obviously, they had served their purpose.

The leader lowered their hand, ordering the others to hold their fire. "Come now, cut that out. You're all scaring her," that same metallic voice echoed from inside the helmet. The leader stepped closer to Timbre, "Why don't you make this easy for us, and come along quietly Ms. Forté?" They held out a hand, beckoning her forward.

She shook her head. "You never answered my question. _Who are you?_ "

The leader shook their head, "That is no concern of yours at the moment. All you need to know is," in a blink of an eye, the leader was behind Timbre with their gun held against her temple, "very bad things will happen if you don't come with us."

Timbre wanted to scream, but nothing came out. She was staring down the barrel of a black and red carbine. The gun reminded her of the black hide of a Grimm. She knew that her aura would help lessen the damage, but she was much too frightened to think about that at the moment. At this range, her aura could break as easily as it could protect her.

The lackies stepped closer, ready to take her to wherever for whatever reason. She had had some weird and obsessive fans before, but these people obviously weren't doing this because of her music. She knew she didn't have much time.

"Get… off… of me!" she slammed her elbows backwards into the sides of the leader. They stumbled backwards as Timbre repelled herself up to the walkways above. She thought she'd made it out, but when she looked down, she saw the barrel of the leader's gun pointed right at her. She launched wires to the side, out of the leader's shot. She began swinging, circling the stadium well above their heads.

The leader stomped their foot. "Don't just sit there, get her down from there!" they demanded.

Timbre continued her path around the room, repeatedly launching and retracting wires from her fingers. If she couldn't fight all of them at once, she'd just stay out of their reach. One thing that she knew how to do well was stall.

As the wind whipped past her, she saw the hole her attackers had made to get in. Her escape.

"Stop moving!" The leader shot a few shots at her, but she had already clipped the wires that held her and launched herself towards the opening.

Timbre landed hard on the curved dome roof outside. She tumbled over herself, rolling away from the hole before finally coming to a stop only a few inches from a twenty-story fall to the lake below. The night sky twinkled above her, the broken moon taunting her. In the distance, the spires of Beacon Academy glowed.

 _Would I be dealing with this right now if I were already there?_ She thought to herself.

"How _dare_ you..."

Timbre turned back towards the hole she'd flown through. Slowly stepping towards her was the group's leader. They had their gun pointed at her, not wavering even a fragment of an inch away from her face. "Now, stop being so much _trouble_ and come along. I can't promise I won't hurt you anymore because you've really, _really_ made me," they lifted their gun to slam it against Timbre's head, "ANGRY!"

She watched as the butt of the rifle came fly towards her. She shut her eyes and reached her arm up to shield her face. The world was about to go dark for a little while, or it might have, at least.

Before the gun could meet Timbre's face, a flash of white slammed into the leader's side.

A woman dressed in a long white coat slammed the leader against the dome. While they were down, she drove her foot into their chest.

"A Huntress?! Seriously?!" the leader shouted. They grabbed the woman's ankle and threw her off. Before she had a chance to recover, they dug their heels into the ground and tackled her at the waist.

They both went flying, tumbling down the curved dome until they eventually slid off of the roof. Seconds felt like days as Timbre waited for any sign of life from either of them, then she heard a splash.

A few more moments of silence passed, "Why must you ruin a perfectly good show?" the woman broke the silence. She poked her head up from the edge of the roof, but the mass of orange curls on her head obscured her face. Thankfully, she had caught herself and dumped the attacker in the lake below.

She pulled herself the rest of the way up, her shoulders sagging in disappointment. Her fingers ran through her hair, straightening it enough for Timbre to see the face of her heroine, "How are you doing, Timbre? Rough night?" she held her hand out to help her up.

The woman who stood before the singer was familiar. Timbre knew her well. Very well. "Carmen?!" she took her hand. She wrapped her arms around the Huntress, hugging her tightly.

"What are you doing here?! Is dad okay?" she stuttered. The mayhem in the parking lot below brought back the sinking feeling in her chest. Ambulances and policemen had arrived to help deal with the panicked masses. Her knees began to buckle when she saw what looked like black body bags.

Carmen quickly grabbed her and spun her around "He's fine, and I couldn't _not_ be here for your last performance," she smirked, "Your mother would've never let me live it down if I did, you know?" she began tapping her toes on the tiles, "I guess the more _appropriate_ answer would be… 'I'm a Huntress, it's my duty to protect people. I'm a teacher, and I have to protect my students."

Timbre pushed the image out of her mind and gave a weak smile, "Yeah… that makes sense… I guess," she looked to the dark expanse of sky above them, "Um… can we get down from here, now?"

Carmen blinked a few times. She looked down for the lake before returning to Timbre. "Oh… right. Yeah, we can do that. Those goons vanished when the cops showed up, so we shouldn't have to worry about… _them_ coming back…"

Timbre hooked a wire to a nearby air conditioning unit, "who?"

Carmen shook her head, "One thing at a time. Let's 'get down from here', okay? We can go out and grab some coffee after I fill out the reports. Or burgers. Maybe some ice cream."

Timbre rolled her eyes as they rappelled down. Carmen had always been scatterbrained, but she usually forced herself to focus during serious events. _What is going on here?..._ She thought to herself. As soon as her feet touched the ground, her father ran up to her and hugged her closely. His cheeks were wet with worried tears.

"Don't worry, dad," Timbre hugged her father back, "You're not losing me that easily…" but she didn't know that for sure. If those goons ever decided to show their faces again, she would be ready. She would be on her way to becoming a full-fledged Huntress.


	4. Tan Trailer

" _Avoid the tyranny of the reasonable voice… it will guarantee a complacency of never trying anything adventurous..."_

― _J. Michael Straczynski_

Flood lights flickered atop a rundown mobile home and gave light to the dusk. A scaffold was positioned behind the vehicle, and from it hung a young acrobat of a director. Her arms were stretched out across a maze of bars and wires. The light was vital to a good shot. Too much, and the actors got washed out. Too little, and nothing could be seen. Balance was key, and it would have been almost impossible for any one person to get the lighting just so on the first try. This was not the case for Sepia Hughes.

Before her stretched a desert with props scattered about. She hummed in her thoughts while looking over the scene. "Opal!" she called, "Pass me up some water, would you? I'm thirsty."

Another young woman snatched up a plastic water bottle, "Aight! Hold up!" she called back. After a few seconds of fiddling with her boomerang and a bit of string, she looked back up at Sepia. "Shouldn't you be at home? Y'know, at your mum's birthday party?"

"I have to get these scenes shot today. Everything is perfect, and she said that she understood! It's fine," Sepia retorted. Her hair was swept to the side of her face so that she could see how her equipment was arranged. Everything seemed perfect so far.

"Hey, Opal, seriously," she opened and closed her fist repeatedly, "Water. Please."

"Ugh…" Opal threw her boomerang in an arc so that the water bottle would land squarely in the Sepia's hand. "Ya know, I'd say that too if I were your mum. Ya always have to film this, film that. Ya don't take breaks."

Sepia tossed the boomerang back down and bent upwards to take a drink. The empty bottle was dropped back to the ground when she was finished, "She's not my real mom. Don't get me wrong, I do love her lots. It just… feels like there is a disconnect there," she shrugged and straightened out her skirt to come down, "I think everything's perfect. The crew should be here in a while." Her feet swung over the bars and she hopped down, landing squarely on the roof of the trailer.

"She raised ya. You're just trying to justify your not being there," Opal pressed as she watched her friend hop down from the top of the trailer, "Why even film in the first place? You know that they'd love to have you at Shade."

"Yeah, yeah, everyone loves Sepia Hughes. Neila would be so happy! Damascus would have his eye on me. I could break Ivoros out of his shell!" Sepia rolled her eyes and focused on Opal as she stood back up, "I dropped out of combat school for a reason. I don't want to destroy things, I want to create things."

Opal had heard that reason over a hundred times, but it never satisfied her. "Ya know, ya can add the entirety of Shade to the people who want you there. You're a joy to be around! Who couldn't enjoy having you there?"

She watched as Sepia gave her a forced, toothy grin. She was one heck of an actress, but a fake smile was still a fake smile. "What is it?"

Sepia snatched up her water bottle again. "You know, what goes on in my head might surprise you," her false smile faded as she walked around the scene. Her eyes settled on a deep crack in the earth, one that was about three feet across. For a moment, she considered blocking it off, but then that could limit the shot angles she had available to film with. It wasn't too horribly close to the set, so she decided that it wasn't that big of a deal.

"I like to be in control, you know? It scares me to not know what is going on around me, but I can analyze every single frame of the worlds that I create on the silver screen. I think that's one of the reasons that I love film so much. I can direct and act in my own films. My voice becomes strengthened by the screen that I get projected onto. There isn't much that I can't do with special effects, even. It's… magical," she smiled at the whole set as she approached her friend again, "I love cinematography. There's just something that sparks a fire inside me."

Opal leaned on the side of the trailer and watched as the sun make the horizon glow with a dull orange, "That's deep, but…" she hummed while she thought of a way to word her thoughts, "I just think that you're talented in a lot of areas. I mean, sure you've got a role in a big upcoming film, but you've also got some _serious_ talent with those guns of yours. Heck, ya even modified them so that you could learn from your fights! That's incredible! You could be a _great_ Huntress!"

"I know that I could be, and I would love to be one. I can't balance both being a filmmaker and a Huntress! I've got to choose, and I have found my niche in film. I found movies before I even thought about being a Huntress, and it was the movies that ignited something inside me. I knew that I had to know everything about those moving pictures." Sepia glanced down the road that she came from to see a dusty blue truck barrelling towards the set. Her crew had arrived.

"So do you want to stick around while we film, or do you need to go do something else?" she asked.

Opal sighed and took a seat against the trailer, "I'll stick around. I love seeing ya act." She thought it best to just drop the whole Huntress thing. Once Sepia's mind was made up, then there wasn't any changing it. No amount of prying would convince her to switch careers again.

"Great, then prepare to be amazed! We're hitting things off with the hero swooping in to save me today! It's going to be awesome!" Sepia waved down the truck as it pulled in behind the trailer, "Hey! I've got it all set up! Bust out my cameras and get into costume! Let's move, guys! Come on!"

A crew of five men dressed in all black filed out and began setting up cameras and whatever else hadn't already been brought on set. Two went in the trailer to change into costume and prepare. Sepia was already dressed in her own costume, a simple blue blouse tucked into a tan skirt. A harness was well hidden underneath her clothing, which would allow her to be taken up with the hero as he flew away.

In an hour, everyone was ready and huddled around the director. Despite Sepia's small stature, her presence on the set was huge. The entirety of her crew looked up to her, despite them physically looking down at her.

"Alright boys, the first scene that we're doing is where our dashing Huntsman is going to save me from our dastardly villain. You know the drill. The hero can fly with his semblance, the baddie is a Grimm experiment gone wrong. He'll have me tied by the ankles and across my chest. Get too frisky when putting my ropes on, and you lose an arm. Sound like a plan?"

And with that, the chaos of getting everyone in place ensued. Sepia focused on getting everyone in place. In mere minutes, she had everything into position. Wires were connected to the back of her harness, her ropes were tied taught, and behind her stood a hulking man dressed in black and red. Behind him was a cluster of posts covered in black and white tape, as well as a large, black, mechanical kangaroo with a white and red bone mask. Though it was a crude representation of a certain type of Grimm, an Oro, it could be taken care of in post. "Alright, take one!" she shouted to her crew, "ACTION!"

The scene went as planned. The wires took her up with the hero just as expected. The mechanism was connected to a smaller scaffold just outside of the shot. "Nice work! I'll go over that and see what we need to do be-" She froze. There was a shift in the weight throughout the system. Upon looking at the lower supports, she saw the issue. One of the supports was bent, and the other three were dented.

The number one concern of a Sepia Hughes set was safety. Test everything before it is put into use. Inspect everything before a shot. She had failed to remember her own rule.

Panic sunk into her chest. "Lower him! Lower him now!" she shouted as she let go of the film's hero. If they got him down, then perhaps her weight could still be supported. It would take too long to lower them both simultaneously with the old rigging that they were using. The metal creaked and the wires began to strain and snap throughout the rig.

The crew froze in place. They all looked around at each other. Fear took hold of every last one of them. Even Opal stood by helplessly.

"I SAID NOW!" Sepia shouted. Maybe she could survive the fall with her aura, but she didn't want to bet on it. Then she turned her head to look for where she might fall. Judging by the height she would fall forwards… directly into the crevasse that she had ignored.

The crew followed through with her order, but it was too late. Even with the hero on the ground, the bent support caved inward. The scaffold leaned with her hanging helplessly. The other three collapsed, unable to support the combined weight of her and the rigging.

"This can't be happening…" she whispered as she watched the ground fly beneath her feet. The momentum sent her forward, and straight towards the crack that she had neglected earlier. "NO!" She shouted, trying to maneuver herself as to not land directly into it, but she began to descend into the earth anyway. Her wires tangled in her struggle.

She jolted to a stop. The wires tightened around whatever they were wrapped around. Her arms. Her legs. Her waist. The wire connected to the back of her harness, the one supporting most of her weight, tightened around her neck.

The feeling of suffocation struck her immediately, but it made her remember that her aura could protect her for a little while. But for how long? How long could she last without oxygen? If her aura didn't hold up that long, then her neck would snap. She was going to die.

"O…" she could hardly speak above a whisper with her the little air left in her lungs, "Opa… l…"

"I've got ya, Sepia! Just hold on!" Opal called from what felt to Sepia like miles above. Though, on the surface, Opal could see that Sepia was only about five feet down, and just barely out of reach. If she pulled her up by the wires, then that would just tighten the one around Sepia's neck. It would just kill her faster.

Opal's eyes traced the support wires up to the winch that the wires fed into. It was dangerous, but it was Sepia's only chance of survival. Her aura would hold up long enough. Her aura _had_ to hold up long enough. She made a break for the winch and kicked the lever to turn it on. Nothing.

"Dammit!" Opal kicked the machine, her flip-flop bouncing off of it without making a dent. She ran back to the hole and looked down. It wasn't more than a twenty foot drop, or the best that she could tell. Sepia could survive that. The girl was small, but tough as nails.

But what if that drop went deeper? She could have fallen deeper and gotten caught in an even worse position. She had watched a movie with Sepia that showed a man cutting off his own arm to get out of a hole.

No, this wasn't the time for doubt. Opal had to act.

"I'm gonna to try to disconnect ya! Brace yourself!" Opal shouted down, but received no response. Had Sepia passed out, or did she not have enough air to speak? That wouldn't matter if she could get her down.

She held up her boomerang and ran back to the winch. She held the end with a large, open hole on the end up to the support that the winch was attached to and pressed a button on a small remote in her freehand. With a bright explosion, her boomerang fired a magma Dust-charged lead slug into the support. She fired the weapon again. Again. A fourth time. The fourth shot was enough to separate the winch from its supports, and the machine instantly shot off towards the crack.

Opal ran to the crack that Sepia had fallen into, but inside she saw Sepia rapidly sliding into a deeper hole, one that her panicked eyes hadn't seen, "Sepia!" she dove in after her friend and latched on.

A tan glow came from Sepia and faded. The wire around her neck finally cut flesh. If Opal hadn't grabbed the wire the moment that she saw Sepia's aura broke, then Sepia might not have had a head.

They both crashed into floor of the crevasse, but there was another drop off only a few inches away. Sepia's blood wet the sandstone under them. Her unconscious body began sliding slowly towards the abyss below. Without an aura, she would certainly die.

Opal didn't have time to think. Her body just reacted. She held Sepia tight in her legs. The wires were weighing them down. They had to go. She fired her weapon three times, finally disconnecting the wires, but not quickly enough for Sepia to be saved completely.

She stared at the girl bleeding out in her arms. The blood. She had to do something about the blood. She untied the bandana from around her thigh and secured it around Sepia's neck. Care was taken to only apply pressure to the sides of her neck, as to not cause any more damage to her throat. Hopefully the blood vessels wouldn't be damaged to the point that no blood could flow at all.

Sepia was going to die. She was going to die right there in Opal's arms.

In a last ditch effort to get help, Opal screamed for anyone to hear. She screamed and screamed until she couldn't scream any more. She was going to be a Huntress in training. She was supposed to keep people safe, but there she was, about to lose her best friend. An ambulance had to get out there as soon as possible, but could Sepia last that long?

The sobbing could just barely be heard between her cries for help. The director's crew scrambled to find a way to help, but things were looking bleak for Sepia Hughes. At least she would die doing what she loved. At least she would die content with herself.

 _But that's not me at all, is it?_ Sepia thought. She could breath again, but it was hard. White hot fire still filled her throat. She knew that no words could come out. She felt tired, too tired to open her eyes. Too tired to move. Everything hurt, but her mind still worked. _I'm not happy. I'm not okay with this. I have to do something._

Her head pounded. The blood must have been rushing away from her head. She felt queasy. Still, she kept thinking. _Here Opal is crying, and I can't do anything. I'm not dead. Just tired. Really tired. More tired than I've ever been._

Even the darkness began to fade. Sepia slowly slipped out of consciousness, but caught the whining of engines. She could have sworn that she heard Opal's muffled voice and a cool breeze come over her. That didn't matter much, though. She was gone. She was growing cold. The last thing that she could see was a bright flash of yellow. Then everything went dark.

 _That's a wrap…_

She allowed herself to descend deep into the grasp of death.

"She's stable, but not well. We can't be sure if she will wake up or not. I'm sorry."

"Then do more! Do what you have to! I am not losing my daughter too!"

The second voice was that of Aubrey Hughes, Sepia's aunt turned mother. It couldn't have been, though. Sepia Hughes was dead. Sepia Hughes knew that she was dead.

 _Do the dead know that they're dead?_

She could still think. That thought had come from her. Sepia Hughes wasn't a corpse. She was alive. She could sense that she was alive. Her heart beat weakly in her ears, but picked up as life began filling her once more.

Everything ached. Everything felt stiff. Though, nothing was numb. She could feel her fingers twitching.

The sheet crumpled under her closed fist.

"Sepia?!"

That got a reaction. She closed another fist around her sheets.

"Oh my gods! Sepia! Can you open your eyes?!"

 _Can I…?_

A sliver of white light stretched across her field of view. She could hear the distant sound of beeping. The chemical stench of medicine burned her nose. White curtains had been drawn around what must have been her bed. It was a hospital, that much she knew.

Her field of view exploded into an expanse of blinding white. It faded, eventually allowing her to focus on the woman standing over her. It was indeed Aubrey. Those deep red eyes were unmistakable.

"Sepia!" Aubrey enveloped her in a painful hug, but it certainly wasn't agonizing. Though not what the doctor had ordered, some motherly love was definitely on the list of things that she needed.

' _What happened?'_ she tried to ask, but found that she could only mouth the words. She tried again, but still nothing.

Pain racked her neck like a noose. The twisted wound around her neck began to burn. Her fingers brushed the front of the bandages around her neck. There was a divot right below her chin. Her voice box was gone.

Aubrey snatched up her scroll and handed it to her daughter. The doctors had told her the extend of the damage, but she didn't have the heart to say it outright.

Sepia took the scroll and began typing.

She didn't need to be told that she would never speak again. While that hurt, she felt that it was unreasonable to deny it and be upset over it. In no way could she allow herself to just give up and cry like that. Voice or not, she still felt like herself.

She handed the scroll back to Aubrey.

"I need a favor," Aubrey's eyes flashed while she read the message out loud, "Get my guns so that I can clean them. Get the doctors to do what they can to get me on the move."

Her mouth hung open. The first thing that her daughter was asking for after waking up was the weapons that she had abandoned months ago. She placed a hand over her daughter's, "What are you thinking about doing, Sepia?"

Something else burned in Sepia's gut. It was her belief that a brush with death changed someone. It was a movie trope for that reason. While looking into the face of Death himself, she had an epiphany.

She typed out another message and motioned for Aubrey to read it back.

"Because I…" Aubrey reeled back, "You want to be a Huntress again?!"

Though surprised herself, Sepia could feel a slew of new sensations boiling inside her. Excitement. Wonder. Adventure. She wanted to go far. There, she could film things that she wouldn't need special effects for. She could choreograph fights naturally. There were so many places that she would be able to see that she couldn't otherwise.

 _Who says that I can't be a director_ and _a Huntress?_ she thought to herself. That brush with death reminded her that she had more to live for than just film. She could keep pursuing film, and she could fight to get the shots that no one else could. Helping people was an added bonus.

She smiled in response, and Aubrey promptly left the room with tears welling up in her eyes.

Sepia knew that those weren't tears of sadness. _You told me I could be whatever I wanted to be, but I knew that you wanted me to be a Huntress. You knew that mom and dad would have wanted it for me too._

Before long, she was ready to test herself. Taking a shot at getting out of bed would be enough, especially since she had only been awake for a few minutes. Leaning up was painful, but she pushed through it.

Her bare feet retracted from the frigid tile, but she forced them back down. _Don't stop. Keep going._

She stood and stared out the window on the other side of her room. The seemingly endless desert of Vacuo sprawled out into the horizon. There was more to the world than all of that sand, dust, and rock. Learning that firsthand would be a good experience.

The other Huntsman academy on the continent of Sanus, Beacon Academy, was a lot greener. It was easy to get to by land, air, and sea. It would be the perfect place to see the rest of the world from.

 _So,_ she forced a smile through her pain, _on with take 2._

* * *

Watch out every Monday and Friday at 6pmCT for new chapters of ARTS, two every week!


	5. V1Ch1: Worlds Collide

Eager faces pressed against the windows of the airship as it glided through the clear blue sky. The buildings and cliffside sprawled out below, giving the group of new students an incredible view of the city of Vale.

Burne "Arty" Umber stared wide-eyed at the town before him. The brick facades and arched roofs of the city's architecture and the warmer climate were all very different from his frigid home in Atlas. He leaned against the railing separating himself from the window. He reached out towards the spires of the school and touched the glass with his fingers, watching a flock of birds fly by below him.

 _Yep… this is real alright,_ he thought to himself, _I am_ actually _here in Vale. I am_ actually _going to Beacon._

He tugged at the strap of his backpack, adjusting the weight of his weapon as he turned to look over the rest of the students milling around in the interior of the airship. He folded his arms and started to feel anxious. Everyone here was a stranger to him.

* * *

On the opposite end of the ship came the otter Faunus, Roland Solferino Wells, who was glaring down every inch of the hull. Behind him trailed a sandy haired man with a blood red balaclava pulled down below his mouth, a man by the name of Vincentas Saurus.

The man tossed a pale orange hard candy in an arc above his head. Right before he was able to catch that sweet little morsel in his mouth, it was snatched out of the air.

Roland held the sweet between his thumb and forefinger to examine it, "You're rotting your teeth," he threw the candy as far as he could. It bounced off the side of some blond guy's head. A "hey!" followed from that direction, but he paid it no mind. All that mattered was getting on with his day.

"I spent a lot of my paycheck on those candies, twerp…" Vincentas cracked his knuckles while finishing his survey of the area. The only potential threat seemed to be the loose cannon walking next to him. Maybe the others could cause some damage, but they had enough sense not to.

"I can't believe you have to follow me around," Roland looked around in an attempt to play off any connection to the man behind him, "Just leave. I'm fine."

"No can do, kiddo. Alabaster wants me to make sure that you don't get into trouble on the way to Beacon. You nearly bit one of the crewmember's ears off when they accidentally stepped on your tail just a few minutes ago. I'd say that Alabaster had reason to worry." Vincentas popped another candy into his mouth.

"My tail is sensitive, and I have a lot going on. Excuse me for being pissed off that some strangers want me to relocate to another kingdom. I didn't even want to go to Beacon in the first place." He rolled his eyes and leaned on the railing with his back to the blond in orange. "But it's not like Haven is a better option now."

* * *

For a second, Timbre Forté pulled down her hood. Fear shook her to the core. Her mind must have been playing tricks on her. She thought that the Faunus boy behind her mentioned something about her coming to Beacon, but she found that she was mistaken. Her cover wasn't blown.

 _Calm down, Timbre. It's fine. Nobody knows who you are… yet…_ She released her clenched jaw. Everything would be fine.

When she reached the far end of the airship, away from the windows where the other students were gathered, she turned her attention back to the Faunus boy. She noted his odd cowboy-esque attire, "Going to a rodeo or something…?" she whispered to herself.

She kept her eyes on him in an attempt to identify what kind of Faunus he was. A kangaroo or an otter maybe? She looked away once she decided that it was definitely an otter tail. The tail was much too fuzzy to be a kangaroo.

 _Don't think I've ever seen an otter Faunus before… but hey. This is a big world._

A tall and intimidating man, obviously not a student, leaned on the railing next to the Faunus and said something with a stern look on his face. The Faunus' face contorted more and more as the man talked.

 _A chaperone?_ She tilted her head. _That's odd. Why would he get a chaperone?_ _Maybe it's his dad or something._

Timbre was snapped from her train of thought by an incessant slurping noise from somewhere near her. Keeping her hood down over her face, she looked around and saw a brunette girl in a sequin shirt sitting on one of the window railings. She was finishing off the contents of a soda can as she swung her legs back and forth.

* * *

The girl on the railing gave a toothy grin to the city beneath her. _This is amazing! Everything is so incredible and beautiful! This is really it!_

She tossed her soda can high up in the air, launched backwards up and off the railing, landed squarely on her feet, and then proceeded to snatch the can out of the air while retaining her rehearsed smile. Sepia Hughes wasn't one to care about the gawking and looks that she received as a result of her acrobatics. In fact, she relished in it. Her only regret was that she couldn't finish off her show with a cheer.

She leaned back on the railing and watched as the looks slowly subsided. _Yup! Definitely my kind of people. Enjoy the moment and move on._ She watched another of the inhabitants of the airship, one with a hood. Mint green. It was undoubtedly Timbre Forté, she knew that much. Being a huge fan of Timbre's work, her obsession led her to reach out and call for her. No sound came out, but she continued to wave her arms.

A jerk came from underneath her feet. She had been so enthralled by her surroundings that she hadn't noticed the scene outside the window panning down. In an instant, a wave of anxious teens made their way to the exit, including her idol. Her small fingers looped over the edge of her choker and tugged. A wince flashed on her face for half a second, an ingrained reaction from her time in recovery.

She filed in behind the boy in orange. Maybe she could catch up with Timbre at some other point.

* * *

Arty slowly made his way down the ramp to the grey brick walkways of the cliffside courtyard. His face was still full of awe as he gazed to the towering spires of the school. The students around him seemed to disappear. All of the sounds of the jittery students around him were drowned out by Beacon's majesty.

 _Much more impressive up close_. His mind wandered out to every corner of the school. Reality came crashing back into his mind with the shouting of another student.

"Hey! Watch it!"

He felt a sharp pain in his right arm as an elbow jabbed him. As he shook off the initial shock of the impact, he noticed the piercing gaze of a cowboy with blazing purple eyes.

"You about broke my tail!"

Arty's brows scrunched up in confusion as he looked down to the ground. The other guy's brown-furred otter tail twitched back in forth in front of him. Arty noticed a bit of dirt at the end that must have rubbed off of the bottom of his boot.

"Holy crap! I'm so sorry! I didn't-"

"Yeah, I bet you didn't. Watch where you're going next time," the Faunus fumed. His raised fist was latched onto at the wrist by the man in red behind him.

"You're not helping to disprove my point from before," the man in red chided while he shoved the Faunus' arm back down. He turned to the orange-clad boy as he led the Faunus away, "Sorry about this one. He's got a bad temper."

Arty just stood there dumbfounded for a second until he suddenly felt more arms hit him, only this time it was two hands planted firmly on his back. He nearly fell on his face when a figure flew overhead. Barely managing to keep his balance, Arty saw a girl dressed in all brown land on her feet in front of him. She turned, waved, and skipped off towards the school.

 _What the heck is with that girl? Why all the gymnastics?!_

* * *

Timbre huffed as the crowd stopped just short of the front doors to the main hall. _Darn it. I just want to get today OVER with!_ Timbre put her hand over her mouth to suppress a scream when she felt someone tap her shoulder. She refrained from turning completely around in order to hide her face.

A notepad and a black marker were thrusted towards Timbre's face. Sepia finally got to her, but it seemed that her idol wasn't too thrilled about being recognized. In an attempt at communicating her peaceful intentions, Sepia dragged her thumb and index finger across her lips to signify that she would keep her trap shut. After all, it wasn't like she had another option.

Realizing what the girl was trying to say, Timbre took the paper and pen.

"Alright," she was about to scribble her name down when she looked back up, "who am I making this out to?" She wanted to make sure that she would please her fan. As much as she wanted the girl to go on with her day, it still warmed her heart to see someone so fascinated with her.

Sepia's smile faded. _I didn't think this one through…_ She tapped her thigh as she formulated a way to get her name across. Upon snatching back the pad, she scribbled down her name at the bottom of the page and handed it back. Her smile flashed back onto her face as she awaited the signature.

Timbre's tension loosened when she realized that this girl was mute. She read the name on the pad: Sepia.

"Sepia. That's a pretty name," she turned to a new sheet of paper, wrote her name along with a short message to Sepia, and handed the pen and pad back, "Maybe we'll see each other again soon."

Sepia's eyes fell over the autograph with wonder. Her first day at Beacon was already proving to be fantastic. It was way better than she had imagined, and her wild imagination rarely had any bounds.

The doors finally opened. It was time to go in and start this new phase of not only her life, but the new phase of all of the lives around her.

* * *

As the students filed in and filled the room, a proper-looking man with greying black hair and a white suit stepped onto the raised stage. He was already clapping his hands as he walked across the stage, seemingly happy with the turnout.

As some of the other students gawked at the man's presence, Arty sat there with a more reassured look. He recognized the man before him as the strange visitor he had met after... the incident. His name was Onyx Alabaster, the headmaster of Beacon Academy. That frigid day, he invited him to come to study at Beacon, despite protests from General Léon, Atlas Academy's headmaster and leader of the Atlas military. Needless to say, Arty's father wasn't happy either, but he knew there was no other choice considering the fact that General Léon had banned Arty from going to Atlas Academy for his training. He was grateful to this man, to say the least.

Alabaster tapped the microphone and cleared his throat. "First off, let me say, I welcome each and every one of you to Beacon Academy. For those of you that do not know, I am Professor Onyx Alabaster. As of tomorrow afternoon, I will be your headmaster. Today I am just a man who is here to make sure that you are all comfortable with the academy that I am humbled to lead. This will be your introduction to the school. Each of you will be split into groups and be teamed up with an upperclassmen to go on a tour. You will then spend the night in the dormitory commons to rest up before your team initiations tomorrow. I won't keep you any longer, so, if you would please go over to this side of the room, you will be given a scroll if you do not already have one and find your names on a list with your tour group leader. Once again, welcome to Beacon and may you all become successful and valiant Huntsmen and Huntresses through your time spent here."

As Professor Alabaster finished his speech, the students began to scatter and check for their names on the holographic boards and get their scrolls.

Arty walked up and scanned the boards for his name. He was so focused on the lists that he didn't even notice Roland next to him. Thankfully, Roland didn't notice him either.

"Where is… oh, there it is. I'm with… Lurida Rhea…" Arty whispered under his breath.

"Dragged around by Gavin Quasar with Timbre Forté and… Rime Chione...got it." Roland clacked away at the typewriter affixed to his arm to make a note for later. "Wait...Timbre Forté… Timber Forté?!" his eyes widened as he looked at the note, "Probably just a coincidence…"

Timbre overheard the Faunus boy from earlier say her name.

 _Great, s_ he thought, _I'm stuck with the hot-shot._ She pulled her hood down farther and screamed internally.

 _Xannie Rhea, Everest Hyperborean and… Zero…?_ Sepia was taken back by the last one's lack of a full name. _Well… they all at least sound interesting!_ In an attempt to stay optimistic, she skipped along to go meet her group. She bounded across the room, making her way to the front of the crowd of students. All of them began their search for their tour groups.

Only a few minutes later, all of the students began to cluster around their assigned tour guides.

* * *

Arty was a bit… confused by his tour members' attire.

First off, the group leader, Lurida Rhea, was in a skin-tight black suit with a bright neon purple pattern. Even more striking was the fact that her hair and eyes were the same painfully bright shade of purple.

Secondly, there was this tall blonde guy fit for the Atlas military, stance and all. He was dressed in all blue camouflage and a black combat vest. At this point, Arty felt extremely out of place in just jeans and an orange t-shirt.

Lastly, was a guy who was wearing clothes much too warm for the hot and sunny day that everyone else was sweating their way through, but he didn't seem bothered in the slightest. He looked ready to go skiing in his down jacket, gloves, and ski pants. His clunky snow boots clacked loudly on the brick path.

 _I used to think I was the weird one, but now I swear I'm the only normal person here._ He thought to himself as Lurida cleared her throat. Arty thought she looked frustrated, as if she were being forced into being a tour guide.

"Okay. Listen up. I'm Lurida, and I don't want you guys speaking over me. This is Beacon." She held out her hands as if to show off the school around them. "I am required to say that I hope that you all have a wonderful time here. I hope that you all have a wonderful time here."

Yep, definitely forced to be there.

"The tour begins now." She rolled her eyes and began walking towards through the courtyard. "Stupid Gavin. Making me do this crap." She didn't so much as look back at her group of students. "Yeah. So. This is the courtyard. Let's go to the cafeteria. That's where food is, for those of you with simpler minds." And there she was, off again about ten feet in front of her own group.

As the four of them walked and looked around, Arty suddenly found a heavily padded glove being held out to him.

"Hey. Name's Ebon. Ebon Carbonado. You?" The skier seemed to realize how much his bulky glove would get in the way of a formal greeting. He quickly yanked it off and held it back out to Arty.

Arty hesitantly shook the guy's hand. "Burne, but my friends call me Arty."

"Well then, Arty, it's nice to meet you." Ebon looked around Arty to the guy in blue camo. "What about you, tough guy?"

The soldier-esque young man just glared straight ahead. "In order to prevent you from bothering me, my name is Navy."

Ebon nodded. "Navy… cool." He dragged his finger in circles next to his head while looking to Arty.

Arty couldn't help but laugh, but quickly stopped because he was pretty sure that at least four of the arsenal of weapons in Navy's combat vest could be used to kill him instantly.

"We aren't here for a meet-and-greet." Lurida stopped dead in her tracks. The itinerary said that she was wrong, but she disagreed with that stupid itinerary. "I wonder if Xannie is having a better time..."

* * *

"Alrighty guys! My name's Xannie Rhea! I'm a member of Team GLXY, so, if you ever need any help, don't be afraid to ask my teammates. Gavin is our leader, he's like this really cool armored space warrior guy. My sister Lurida looks _exactly_ like me only purple instead of yellow and her hair is longer, aaaaand Yamuna is a short Faunus girl with these cute little wolf ears. So, what are you guys' names?" The girl in black and neon-yellow jumped excitedly while looking to her group.

 _Oh, she doesn't know…_ Sepia quickly typed out her name on her scroll and held it up.

Xannie looked at the scroll's screen. "Sepia Hughes. Aww, you don't need to be shy. You don't need to talk to me through your scroll."

Sepia quickly typed out two words. "I'm" and "mute" before showing her so that the situation could be spared any more awkwardness.

Xannie's eyes widened and she cupped her hands over her mouth. "Oh my god… I'm… I'm just…" her cheeks turned red. "Uhhhh… what about you?" She quickly moved along to avoid embarrassing herself any further. She gestured to the giant, super muscular, caveman-looking student.

 _Is he even the right age to be a first year?..._ Xannie thought to herself. _I mean, Yamuna's brothers started late… but this is ridiculous_.

"NAME. EVEREST. HYPERBOREAN." Veins popped along his massive biceps. He jammed a thumb at his chest with enough force to flatten a car as he went on to explain who he was. "EVEREST. STRONGEST. ONE. THERE. IS."

"Ooooooooookaaaaaaay… Thank you Everest. And so, you must be Zero…" Xannie looked at her paper again. "There must be a mistake here, I don't seem to have your last name."

The last group member, a thin pale boy in a black hoodie and jeans stood there in eerie stillness. He had a blue scarf wrapped around his mouth under his pulled up hood. He glared at the peppy group leader with a cold stare. After a painfully long moment of silence, Zero finally spoke, "I don't _have_ a last name."

Xannie just stood there. Dumbfounded. "So… let's move on with the tour." She quickly turned around, rubbing her temple with a gloved hand. She turned so that the others wouldn't hear her talking to herself, "The others can't possibly have anybody weirder than these three…"

Sepia happily went along with her new friends on the tour. _I was scared that this Everest guy might overheat…_ She snickered at her own internal joke. _I hope Timbre is having as much fun as I am!_

* * *

 _I. Hate. My. Life._ Timbre was trying to refrain from bashing her head in on the nearby light post she was walking past with her tour group. The Faunus boy from earlier, whom she had learned was named Roland, had been radiating hatred from the moment they started the tour. _Why is he even here if he doesn't want to be?_ She thought to herself, making sure to keep her hood down whenever she caught him throwing glances her way. _I've never heard of anybody being_ required _to go to combat school before._

The other person in their group, Rime, was much more likable. She was shorter than Timbre, but held her manner in a way that made her seem much more mature than her appearance made her out to be. She could swear she saw Roland sneering at Rime's jacket, which she wore off of her shoulders. She was almost scared that Roland would just bash the girl on the head with the massive typewriter he had strapped to his wrist for whatever reason.

A large, armored guy led his group with his head held high and a prideful smile on his face. Their group leader, Gavin, had proven to be one of the largest sources of positive energy in the school. "You guys will love it here at Beacon!"

"Yeah, I'm sure," Roland muttered with as much sarcasm as he could fit into three words, "Oh, and what else? Are we going to be making _friends,_ too? Oh, and I can start with these two ditzes!" He rolled his eyes as he gestured to the girls on either side of him. All of the positivity felt poisonous.

Rime looked at Roland in disgust before walking behind him to walk alongside Timbre.

"Can you _believe_ this guy?" Rime asked before her eyes widened in realization. She didn't believe that the other member of the tour was actually a celebrity! When she saw the name, she, like Roland, thought that the name was just a coincidence. "Oh my god. You really _are_ Timbre Forté!"

Timbre quickly shushed the shorter girl, "Shhh! Please, keep it down! I'm trying to kinda lay low right now…"

Rime rolled her eyes. "C'mon. You're at Beacon. Celebrity status really won't matter much here. You wouldn't be here if you didn't want to be a Huntress, right? That's why you had your big 'Final World Tour', isn't it? What exactly is somebody like you doing here anyways?"

Timbre kept walking, holding the edge of her hood.

"Right… if you don't want to talk about it, that's fine, but you need to realize you can't hide under that hood for four years." Rime put a hand on Timbre's shoulder and smiled at her. "You gotta come out from under there sooner or later! Especially when you get teamed up with three complete strangers, right?!"

Picking up at on the budding conflict, the leader butt in, "Guys! Guys! At Beacon, we keep it positive! Let's not get off on the wrong foot!" Gavin held up his hands as he stopped the group in front of the dorms.

"Get off on the wrong foot?" Roland rubbed his temples, "Gavin, your positivity is toxic. Please, knock it off and give a real freaking tour."

"I would advise that you stop acting like this, Roland."

Roland glared daggers at the spaceman and cracked his knuckles. "Oh, what, I can't have a bit of fun?"

Rime piped up. Timbre noticed that she gripped at a dark blue crystal hanging on the end of the silver necklace around her neck. "Your idea of 'fun' isn't exactly fun for the rest of u-" She was cut off by a sudden sizzling noise filling the air.

Inches from Roland's nose rested a curved, white bow-staff arcing with a black electricity. "I said… we keep it positive at Beacon. I thought that I made that point very clear." Gavin matched Roland's glare and watched him lower his arms.

"Fine, whatever, sorry." Roland looked the opposite direction.

"Great!" Gavin split the staff in half and clasped the individual pieces to either side of his belt. "Carrying on with the tour."

Rime picked up the pace a bit to catch up with Gavin and slapped him on the shoulder. "Nice job, dude! He was being a real jerk back there." She said happily.

Timbre laughed for a second, but turned and saw the seething hatred that Roland was aiming towards Gavin and Rime.

 _What in the world is his deal?..._ she thought to herself as Gavin held the door to one of the dorm buildings open for them.

"GAVIN!" A shrill, but jovial voice radiated from down the hallway. Seconds later, Gavin was tackled by a Faunus girl who was only half his size. Her kimono clung to the static-filled plates of his armor. "I'M SO HAPPY THAT THE NEW PEOPLE ARE HERE!" She grinned and then looked at the group. With one eye navy blue and the other bright yellow, her hypnotic gaze drew in the attention of the group.

Gavin's group sat there, each wondering how this short little girl could possibly be at Beacon, much less be part of a second-year team.

"Oh! You're some of the new kids! How nice!" The wolf ears on her head twitched with excitement. "OH!" She focused on Roland. "A Faunus!" She leaped away off and ran a circle around him. "Otter, huh? Cool!" She glanced at Timbre and Rime. "A celebrity and a… girl! How great!"

Giving Rime a look over, she frowned. "You might get cold dressed like that! Pull up your jacket. Or don't. It's pretty hot out today."

She focused on Timbre, leaped over her, and pulled her hood along with her on the way. "There! Now you won't get too hot! That's more comfortable!"

Timbre felt her blood run cold. Her face now exposed. Roland, Rime, Gavin, and Sepia were the only students that knew she was there, but now four more knew. The young Faunus girl, and her tour group. All three of her students panted as they approached. One girl, a redhead dressed in a red and black flower dress, gasped as she regained her composure.

"Oh my god! You're-" She began.

"I know! I'm… I'm Timbre Forté…" She pulled her hood back up tight.

The girl in the dress came up and held out her hand. "I'm Alice Crims. It is a pleasure to meet you in person." Her thick posh accent only amplified her seemingly snobbish demeanor. The words seemed finely rehearsed.

Timbre looked up shyly and shook her hand.

A sickly pale woman in a flowing white skirt and light blue top waltzed her way over to the group. "And I am Frost Aurora. Very nice to meet you."

Alice glared at Frost, making Timbre feel comforted by the fact that her group wasn't the only one having some conflict.

"And I'm Yamuna Luna, by the way!" The Faunus girl clapped and looked around. "Wait… one… two… hey! Turf! Turf! Get over here and introduce yourself, too! You need to make friends!"

"Sup." A tanned guy in a dusty green tank-top and a green beanie said hesitantly as he gave the group a thumbs up. "I'm uh… I'm Turf Fescue."

Gavin gave everyone the thumbs up. "Great! Now that we've learned each other's names, what do you guys say that we go get some lunch back at the cafeteria? That way we can grab something to eat and go meet the rest of the new kids!"

"You're all idiots." Roland pushed past him.

Gavin gave a hearty laugh before going dead silent. "What was that, Roland?"

"Word of advice." Yamuna began giggling. "Under any circumstances… don't piss him off." Her ginormous smile served as a final warning.

"Too late for that, sister." Rime whispered to the Faunus girl.

"Fine. Whatever. Let's just go." Roland huffed and crossed his arms.

* * *

The arched windows and high ceiling of the cafeteria made the room feel very open and comfortable while the Gothic style made it even more awe-inspiring in its sheer amount of detailing. Arty sat down with a plate of food. He had somewhat broken away from his group to try to talk to some of the other new students. He hadn't had any luck, as he was sitting alone on one side of the room.

"First day is kind of a failure so far." He ate a spoonful of mashed potatoes. "How am I gonna get through initiation tomorrow?..." Arty put his spoon down and pulled a folded paper out of his pocket. He opened the note, the bright red stamp on its crumpled surface read 'ANNULLED'. It was his original team assignment from Atlas with his friends Midas and Curie, and Midas's cousin, Ledning. "How would things have been different if I hadn't have screwed up so bad?..." he clenched his jaw in remembrance of his actions, "you guys must be pretty upset with me, huh?..."

Across the room, Timbre walked around the tables with her tray, trying to find a place to sit. She had already mulled over what Rime had said. Her hood was down, showing her long black hair and red highlights.

 _You can't hide under the hood for four years. Go make some friends. You only have… less than 24 hours until you're going to be put onto a team with three of the people in this room._

Timbre saw a blond boy in an orange t-shirt with black sleeves sitting by himself. She found the orange streaks in his hair kind of funny. They kind of reminded her of herself. He was picking at his food, not eating any of it as he stared almost sadly at a piece of paper sitting on the table in front of him.

 _He looks kinda lonely…_ Timbre thought to herself as she adjusted her course. Around the room, she heard whispers of her name. _Why in Remnant did I pull down my hood…?_ Her frown slowly contorted into a well-practiced smile as she stopped a few feet to the left of the boy. "Hey! Are you all alone, or are you waiting on somebody? If you are, then it's totally fine. I just thought that you looked like you could use some company," she motioned to sit down, "I kinda don't know anybody here so… why not try to make some friends, right?"

Arty quickly folded the paper back up and shoved it in his backpack before looking up to the girl talking to him. At first, Arty thought he was going crazy. He could have sworn that the girl that had just sat down next to him was the singer Timbre Forté. It couldn't have been her... could it have? He looked behind and around himself to look for the person that she surely must've been talking to.

"Are… are you talking to me?" He said pointing to himself.

She began to that think she was making a mistake.

"Yes, you." She sighed as she took a seat a few feet down from him, "So what's your name?" She used her fork to begin stirring the spaghetti on her plate.

Arty was about to speak, but then he and Timbre were both stunned with a combination of awe and fear at the walking building with two trays of food in each hand. A satisfied grunt came from the man as he walked on by. "EVEREST. LIKE. SPA. GET. E." He boomed and made his way to a mouse of a girl. He sat, the seat beneath him cracking under his enormous weight.

"Thanks, Everest!" Rime beamed as the neanderthal laid one of the trays down in front of her.

Arty and Timbre shook their heads free of the spectacle they just witnessed.

"Ooookay…" Arty began. "I'm… uh..." he held out his hand in an awkward attempt at an ice breaker, "my name's Arty Umber. I'm actually not from around here… You see, I just got here from Atlas yesterday, so… I'm not waiting on anybody, considering I don't _know_ anybody yet."

"Wow. Long way from home, huh?" The girl said through a mouthful of noodles as she shook his hand.

"Yeah… hey. Has anyone ever told you you look a lot like that singer Timbre Forté?"

Timbre gulped. "Well… that's probably because I _am_ that singer Timbre Forté."

Arty's eyes widened. "Oh…" He wanted to say something, but his voice refused to function from the unexpected turn his day was taking. After an awkwardly long moment of silence, Arty finally found out what to say. "So, what brought you to Beacon?"

Timbre's expression softened. "Um. I just… decided it was time for a career change." She pushed her hair back behind her ear as she looked down at her half-empty tray glumly.

"Right." He contemplated his next question, "So what'd you think of the tour? Pretty great campus, huh?"

"Yeah. The tour itself was great," she sighed, "Listen, I hate to be a downer, but I really need to vent to somebody, _anybody_ … So, I hate to put you through this."

Arty was a bit surprised by Timbre's sudden trust in him, "Uh… okay. Yeah. Go ahead and vent. I don't mind. Good to do that every now and then," Arty realized he was rambling a bit and mentally kicked himself to turn off his suddenly functioning voice.

"Thanks… there was this one guy in my group that just drove me _insane_. Super spiteful and rude..."

"Really?"

"Yeah, he kept trying to pick fights with the rest of my tour group." Timbre pointed to the short blonde girl sitting next to the hungry caveman.

"Her? Wow. What kind of guy tries to pick a fight with a girl like that? She doesn't look like she could make anybody angry enough to lead to punches."

"I know. She's a really cool person from what little time I've spent around her. This guy… Roland, or something like that, is a real jerk. Hates everything and I swear if his frown got any bigger, his face would cave in."

That description rang a bell in Arty's brain. "Wait… does he happen to be a Faunus with an otter tail?"

Timbre leaned forwards, "Yeah! How'd you know?"

"'Frown any bigger and his face would cave in.' Also, he tried to pick a fight with me back on the airship when we first got here because I accidentally stepped on his tail."

Timbre looked surprised. "Wow. So I guess this Roland guy is just a jerk to everybody then."

The sound of a throat clearing came from behind the two. "Excuse me."

Arty and Timbre turned to see the purple menace with his arms crossed.

"Speak of the devil." Timbre whispered to Arty. Her upper lip drew back in disgust as she looked up at the newcomer.

"At least I have the guts to talk about someone to their face, cowards." Roland growled. "Who do either of you think you are, anyway?" Vincentas didn't have a leash on him this time around. No one was there to hold back his wrath.

All day, Arty had been relatively quiet in hopes of preventing any trouble, but he'd already had enough of this guy's attitude. "Dude, c'mon. Chill out. We're just trying to get through today, and it doesn't help having somebody threaten to pick a fight as soon as we get here." Arty's tone had become much more serious as he quietly reached for his backpack. So much for avoiding trouble.

"Oh, tough guy, huh?" The cowboy thoughtlessly clacked away at his typewriter. "I mean, we can go a round if you want. I'll kick your a-"

The crashing of trays and gasping of people filled the area as a girl dressed brown and gold sequins slid through a sea of trays and glasses and stopped, crouching on the table in front of Timbre. She pointed directly at her face and gave a wide smile.

Timbre welcomed the friendly face. She decided to not drag any more attention to herself and let the two guys go at it as Roland kept typing for whatever reason. She decided to try something. In a few hand gestures, she signed ' _Do you know sign language?'_ to Sepia.

' _Mostly, but I'm still a bit clumsy with it.'_ Sepia signed back. Her hands shook, but the message was clear. ' _I'm so happy that your hood is cow!'_ She frowned as she looked at her hands for a moment before readjusting her hands to sign ' _down'_. Her cheeks flushed.

Timbre chuckled. ' _It's okay. You'll get better at it.'_ Timbre thought about the need to make friends again. ' _If you want, I could teach you.'_

' _Absolutely!'_ Sepia signed back, but then looked on at the ensuing argument between the orange and purple ones. ' _What are they doing?'_

"Being reckless…" Timbre groaned.

Roland cracked his knuckles and crinkled his nose. "You really are stupid, huh?! I could wipe the floor with you in a heartbeat. Go on, try me!"

"Hey! I was just pointing out how rude you were being, but if I really have to," Arty suddenly whipped out his weapon, a long-barreled orange gun with silver accents, and pointed it at the Faunus boy. "I don't mind making a mess."

At first, Roland was surprised that the runt had the gall to pull his weapon on him, until he noticed the chamber on top of the gun. He stopped typing as he began to laugh. "A _paintball_ gun?! What kind of Huntsman uses a _paintball_ gun?!"

"Try me 'Typewriter'."

"Happily." The long strip of paper coming out of Roland's machine contorted and folded in a flurry of paper and ink. In less than a second, a blade was fully extended out parallel to his arm. "I'll slice that thing into bits, wannabe Huntsman."

Timbre dropped her fork in surprise. Her mouth fell open as she looked at the typewriter. "A sword… just… came out of a… typewriter…" the only thing that pulled her attention from the scene was the enthusiastic clapping from Sepia, who was still standing on the table. It seemed that she was egging on the fight by giving a silent cheer.

The two stood there pointing their weapons level to each other's faces. Right before it seemed that the two were going to go at it, the sword and gun were suddenly slammed into the table between them by a grey hiking shoe. Unfortunately, the sword was still connected to the reel of paper, and Roland's face took a nosedive directly into Timbre's plate of spaghetti.

A tall redhead in a white coat looked down at him with bright brown eyes, "Alabaster told me you were a bit of a troublemaker, Roland, but he also _promised_ me that you were a level headed person, Arty, which honestly, after what you did, I don't see it, but okay," she gave him a thumbs up before faking a pout, "was _he_ the one that was mistaken instead of General Léon?"

Arty began stammering as Roland peeled his face off of the tray.

"I-I-I… I…" Arty looked ready to run away.

"Carmen!" Timbre suddenly piped up.

"Timbre! Please… you're at school now, you can call me Professor Maple… or not, I really don't care," she turned her gaze to Arty and Roland, "are these two... bothering you?"

"No! No! They're not. We're actually getting along… _very_ well." She glanced over to Arty and Roland, trying to communicate with them that she was trying to save them from Carmen's wrath. She knew that Carmen had a tendency to get a bit overprotective.

"Y-yeah! We were just… showing each other the weapons we made." Arty said, gesturing to his paintball gun, still held against the table by Carmen's foot. "Right, Roland, _buddy_?"

"Screw off, _bud-_ " Roland was stopped by a hard kick to his shin from Timbre. "Is...what I would say if we weren't already great friends!" He forced an unnatural smile as he wiped the spaghetti from his face.

Carmen gave a suspicious nod, "Good… glad to see you all getting along," a mischievous grin spread across her face, "just be careful, though. You never know who you'll be on a team with!" She turned to exit the cafeteria, "See you at the cliffs tomorrow! Toodaloo!"

Once Carmen was out of earshot, Arty and Timbre sighed in relief.

"That was a close one…" Arty wiped his forehead. "Thanks Timbre."

"Heh, don't mention it. You just owe me another plate of pasta."

"I'll… go get it for you." Roland muttered with the first sign of embarrassment showing in his face. Before anyone could comment, he began walking off for the food line in silence and still covered in spaghetti sauce.

' _Wow. I guess almost getting expelled on your first day sure makes a guy turn around.'_ Sepia signed.

' _No kidding.'_ Timbre signed back.

Arty just watched confused. "Um… Timbre, who is this you're flapping your hands at?"

Before Timbre could respond, Sepia had already whipped out her scroll and typed out something almost as fast as Roland typed out his weapon. ' _I'm Sepia Hughes. Director, actress, and special effects master, at your service! I had a role in a film, but I had scheduling conflicts coming to Beacon and all, among other things.'_

Arty had never heard of her, but he wasn't going to say anything about that. "Wow. I've only been here about six hours and I've already met a singer, an actress, an ill-tempered cowboy, a skier, a military meat-head, a neon girl, and an eccentric professor."

' _I was supposed to die in my first scene…'_ Sepia signed to Timbre glumly, but thought it best to leave that out with Arty. ' _I was replaced by Scarlet Redhanson…'_

Timbre nodded, not knowing how to respond to that.

"Here." Roland finally made his way back to the table and humbly set the tray in front of Timbre. The idea of spitting in her food was tempting, but Carmen Maple's words rang in his mind. She wasn't wrong. He'd be on a team with other people, and these people were just as likely to be on that team as anyone else was.

After a little while, the group leaders called for all the new students to go on the second leg of the tour. Afterwards, it was off to bed to get rested for initiation and team placements.

Later that night, Arty laid on his back, staring at the ceiling. The snoring of the other new students filled the room. He didn't know what time it was, but he was wide awake with the anticipation of being placed on a team with three others. He reflected back to his lunch with Timbre, Sepia, and Roland. Timbre was nice enough, but he didn't know how it would be being on a team with a celebrity. Ebon seemed like a cool guy. Navy and Roland weren't exactly pleasant to be around… but they did seem to know how to fight. Then there was Sepia, who was still a complete stranger to him, and a strange one at that.

 _I don't know._ He rolled over and closed his eyes. _I guess whatever happens tomorrow just… happens._


	6. V1Ch2: Crash and Burne

Roland sniffled and wiped his nose as he finished his journal entry. His hands shook softly as he lowered his arm. The metal lining of his typewriter made a soft clang as it rested on the steel bench atop the roof. He cleared his throat while watching the black sky begin to burn with the rising sun's light.

"Again?" An unaffectionate voice of Vincentas came from behind him.

Roland kept his eyes on the horizon. If anyone was going to see him cry, it wasn't going to be the guy harping on his every move. This wasn't something that he could handle criticism on. "I couldn't sleep. Sue me."

"Doesn't seem like you even tried," Vincentas walked towards the bench, but stopped as Roland held his hand up.

Roland shook his head. "Two hours is enough sleep. Just leave me alone for once. I don't have anyone to get into it with up here." He didn't want to talk, nor did he want some jerk telling him how to deal with his feelings. "I'll be at the cliffs in two hours. I can manage myself for a little while, okay?"

And with that, Vincentas went on his merry way without another word.

Roland took a deep, shaky breath as he stood. "Alright… this is the day." He tore off the journal entry and folded it. "Help me today, okay?" He pleaded to the horizon one more time before slipping the note into his pocket. He thought of his words as he stood and stretched.

 _Hey mom, I just thought that I'd update you on Beacon. I'm having  
some trouble getting along with some of the other students, but I'm sure  
that you could have guessed that one by now. You always told me that I  
could tell you anything, so I want to tell you that I'm scared._

* * *

Arty was fighting the urge to turn and run away from Beacon and never return. _What kind of madhouse_ is _this?!_ He screamed internally as he looked over the cliff before him. He had a relatively restless night due to the anxiety for the initiation, but he was wide awake now as he stood 100 feet over a vast forest that stretched as far as he could see. He held his paintball gun tightly as he stood on a flat square plate of metal. To his left and right stood the other new students that had filed the airship the day before, all on identical plates. His eyes flickered around, but nobody looked nearly as scared as he felt. _I'm starting to think that the test back in Atlas wasn't actually that bad…_

Professor Alabaster and Carmen stood between the line of students and the cliff's edge. Professor Maple held a large-model scroll as Alabaster addressed Arty and the others. She was smiling widely. Obviously, she found great joy in the initiation for new students.

"It is good to see all of you out here today. I hope that this will be a good start to the four years that lie ahead of you all. To keep this brief, I will have Professor Maple here explain the procedure that we will be following today," Alabaster tapped Professor Maple's scroll with the head of his cane, "If you would, please."

"In the Emerald Forest, you are to find the ruined temple. There is a collection of treasures that will help decide your teams for the next four years. The first person you make eye contact with once you land in the forest will be your partner," Professor Maple tapped at a few windows on her scroll with a smirk, "and make sure you have a good landing strategy."

Bits and pieces of Maple's explanation spun rapidly in Arty's mind. Eye contact? Partner? Landing?! Strategy?! What was she rambling about?! He didn't have too much time to wrap his mind around the randomness of team assignments at Beacon before the student farthest from him, a redhead girl in a red dress, was suddenly flying through the air towards the forest. Student after student was launched.

"Um… professor? What exactly are we doing?!" Arty stammered as a guy in a black hoodie flew into the sky.

"Finding your team assignment Mr. Umber. We do this with all of our new students."

Arty's turn was slowly approaching.

"Were we supposed to have a... 'landing strategy' planned out beforehand?!" He nearly yelled, holding Palette's grips to the point his knuckles went white.

"Not at all." Alabaster replied.

Before Arty could speak again, he suddenly felt the ground disappear below him and the air begin whipping his hair and clothes around. He looked down and saw nothing but trees hundreds of feet below him. "OH CRAP OH CRAP OH CRAP OH CRAP!" Arty yelled as he flew through the air.

Alabaster and Professor Maple watched as the students became nothing more than specks in the sky.

Professor Maple sighed contently, "I _love_ my job sometimes."

Alabaster leaned over to her, "Seeing the looks on their faces when the launch pads go off is my favorite part. Shame it only comes once a year."

"We need to install cameras up here to take pictures. Like they have on roller coasters," Carmen suggested as she began scrolling through the different camera angles on the large scroll in her hands.

"Now _there's_ an idea!" the headmaster agreed.

* * *

The wind was freezing cold and made Arty's eyes water as he shot through the air. The forest stretched out far below him. He looked around and actually saw some of the calmer students using combinations of their weapons, Semblances, and techniques to prepare for landing. That's when he got an idea. He reached down to the glass tubes attached to his belt. His fingers fumbled around until he finally found the color of paintball he was looking for. He pulled the tube up and dumped the white paintballs into Palette's hopper, careful not to let too many of them to fly away from the sheer force of his momentum. He panicked when a few began to spill backwards and shoot away behind him. Luckily, there was enough in the hopper to do what he wanted to do.

He closed the lid, pulled his feet forward and held the end of the gun to the bottom of his boots. "Please let this work!" In a matter of seconds, his feet were coated in glowing white paint.

Arty now felt air coming from below him, the force was strong enough to begin pushing him upwards rather than forwards. He used the air coming from the Dust on his boots to slow his descent into the forest. His breathing finally slowed to a normal rate as he floated down safer than just flying through the trees at warp speed.

As he neared the ground, the rush of adrenaline finally began to subside, costing him his control over his balance. His lack of experience in flying around resulted in him slamming into the ground, skidding to a stop with his face in some shrubs. "Well… that went better than expected," he said after pushing himself to his feet wiping the sweat from his brow.

* * *

On the flip side, Roland wasn't doing so well. His mind raced, trying to think of something to type out. No fairy tales came to mind, no novels, not even the dictionary came to mind. The cake recipe that served as a last resort was even gone from his panicked mind. He had to think of something, otherwise his landing was going to be incredibly painful. Like Arty, he wasn't aware of the odd initiation procedures at Beacon.

 _I'm scared that I can't make it through this._

His hand fell onto the grenades on his belt. Could he manage to make a construct from straight ink for a few seconds? Probably. It was the only chance that he had. He pulled the pin and chunked it at the tree ahead of him. The frag grenade exploded into a cloud of black ink. The fragments of the casing imbedded into the trees, acting as anchors for the construct he had in mind. It took more focus than he thought he had left, but he managed to force the ink to condense into a net to catch him.

The weak netting caved under the force of the Faunus falling, but it did manage to soften his landing… somewhat. He crashed down into the branches, ink dripping down from overhead. He coughed up a few leaves and reclined back into the pile of snapped branches that he had made. "That went better than…" His eyes widened in horror as he felt a drop of ink on the crown of his scalp. "No…" He patted his head wildly. "MY HAT!" He exclaimed while jumping down from the tree into the forest below. Like a feral beast, Roland set out to find his precious hat at any cost.

* * *

Nearby, Arty was finally on his way through the forest, making sure to keep watch for any Grimm that might be in the area. He thought that he heard a noise from the underbrush, and he whipped around to aim his gun towards the sound. When he realized it was just a branch falling from another student flying through the trees overhead, he rolled his eyes at his own nervousness. He then realized that Air Dust might not be the best thing for fighting Grimm.

He emptied the hopper's contents back into their respective tube and replaced them with some red, yellow, and dark blue paintballs.

The light was barely able to come through the canopy. If he didn't feel like he could be attacked at any moment, Arty would have found it a beautiful scene he wouldn't mind painting, but he didn't have time to think about art at the time. As he walked, he found another clearing, only it wasn't empty.

He walked towards the object in the center of the grassy area. In the bright late morning sunlight, Arty found a tan cowboy hat with a purple band floating in midair. Splattered on the front of the hat was a splotch of white paint. Arty barely had time to process what was happening before something came crashing through the trees behind him.

"YOU!" Roland snapped with teeth clenched. He bolted towards Arty, but he passed him at the last second and tackled the hat. "You came back to me!" He grinned and held it close as he fell to the ground, holding his hat tightly against his chest. His thick brown otter tail twitched happily.

Arty, still wide-eyed, went from a state of fear to absolute confusion. Then it hit him. "So... does this count as eye contact?" he looked towards the cliff they had just been launched from a few minutes ago, "I'm still fuzzy about how Beacon does this… are we partners now?" He turned back to the Faunus, who was still hugging his hat.

Standing up, Roland plopped his hat on his head with a smile. Sadly, this smile was fleeting. "Oh... oh no." He turned around and began walking out of the clearing. "Nope. Not you. Bye. Have a nice life." He completely avoided the rules that Alabaster stated, being willing to break even those rules to avoid being on a team with the toothless wonder. "I'd rather have the caveman."

Arty rubbed his temples. "Why me?" He turned and began following Roland through the trees. "Hey! Where are you going, bud?"

"To find a partner with a real weapon, _bud_." Roland waved back without so much as a glance. "We still haven't technically made eye contact. Get out of here."

Choosing to ignore the comment about a real weapon, Arty knew he wasn't going to let Roland break the rules for him. He formulated a plan. He stopped in the path as Roland kept walking. "Fine. Okay. I'll leave. But hey, just so you know, you have a little… something on your hat." He pointed to the top of his own head with a cocky grin on his face, exposing his missing tooth.

Roland stopped dead in his tracks. His entire body went rigid. As if defusing a bomb, he carefully took off his hat. Upon examination, he found a large white blotch coating the front of the wide brimmed hat. "What... what is this…?" He seethed before whipping around and glaring at Arty.

Arty couldn't help but chuckle to see that his plan had worked. Arty took a step towards Roland. "You didn't even wonder why your hat was _floating_ back there in the clearing? I guess one of my Air Dust paintballs must've flown back and knocked your hat off when we went through our little flight simulator back there on the cliff." Arty waved his gun and pointed a finger at Roland. "Oh, and by the way. I'd say that _that_ was eye contact. Can't deny it this time. No rules broken."

"Oh… so it _was_ you…" Roland placed his hat back atop his head and began to stomp towards Arty. "Thanks for letting me know! Now I only have to beat the crud out of one guy!" He reared his fist back to knock more of Arty's teeth out.

 _I'm scared that I can't make it through this without you here to  
lead me along the way. In six hours my whole life is going to change  
again, and I wish that I could call home to tell you about it._

Why did his conscience work when she was involved? Then again, she would have given him an unending lecture about being nice to your teammates. He slowly lowered his fist and took a deep breath. "You're right… Thanks…" He adjusted his stance and crossed his arms. In a reluctant attempt at being civil, Roland held out his gloved hand. "I'm Roland Wells. I'm a bit far from my home in Mistral." Those simple words pained him to say, but he was about out of options.

Arty was taken aback. He was half expecting to have to defend himself in a fight with his new partner. "Um…" Arty thought it might be a trick, but he shook Roland's hand anyway. "Burne Umber. But please, just call me Arty," he chuckled, "Looks like we're both foreigners. I'm from Atlas." The awkward tension had diminished, but not by much.

 _You know, I can't help but think about all of the stories that  
you told me about your team and how much you got along._

"Just… stay out of my way and we'll be fine." They would have to work within a team sometime, but that time hadn't come yet. Roland turned and began walking deeper into the forest. If the temple was anywhere, it'd probably be in the farthest section of the area. "How does Atlas do this?" He asked with a look back to Arty.

Arty honestly wasn't expecting much chit chat. "Oh, well… at the end of your preparatory combat training, they give you this horrible four hour long written exam. Based on your answers and scores, they assign you with three other people. I actually had a team assignment already before I came here," Arty really hoped Roland wouldn't ask a follow-up question.

Roland slowed down to a stop and frowned. "What brought you to Vale…?"

 _Crap_. "Uh… well…" Arty tried to pick his words carefully, but he felt like he needed to be honest. He was the one that convinced Roland that they were partners for the next four years after all. "Well, I was actually… banned from the academy back home. Alabaster showed up at my house and asked me if I'd like to come to Beacon. Considering I didn't have any other options as uh… General Léon warned the headmasters of Haven and Shade about me. So, when Professor Alabaster came knocking at my door asking if I'd like to go to the only school that, for some reason, didn't hate me already, I took up the offer." Arty pushed a few branches out of his way as they trudged into a dense thicket. "What about you? What brought you here?"

"One of Alabaster's rent-a-Huntsman, Vincentas Saurus." The disdain for Vincentas that Roland had was evident in his voice. That man kept him on a tighter leash than his own father, and that was saying something. "I… lost some things back in Mistral. He thought that a change in scenery would be a good thing for me. I agreed." Most of it was true, but the ending was… iffy at best.

 _I don't think that I deserve that, but I know that you think I do._

Arty could only nod. He didn't know how to respond to something like that, especially when told in that tone of voice. He knew that many people didn't have particularly pleasant backstories with Remnant being such a dangerous place. Most didn't like to talk about it, but for some reason, he didn't get that vibe from Roland. He assumed that he didn't want to go into further detail due to his combative nature.

After some more walking through nothing but silence and trees, they were suddenly surrounded by loud growls and roars. The two immediately readied themselves, standing back to back as Arty readied his gun and Roland brought his typewriter to a typing position. Arty glanced over. Somehow, Roland's arm-mounted typewriter already had a long roll of paper full of text. Had he been typing this whole time and Arty just didn't notice? His attention was ripped away as four… five… then six Beowolves leapt from the foliage and began to surround them. The werewolf-like creatures' bony plates seemed to glow in the late morning sun, highly contrasting their jet black bodies.

"Uh… Roland? I know you told me to stay out of your way and all, but do you think you can stop typing and maybe help me find a way out of this?" Arty kept his gun aimed forward, switching back and forth between the two Grimm in front of him as they came closer.

Roland nodded and waved his hand over the stream of paper. "It's not _just_ typing. I kind of required for me to fight." He explained as the paper folded and contorted into a triangular blade. Before it solidified, he shut his eyes and took a deep breath. _Be yourself, not someone else. The lance was great. A sword won't suit me in this situation._ He reminded himself as the blade spiraled around itself and formed a straight rod with a triangular blade at the end. _But a spear… pretty close to the lance, but more effective._

He suppressed a smile as he cut off the newly formed spear and held it at the ready. "I've got this," He lobbed the spear at one of the Beowolves. It pierced its chest, but Roland kept his hand up and focused on keeping the spear going. It dug into the ground, leaving a live Grimm squirming as the butt of the spear fanned out and removed any chance of the monster getting up.

While Roland could have retrieved the weapon, he hesitated. For once, someone could fight by his side and allow him to make a better weapon to fight with. He groaned as he took a step and positioned himself behind Arty. "I need you to cover me while I make something better than a spear, okay? Can you manage that?"

Arty was still staring at the fanned out black spear jutting from the pinned Grimm. He shook himself out of it. "Okay. Let me just use my 'real weapon' to hold them off." Arty took a step towards the two Beowolves before looking over his shoulder. "But you need to explain what the heck you did just now when we're done here." He darted towards the Grimm.

The black monsters swung their claws at him. Arty felt the edges of the razor-sharp claws fall mere centimeters from his face as he ducked down and slid on his knees through the dirt and leaves, right between the two Grimm.

As the Beowolves spun around in confusion, Arty kicked himself upwards, turning back to face them as he flew backwards. He aimed his gun square at the backs of the creatures. Two clicks of the trigger and they were quickly splattered with paint, one blue, one red.

One of the Grimm was encased in a solid block of ice while the other was quickly blown apart by a fiery explosion.

Arty kicked off of a tree and launched towards the frozen beast. He reared his leg back for a kick. When his heavy boot connected, the Grimm-sicle was smashed to pieces. The bits of monsters left on the ground quickly dissipated into black mist, leaving nothing but some charred grass and chunks of ice.

Arty gave a cocky grin to his fallen enemies, "3 down, 3 to- WOAH!" Arty barely ducked before the remaining three Beowolves charged at him. He could see Roland about twenty feet away standing with his back to a tree, typing rapidly, but nowhere near done with… whatever he was doing.

"Just gotta keep these guys busy for a bit longer!" Arty dashed between trees. Branches and bits of bark flew as the Grimm grabbed for him, their claws swiftly cutting through the trees. As the trees began to fall, Arty realized he had more to worry about than just getting sliced to pieces as a log almost crushed him. At the last second, he managed to make a quick 90-degree turn.

"Roland! Any time now would be great! We're losing forest over here!" Arty turned back as he ran, shooting towards the three rampaging monsters. A few paintballs whizzed past them, splatting onto nearby trees. Thankfully, none of them were red, but now the trees were frozen solid. _Maybe I should siphon out the red ones… if I don't die that is._ He shot again. Another shot backwards. A yellow paintball broke open on a tree between him and the monsters. _Dangit!_ He yelled at himself.

It took him a few seconds to notice, but the sounds of the heavy clawed paws slamming on the forest floor had stopped. He turned and saw that one of the Beowolves had wandered a bit too close to the tree and, upon passing it, had a bolt of electricity go straight through its masked head. It fell to the ground, the sides of its head smoking before it faded to mist. The other two could just watch as their dead pack member floated away in the wind.

Arty chuckled, but his smug grin soon faded when the remaining enemies figured out they had another target nearby. "Roland!" Arty began running parallel to the monsters while attempting to fire at them. He tried to make his aim count in order to prevent a forest fire. He panicked when a red ball shot out. It made contact with a tree. An explosion rang out as a group of trees were instantly engulfed in flame. _Dangit dangit dangit dangit!_ Arty called for Roland again, but upon reaching the tree he had last seen his new partner, he couldn't find him anywhere. "Where'd you go?!"

Arty had reached the tree first, but the Grimm weren't too far behind. He was cornered. His eyes widened, he knew in his mind that pulling the trigger again now that his targets were so close could lead to him getting hurt in whatever elemental blast resulted from the shot. He looked around for an escape, but he didn't have much time.

"Thanks for the cover." Roland gave a sadistic grin as he gave the thumbs up from a branch above. "I've gotta say, that was quite a performance." He dropped down in front of Arty and held his typewriter bearing arm out to face the Grimm.

From the paper reel came a bladed hook facing inwards. The moment the claw of the Beowolf came down, he used the flat of the blade to swat it away. In one fluid motion, he hooked the monster around its neck and threw it to the side. The other Grimm seemed to take note of this and hesitated.

Roland glanced to Arty for a moment with a grin before looking back at the Grimm. "This one seems a little scared." Those fear stricken molten Grimm eyes sent a surge of joy through his very soul. He rushed the beast and allowed himself to take on the bloodlust that his mother taught him to harness.

He slashed with the curve of his hook and kicked the Beowolf in the chest, sending it backwards. "That all you got?" He spat. Behind him came the second, and upon reaching him, Roland whipped around and hooked it by the neck for the second time. "Idiot." He growled at the thing that dared to go after him.

"Hey Arty! Check this out!" Roland shouted as he tossed the Beowolf at the other. "It's like child's play!" He walked towards two Beowolves, both of which were scrambling to get up. "So dumb. So naive."

 _I'm sure that I'll just go and screw it up._

"Hey Roland? We have a problem… you think you could wrap things up here?!"

Roland looked back to Arty to process what he said. Realization hit him like a bus as he watched flaming branches around them. He noticed that Arty was getting certain paintballs put away in the midst of the forest fire that _he_ created.

Roland groaned, "Right...I'll get on that, _Burne…_ "

He ran up to the pair of Beowolves and lopped off their heads with a single swipe. He grinned as they faded away. "So… question. What do you want me to about a forest fire? Not like this is the thing that we're supposed to do at the moment."

"We can't just leave this forest to burn, Roland!" Arty said, the last of the red paintballs back in its tube on his belt.

"Um… yeah… yeah we can." Roland waved his hand around the area. "It isn't like I'm any help when dealing with fire."

"We're training to be _Huntsmen_! We're supposed to be _responsible_!" Arty said as he frantically worked on getting the remaining paintballs back in their respective tubes.

Roland gawked at Arty's blatant disregard of the skill set available to them. "Arty, paper burns really well, and a paintball gun isn't going to be very helpful when it comes down to a forest fire." He looked around at the raging fire. "Didn't you do this in the first place?"

Arty stood quiet for a moment. "Well… yeah, but that's not the point! It doesn't matter how it started, all that matters is how we stop it!" Arty looked at the tubes on his belt. "Oh crud." He began rooting through his backpack as the fire continued to spread around them.

"Looking for some more Fire Dust to start another fire around this one? That's how the wildlife services do it." Roland questioned as he watched Arty frantically dig through his bag.

"I'm going to refrain from adding any more fire to the flames. I'm actually looking for more ice or maybe even some water Dust paintballs… _Dammit_! I don't have any Water and I'm clean out of Ice!"

"Wait...it's a base type of Dust, dude. Did you just not stock any, or…?"

"For whatever reason, it's a _bit_ harder to find." Arty zipped up his bag and swung it back over his shoulder. He began counting on his fingers. "Ice Dust is easy to find. Even _S_ _team_ Dust is easy to find. But can I ever get my hands on just plain _Water_ Dust for once?! Especially since this is _the first time I've ever needed to use it_!"

"You lived in _Atlas_! You have the largest military power in _Remnant_ and you're almost completely reliant on Dust for everything, and you didn't bring any Water Dust with you?! I mean, you're in Vale now, why not just order it?!" Roland looked at the crazed painter in disbelief.

 _The thing is, I'm also sure that I can do well as  
long __as I remember what you wanted for me._

He groaned as he rolled his eyes. "Hold on… I have an idea." He pulled a few grenades from his belt and tossed one to Arty. "Pull the pin and throw it into the middle of the fire. You're going to have to catch me when I fall over, though. This is going to take a lot out of me."

Arty looked down at the grenade in his hands with panic and confusion. "Okay, I may be out of ideas, but how is a _grenade_ going to help put out a _fire_?!"

"It's ink. That's something that I can work with." Roland took a deep breath and looked at the grenade in his hand. "Two at once is a stretch, but I've handled more than that before. I can smother the fire."

Arty sighed. "Okay, fine, whatever. I'll trust you on this, but you _need_ to explain this to me after the fire's out." Arty pulled the pin and threw the black sphere into the raging inferno in front of them.

Roland pulled the pin on his own grenade and threw it in the opposite direction. A pair of loud pops rang out, and he held up a hand to get ready to smother the flames. "Okay, here we g-" He was cut off by a scream from within the fire. "Well, looks like we found someone."

"Oh god… oh god! I killed somebody!" Arty grabbed his hair as he panicked.

"They aren't lethal, moron." Roland glared. "Well, that is, unless I make them lethal. Besides, everyone out here has aura... hopefully." He took a few steps closer to the edge of the small clearing. "Hey! Who got hit?" He called out.

A huge figure charged from the burning trees near where Arty had thrown his grenade. Upon getting closer, the pair saw that the large figure was actually two people, one larger one with a smaller one riding on its shoulder. Before them now stood the giant hulking caveman and the shorter girl in the loose jacket and tank top. Both of them were covered in a splatter of black ink.

Arty exhaled in relief. "I thought I killed somebody…" He tried to ignore the fact that the intimidating tower of muscle standing before him was looking at him and Roland wearily.

"Oh great… it's you." Rime said, glaring daggers at Roland.

Roland nudged Arty with a grin. "Hey, at least we didn't hit someone that was actually useful."

" _ **TINY ANIMAL MAN MEAN TO RIME?!"**_ Everest boomed as he began to slowly draw the massive club from his back.

"Woah! Woah! Take it easy!" Roland held up his hands in defense. "We're cool. Everything is okay!" He looked to Arty again. "How is this guy a first year…?"

"Don't look at me, I asked the same thing yesterday." Arty said, still with a look of fright on his face from the near death experience.

Rime moved in front of Everest. "Woah, big guy. Calm down. No smashing people… unless we have to." She glared at Roland on the last part.

She turned to the two boys, or rather, to Arty. "We saw the smoke and came running thinking somebody might be in trouble. Judging from all of... _this_ ," she gestured to the flames burning around them, "I'd say you are. How did it even get this bad?!"

"Arty here started the fire. He's a little special, so go easy on the guy." Roland glared back at Rime. "He threw the grenade that hit you guys, by the way." He waved a hand and pulled the ink off of the two and onto the ground. "You're welcome."

Rime and Arty both ignored Roland's jabs.

"Ugh, whatever. I guess I can help you just this once." She said to Roland before turning around. "Just stand back." She grabbed her silver necklace and pulled it off of her head. She held the dark blue crystal in her right hand.

"Oh yeah, not even a thank you. You're just going to sit and play with your dumb little necklace." Roland shrugged and began to walk behind Arty in case the caveman decided that he was hungry.

Without turning back, she held the gem up in the air. "It's _not_ dumb necklace." She began channeling her aura. A bright blue light began to glow and intensify from between her clenched fingers. The temperature began to drop.

Arty and Roland looked around and watched as flecks of snow began to swirl around the girl.

A torrent of frigid air and ice began materializing from the necklace in Rime's hand. She began rotating, putting out the flames around them. Arty, Roland, and Everest all moved around her to avoid being hit by the ice.

A minute or so later, the flames were gone, the ground was soaked, and the trees were nothing but steaming black husks.

When she was done, Rime put the necklace back on and turned around and bowed with a mocking smile on her face. "You're welcome."

Arty was just staring blankly in awe. "Wow. That was sick. I've never seen anybody do that with Dust before..."

"Yeah, I could've done that with ink had you not gotten in my way." Roland crossed his arms. His grip tightened on his sleeve as he saw Rime give him a death gaze.

 _I'm going to be a good teammate for you._

"But…" He gave her the hint of a smile. "That was pretty _cool_. Thanks, Rime, you helped us out greatly."

"Did you… did you just? Did you just make a pun? Y'know what, nevermind. Everest and I are just gonna go." She turned to walk away. "Try not to die, you two. C'mon Everest."

He gave the two boys a crooked glance before lumbering off after Rime. "RIME. WHEN. EAT?"

"After we're done here Everest. Now come on." Arty and Roland heard Rime say as the two of them disappeared into the trees.

"Well, that was fun." Arty smiled stupidly as he nudged Roland with his elbow.

Roland glared as he began to walk towards the south part of the forest. "Yeah, whatever. Let's keep moving so that we don't end up burning the rest of the forest down." He patted his belt and counted the remaining grenades. "Three more frags, and fully stocked on the others... that works…" He mumbled absently.

"Okay, now that we're not on the brink of death, _how do you keep doing these things?!_ " Arty pushed again.

"Okay, look, you don't need to know much about me to fight with me, and I do not have to like you to fight with you. I'll explain the background stuff if the need arises." Roland grumbled as he picked up the pace.

Arty stopped, his eyes darting around as he processed Roland's absurd statement. "Okay… that part about not liking me is true, but the other part before that… not so much." He caught up to Roland. "If we're going to get anywhere within the next four years, we're going to have to know everything that each other can do in a fight, and that goes with whoever else we get teamed up with." Another mocking smile. "Capiche?"

Roland glared back at Arty and clenched his fist. He was about to make Arty regret his line of questioning.

 _I'll make sure that you look down on me and smile._

"You really suck, you know that?" Roland spoke to both Arty and himself with that. He tapped the typewriter on his arm. "You know how, very rarely, a Semblance can be hereditary?"

"Yeah. So I'm guessing that's the case for you, considering you're saying that."

"Yeah, it is. I got my Semblance from my mother. She found that she was able to control ink as long as she knew the configuration that it was in. She named it Inkheart." Roland pointed to the grenades on his belt. "My mother got to the point where she could control ink without words behind it, but when I try, it drains my aura really fast with where I am now."

"Huh… I guess a Semblance like that makes the typewriter a much more effective weapon…" Arty was still somewhat confused that a Semblance like that could exist. He'd never heard of anything like ink-control before.

Roland slipped a piece of paper out from under his vest. He unfolded it and began reading over it again. "Yeah, it does." He gave a silent 'thank you' to his mother as he thought on the day so far. With a partner, he decided that it would be smart to either avoid exactly what brought him here, or to tell him outright. He wasn't going to do the second one. "As a resident of Mistral, I'll go ahead and warn you. If you ever meet anyone who went to combat school at Sanctum or Haven, just avoid the topic of instructors. Namely, Professor Oscura. We don't talk about her." He told Arty as he slipped the note back into his vest.

Arty had no idea what Roland was talking about. He wanted to ask more, but he decided it'd be better to just agree and keep moving through the forest.

Roland looked around the forest. He stayed silent as he reviewed his day. Hopefully, Vincentas could see everything that was happening and hoped that it'd make him get off his back a little.

* * *

He thought back to earlier in the morning. He had to pick up a few grenades from his locker, and as he was leaving he saw Vincentas standing in the hallway. "What do you want?" He shoved his hands into his pockets and began walking past his chaperone.

Vincentas trailed behind Roland. "I told Alabaster about earlier this morning." He began. "He said that I have to make sure that you're not going to have an episode in the selection process today."

"I told you that I was fine earlier, and I'll tell you that I'm fine now." Roland stopped as they reached one of the walkways. "Look, what happened happened. You can leave me alone about it."

"The result of that was a Nevermore popping up in the middle of the city-"

"I get it, that's major. That's seriously dangerous, but my mother had just been torn away from me without warning. Right now, I'm just feeling the after effects and the grief. I still need to process all of this, and it's not helping to have you breathing down my neck about it constantly." Roland snapped as he turned to face Vincentas. "I want to make some friends, alright? I want to find some ways to cope with this, and the only way that I know how to right now is to write out my thoughts. Of course I'm depressed, of course I'm keeping to myself, of course I'm being antisocial. I'm working on all of that because I know that my mother wouldn't want to see me like this. She wanted to me to succeed, so I will succeed. I'm still screwed up, but I don't really think that's too surprising."

Vincentas unfolded his arms and nodded. He almost seemed pleased with Roland's response, as if that's what he wanted from him. "So I can tell Alabaster that you're going to try and get along with your classmates from now on?"

"Tell him what you want." Roland relaxed, realizing that he was doing what Vincentas had been wanting him to do. _No promises, though…_

* * *

Roland shook off the memory of the conversation that morning. "Hey Arty, let's make sure that we show Beacon a thing or two about how real Huntsman in training do things, okay?"

Arty was shocked by the sudden change in attitude. He smiled. "Um… yeah, sure thing." He said with confidence and excitement, with a slight hint of confusion.

"Good, then I suppose that settles that." Roland nodded. _I suppose this might not be so bad. Thanks for teaching me, mom._

 _I love you, and I miss you. I'll check in with you  
again as __soon as I can. Talk to you later._


	7. V1Ch3: Starstruck

Timbre felt free for the first time in forever. She had ditched her hoodie that morning for her usual green top, shorts, and combat boots. Her red detached sleeves fluttered loudly as she flew through the air. She'd heard of the unusual methods used for team assignments at Beacon, but this was much more fun than terrifying. She turned to face the sky. Her arms stretched out as she closed her eyes, letting the air rush past her. When she reached the crest of the arc, she turned back to face forward and smiled. "Let's go, Klavier."

She aimed her fists forward as she came close to the trees. Thin wires launched from her gloves and imbedded themselves into the bark of a tree. She felt her whole body change direction as she began wrapping around the tree. She clenched her fist and the wire wound back into her glove. Wire after wire, Timbre began to swing around the tree. She circled around and around until she finally slowed down enough to ready herself to land. To finish her landing, she launched a wire downwards as she fell. The wire wrapped around a tree branch, allowing her body swung upwards. She looped around the branch again and again, the wire winding tighter and tighter. Upon losing force, she twitched her thumb, causing a mechanism in her glove to cut the wire. She launched upwards before landing on her feet, crouching to reduce the force of the fall. "Good job guys," she clapped her hands together, giving herself a high-five. "Now… where to go?..."

Before she could decide on which direction to go, she heard a series of rapid bangs, like gunshots. She turned to the sky, hoping to identify the source of the noises. Her breath was knocked out of her as she was sliding backwards through the dirt. The force of the object hitting her drove her into the ground, making a shallow trench where she was dragged through the earth.

Dazed and aching, she leaned forwards. Through the settling dirt cloud, she found a familiar girl dressed in brown lying across her legs. "Sepia?!" She groaned raspily as she coughed up some dust.

 _'That's my name, don't wear it out!'_ Sepia signed. She looked up at whomever it was that she smashed into. Her mouth fell open as she saw the person who was going to be her partner for at least the next four years. She shot up to her feet and began to bounce around giddily. _'Oh my gods! Oh my gods! It's bacon sandwich! It's bacon sandwich!'_ Her hands flew wildly as she rapidly signed to her new partner.

Timbre couldn't help but smile as she saw the other girl fumbling with her signing. _'You mean happening'_ , she signed back with the correct hand motions, which were vastly different than the ones Sepia had used. Out of all the people she'd met the day before, Sepia was the only one that was a fan, but didn't go out of her way to try and impress her like the snobbish girl from Yamuna's tour group. Sepia was just a fan. _Maybe this won't be too bad after all._

Finally, Sepia calmed down and took a deep breath. _'So you really don't have a partner? I'm the first to find you?!'_ She looked around for any other signs of life nearby. _'We get to do everything together for the next four years or more?!'_

Timbre was taken aback by Sepia's energy, but she gave her new partner the benefit of the doubt and attributed her behavior to pure excitement. _'Yeah! It doesn't matter who the other two people on our team are, we're stuck together whether we like it or not!'_ She signed back, chuckling.

 _'Then let's get started!'_ Sepia snatched her camera guns off of the ground. She twirled the angular pistols around, allowing the twin reels atop each to spin freely. She hooked them to the bustle on her lower back. _'Avant and Garde are primed and ready to go! Let's kill some Grimm and get to the temple!'_

"I like your enthusiasm… I'll just follow your lead then."

Sepia nodded and bolted off ahead with a smile plastered across her face.

As they ran, Timbre could see nothing but trees for as far as she could see. A few mountains jutted out of the landscape here and there, but there was nothing that suggested they were heading towards the temple. "Sepia, are you sure you know where you're taking us?"

Sepia turned around and stopped dead in her tracks. Shrugging her shoulders, she shook her head as if to say "I don't know."

Timbre stopped, wiping her forehead. _Great_ , she thought to herself. _Maybe our enthusiasm blinded us a bit._ "So, any ideas as to which way we should _really_ go?"

Sepia just shrugged.

Timbre nodded. "Okay, maybe we should just take a bit of a breather." Timbre sat down, her legs crossed together. She patted the grass to tell Sepia to sit down.

Sepia plopped down onto her back and crossed one leg over the other. _'That sounds good.'_ She couldn't quit smiling from the luck that she had. _'So what brought you to Beacon?'_

"Um… well… I thought that a change in career would be good for me. I was getting kind of tired of going all over just so people could see me sing. I thought it'd be better to see the world in a more… let's say, _helpful_ way. So, I came home to Beacon to do it." She waited to see if Sepia would keep prying, but she just nodded. "So, what about you?"

Sepia whipped out her scroll and began typing. It would save them a little time to not have to work through the physical typos that her hands occasionally made when signing. She finally passed it to Timbre. _'I've lived in Vacuo my entire life, and I went to combat school there. I left to pursue film, but I ended up having a really bad accident on the set of a shot that I was doing. A wire got caught around my neck, and… well, this is the result. I've gone back to my dream of being a Huntress now that I can't really act or direct anymore. Well, not with how I am now, anyway. When I'm a Huntress, I'm going to get back into directing, but it's going to take a bit to figure out how exactly I plan to do that.'_ She kept her smile as Timbre read her message. The grass was soft against her back, her eyes shut, and she yawned. _'I can't wait for everything that will happen in the next four years.'_ She signed and put her hands back over her stomach.

Timbre sat there in shock. _How can she be so… positive and happy after something like that?_ She passed the scroll back slowly. "Sepia… I'm… I'm so sorry that all that happened to you." Timbre felt hot tears welling in her eyes and wiped her face with her hands.

 _'It's cool. My auntie-mom always said that I should be a Huntress instead. It's a much more reliable profession, and my friend Opal agreed as well.'_

Timbre was a bit confused. Sepia had made mistakes with her signing before. Timbre had no idea if Sepia meant what she had signed, _'grandmother'_ perhaps? "I'm sorry, but did you mean to say auntie-mom, Sepia?"

 _'Yeah, my parents died when I was young. They were Huntsmen, and good ones at that. I was adopted by my aunt after they passed.'_ Sepia smiled as she thought back to the stories of her parents fighting the forces of evil. _'I don't remember them all that much, but my auntie-mom talks about how amazing they were quite a lot.'_

"Wow…" Timbre thought that it must have been really hard for Sepia to say these things. She decided that if Sepia was comfortable enough to confide in her, she could do the same with Sepia. "Well, to tell you the truth… my mom was a Huntress to-" A scream echoed through the woods. The two girls shot to their feet, weapons at the ready. "Somebody's in trouble!" She turned to Sepia. "Did you happen to catch where that came from?!"

Sepia took a slow breath and closed her eyes. In a few silent moments, she opened her eyes. _'On it.'_ She pointed in the direction that they came from and bolted off. She held her smile, not phased one bit by what she had just shared. The past was just the past as far as she was concerned.

Timbre ran alongside Sepia as they headed towards the scream. Sepia suddenly turned to the left, away from where they had come from. The new path winded down a hill towards a rocky outcrop over a river. Down in a clear patch of dirt surrounded by giant boulders was a large Ursa, the bear-like Grimm, attacking another student, who was swinging their weapon at the monster. From up on the hill, neither girl could tell who it was.

"Oh great…" Timbre jumped down off of the edge and Sepia followed. "Hey!" she called to the Ursa, "Back off!" A length of thick woven cable drew out of each glove. She looked over and saw that the endangered student was the boy in green from Yamuna's tour group. _Wasn't his name Turf or something?_ She thought as the Ursa turned towards her.

 _I've got this._ Sepia's smile grew as she sprinted towards the Ursa with fully automatic pistols blazing. She hurtled over it and rolled to land on the other side. While putting one of her guns away, she latched onto Turf's arm and dragged him a few feet out of harm's way before positioning herself between him and the Grimm. Her guns were pointed at the beast with surgeon-like steadiness.

"Sepia! What do you think you're _doing_?!" Timbre yelled to her new partner. "I was trying to lure it away so we could deal with it!" She saw the Ursa begin to lunge forward and she reacted on pure instinct. She whipped her wires towards the beast and latched onto its hind legs, effectively tying them together.

Turf leaned up to get a better look at the tiny woman with his shotgun in his arms. "Um… I was going to… shoot it…"

Sepia turned her head ever so slightly and held the barrel of her gun up to her lips as if to say "Shhhhh…" before she continued to fire upon the immobilized Grimm. She was dead set on impressing her idol.

Timbre knew her wires couldn't hold much longer. She struggled to hold them tightly around the monster's legs. "Guys! Out of the way!" She clipped the wires from her gloves, letting the Ursa fall forward towards Turf and Sepia. It clawed at them, but missed. With its prey out of reach, it worked on the wires at its feet. The Ursa's claws latched around the woven silver cords. With a gunshot-like snap, it was free to attack the students again.

Sepia crouched to get ready to fight a gargantuan monster all by herself. She jumped over the paw of the creature as it swiped at her. While in the air, she slammed the blunt ends of her pistols into the forehead of the Ursa with enough force to crack its face plate and send it back a few feet. When it shook off the blow and charged at her again, she leaped onto its back and began bashing it in the spine over and over with the butts of her pistols.

Timbre wanted to do something, but Sepia's erratic and unpredictable movements made it difficult for her to process what she could do to help. "Sepia! You're going to get yourself killed!"

Turf stood and looked on in terror at the scene unfolding. "Um… I'm just gonna…" He took a few steps towards the writhing Ursa as it struggled to get the smaller girl off its back. Upon reaching it, he watched as Sepia flew off into a nearby boulder. "Okay, just gonna kill it now." He aimed his weapon at the cracked forehead of the Ursa and shot. A heavy Earth Dust buckshot whizzed through the Ursa's head and sent it down to the ground. He lowered his weapon as the Grimm began to fizzle out of existence. "Got it."

"Sepia!" Timbre ran to the girl crumpled on the ground next to the boulder. She helped her sit up. "Are you okay?" She heard Turf's heavy boots run up behind her.

"She got walloped pretty hard, huh?" He motioned to help Sepia up.

If Sepia was capable of groaning, she certainly would have. Sure, she wasn't hurt too bad because of her aura, but she was certainly sore from nearly breaking her spine. _'I'm good!'_ she signed to Timbre before hopping up. It hurt to move, but she wasn't going to show her teammate that.

Timbre could have sworn that this girl was insane. She'd seen people get injured by Grimm before, but Sepia was up and ready to go not even two minutes after the Ursa slammed her into a boulder. "You're just full of surprises aren't you?" Timbre turned to the boy in green. "You okay?"

Turf nodded slowly. "I'm fine. No biggie." He held the shaft of what seemed to be a shovel with twin shotgun barrels on the bottom side of it. "So… I guess that neither of you are my partner, huh?"

"Um..." Timbre began before Sepia suddenly wrapped her arms around her and latched on tight. "I guess you can take that as a no… Sorry." She shrugged.

"Well, dang it." Turf readjusted his green beanie. He collapsed his weapon and hooked it to his belt. "Guess I'll be on my way, then." He turned to leave. "See ya later."

Turf didn't seem disappointed, but Timbre still felt bad for him, especially since he was still wandering alone through the woods. "Hey, Turf!" She called out to him.

He turned back around, seeming a bit surprised.

"We may already have partners, but that doesn't mean you can't come with us until you find one." She turned to Sepia. "Might be easier to find somebody if there's three of us rather than one."

'I guess.' Sepia attempted to stand up straight. She still hurt all over, but she tried to suppress the reaction to pain. It was still nothing compared to the back pain that spending all day in a harness on set gave her. She could manage.

"I mean, if you two are sure." Turf looked around for a bit. "I guess it'll be easier to find the temple with more people anyways." He dusted off his shirt to no avail in an attempt to make himself at least semi-presentable. "So, which way we going? I was heading that way up the river when that Ursa attacked." He pointed upstream. "I figured that the temple would probably be a bit higher up, so going against the flow of the river should get us a little ways closer if that's the case."

Timbre looked to Sepia, who just shrugged. "Better idea than any." She said before they headed off up the riverbank.

A half hour of awkward silence was spent walking along the riverbank, though Sepia didn't mind. She had time to recoup and think about her situation. She was paired with her idol, but already she was getting hurt in her effort to show off. Oddly, it was her who decided to break the silence by pulling out her scroll and typing out a message. _'When we have our teams, would you two join me in something for all of us? We could head down to Vale for dinner after everything's said and done! It'd be fun!'_

Turf read the message and couldn't help but smile. "I mean, it isn't like I have any plans yet. We can get all the new first year teams together to celebrate!" He told her. Finally, he was getting to have a normal conversation at Beacon. Just a normal, nonsense conversation.

Timbre laughed nervously. "Yeah, that'd be fun. There is a little cafe that's a good place to relax, and the food is the best I've had in Vale. I would love to share it with everyone."

 _'Hey, we'll have you with us. Maybe we'll get a discount or something!'_ Sepia showed Timbre on her scroll.

Timbre smiled. "Yeah, maybe. It might be best if we just stuck to the student discount that we get already. I think it's like ten-percent off if it's just you, and twenty-five-percent off if you're with your entire team."

 _'Who do you think we'll be on a team with?'_ Sepia signed after putting away her scroll in her bustle.

Timbre shook her head. "I honestly have no idea. I'm not exactly sure how Professor Alabaster is doing things around here… There _really_ doesn't seem to be that much of a system."

"I think that he does." Turf chimed in. "It kind of feels like he's just not giving the details to us so that we learn on our own how to cope with the chaos of being a Huntsman or a Huntress." He felt like that was something that a guy like Alabaster would do, but wasn't entirely certain. The thought did comfort him, though.

"Yeah… I guess." Timbre said as she processed the idea. "I mean, I've heard of Professor Alabaster all my life. And Beacon has produced tons of world-class huntsmen, so I guess he has to have _some_ clue as to what he's doing."

Sepia began to type something, but stopped and deleted it. In a few moments, she had a new message typed out and showed it to Timbre and Turf. _'Did you guys hear something?'_ She asked. When she stopped to look around, she just nodded and pointed across the river. _'Over there.'_ She signed.

"No…" Timbre sounded concerned.

"Yeah, about fifty yards from where you're pointing." Turf nodded in agreement with Sepia. "Sounded like explosions." He held his hand to the river. Ripples began dotting surface of the water. Through a massive crash of water, a short series of stepping stones appeared to serve as a bridge across the rushing water. "Come on, someone might need help. I can't hold this for too long, so let's try and get a move on, alright?"

Sepia gave a thumb's up and a grin as she bolted across, hopping from stepping stone to stepping stone.

"Wow… neat Semblance." Timbre commended Turf as she drew out lengths of wire from her gloves.

"Thanks." Turf began hopping from stone to stone behind Sepia. "Now please, let's move." He told Timbre once more.

When the three made it across the river, the stones sank.

"Right." She nodded as they ran off through the trees. She yelled out into the trees. "Hey! Is somebody in trouble?!"

"Hey! There are Grimm around. Don't attract them." Turf looked back at Timbre disapprovingly. "Keep the noise down. The explosions stopped."

Timbre nodded. She kept her head forward and hoped that he was right.

The shade from the trees quickly opened into bright sunlight as they made it to the edge of another cliff. There, one of the girls Timbre had seen the day before on the tour was backed up against the edge of the cliff by a large snake. It was half black and half white with a head on each side.

"A King Taijitu… I've only _read_ about these…" Timbre whispered in a mix of awe and fear.

The redhead girl in the formal dress was moving quickly, dodging the attacks of both of the Grimm's heads. The white head lunged forwards, aiming right at the girl. Right before the fangs would have pierced her body, she jumped up. The fluttering of her dress made it seem as if she was floating above the snake's head. With a quick twist, she launched something downward at the base of the head.

The three watched as the white head separated from the rest of the body. The glowing red inside of the monster was now exposed.

"One down." She kicked the head and watched as it slowly rolled off of the cliff. She turned back to the snake, who's black head was eyeing her angrily. "One ta go."

Timbre ran forward. "Hey! Uh… Alex, right?"

The girl looked offended, "Timbre Forté! I woulda thought you would at least remembered my _name_!" Her posh demeanor had turned brash.

She backflipped away from the black snake head lunging at her. She threw something else at it. In an instant, the snake's remaining head was encased in a large ice crystal. "My name is Alice." She held up one of the objects she had been using to fight with. A card with a red heart-shaped symbol on its back glimmered in the late morning sun. Upon flipping it to the reverse side, it showed a single black spade.

The snake was beginning to thaw. The layer of ice cracked along the side of its face. It opened its jaws wide and began to inch closer to Alice, who was facing away from it.

"An' don't forget it." She spun around on the heels of her boots, throwing the card behind her.

The card seemed to hit with the force of a speeding bus as the creature's remaining head caved in and blew apart. The ice shattered, sending sparkling shards into the air. The twice-decapitated snake fell and quickly disintegrated.

Alice nodded with a haughty "hmph," and put the cards back into concealed pockets in her corset. She looked over to the party of onlookers. "You three _do_ know it's one partna per person, right?" She said as she looked them over.

"Um…" Timbre said, raising a finger as if she was going to explain something.

A look of realization came across the redhead's face, which then grew into a big smile. " _No_ way! You don't 'ave a partna!" She ran up to Timbre, grabbing her hands and holding them in front of her. "Oh I'd be so glad ta join you Ms. Forté!" She said giddily. "Ta think, tha two of us could be _unstoppable_ , or at least, tha most popula."

Timbre felt a little uncomfortable. "Um… Alice?" She felt like she was letting down a fan. "I already… have a partner…" She looked over to Sepia, who was glaring at Alice with a murderous look in her eyes.

Alice's smile vanished in an instant. "You… you don't mean." She turned and locked eyes with the dirt-covered boy with the shovel in his hand.

"Yo." He said, waving with a quick flick of his wrist.

Alice let go of Timbre's hands and began stomping her foot. "It's not fair, it's not fair, it's not _fair_!" She glared at Turf. "Why must I be paired with _you_!? I mean, I'm prim and propa. And you…" She looked him over, inspecting the dirt that seemed to coat his body and clothing, "you're just… _dirty_." She scoffed. "No offense, o' course."

"Wow, thanks. Offense taken." Turf crossed his arms. "Nice to meet you too, _partna_." he said, mocking Alice's accent.

Alice sighed. "Ah well. You may not be my partna Timbre, but we could still end up on a team togetha!" She clapped her hands together before going over and grabbing Turf's arm. "Okay, c'mon. Let's get this ova with." She dragged him off towards the woods at the opposite end of the cliff's clearing.

"Hey! Chill with it!" Turf protested as he pushed off of Alice and began walking beside her. As they walked away, Timbre and Sepia could already hear them getting into a fight.

Sepia slowly held a gun up towards Alice's back with a shaking hand and hate in her eyes.

Timbre saw this and slapped Sepia's gun towards the ground. "Sepia! What in the world do you think you're doing?!" She whispered harshly to her teammate.

 _'Huntresses kill monsters, right?'_ Sepia signed after putting away her gun and glared at the snotty brat of a student. _'How could anyone be that rude to someone for no reason? Turf is nice enough. So what if he has a little dirt on him? He'll make a good partner.'_ She signed to Timbre. The pain in her back was completely gone. She was ready to fight. _'On top of that, it's like she isn't thankful for the gift that she obviously has when it comes to combat. I hate the feeling that she gives me.'_

Timbre watched as the girl in red and the boy in green marched off into the woods. "I mean, you're not _wrong_. But that's no excuse to let your emotions get out of control like that. It wouldn't exactly look good to the teachers on the cliff to see you shoot another student during initiation."

 _'One, it wouldn't kill her, and, two, our emotions are the basis of our aura, are they not? They are so deeply a part of us, so it's more of a matter of allowing which emotion to control us at which time, you know? Grimm take advantage of that, too.'_ Sepia took a deep breath. Her eyes lit up once again as she looked up at Timbre. _'I think I'll let joy do the controlling for me for a while.'_

"So… almost shooting someone equals joy for you?..." Timbre said concerned. She had half a mind to run after Alice and Turf.

 _'Oh! No!'_ She silently laughed. _'I meant that I wasn't going to be sour about this. Turf can handle himself.'_ She explained and awkwardly smiled. _'Sorry. I promise that I'm not completely crazy. Only a little, like fifty-percent or so.'_

"Right… got it." Timbre began walking the way Turf and Alice had gone. She stopped and turned back to Sepia. "C'mon. We've still got a temple to find."

Sepia took off and began heading towards the darker part of the forest. It was her assumption that the temple would be hidden in a location that the students would be hesitant to go to. _'You said that your mother was a Huntress. Is she not anymore?'_ She signed to her partner.

"Oh…" Timbre felt the well of sadness she had been suppressing beginning to well up a bit. She shut her eyes tight to keep the tears in. "My mom… died when I was still a kid. She was a great Huntress from the day she graduated to the day she left us." She opened her eyes and watched the tree canopies pass by overhead. "That's… kind of the real reason that I dropped everything and came to Beacon in the first place. I realized my life as a celebrity wasn't what she'd want from me. And I know that she would have seen that it wasn't what I'd want for myself." She leveled her gaze to the path ahead. "I'd much rather be unknown and help people than be an idol and help noone." She shook her head. "I'm sorry, I didn't mean to get into it like that. But," She turned to Sepia, "we're teammates now, so… I guess we kinda need to know why the other's here, right?" Her mouth curved into a slight smile.

 _'I'm glad that you told me.'_ Sepia signed. Her strides were goofy and stiff-legged. She tried to lighten Timbre's mood at least a little with her odd demeanor. _'It get's easier to deal with, you know? If you can find what makes your life fulfilled, you can know that you made anyone who may be gone happy with you. That's how I live my life, actually. I'm always happy because my parents would have wanted me to be.'_ Sepia explained.

Timbre walked on in silent understanding. Sepia didn't feel much pain regarding her accident or her parent's deaths because she believed that they wouldn't want her to feel that way. It wasn't denial like she had once thought, but total acceptance of the reality that she lived. _What a way to live..._

She grabbed Sepia's hand. "C'mon, let's go. Maybe we can be the first ones there if we're lucky!" She began dragging Sepia to go faster.

Sepia smiled as she followed along. She shut her eyes, secretly activating her own Semblance.

Timbre felt Sepia grab the back of her shirt. "Huh? What is it, Sepia?"

Sepia opened her eyes. _'That way.'_ She point to their right through the trees. _'The temple is that way.'_

"But Alice and Turf went..." She shook her head. "Fine. You lead the way. You actually seem to know where you're going this time."

Timbre ran along with her new friend. She smiled as she released lengths of wire from her gloves. She shot one into a limb overhead and began swinging through the trees as she had before running into Sepia. "Race ya!" She yelled as she zoomed past. Timbre felt her scroll vibrate. She reached into her pocket and pulled out her scroll as she swung. After making sure she had a clear straightaway, she read the words on the screen.

 _'Watch out!'_

Timbre came to a screeching halt as she shot her other wire to the side, wrapping around the tree and coming to a stop, hanging by her wrist. "Ow…" Timbre rubbed her head. "What is it Sepia!?" She called out. She could just watch as her teammate ran by below, pointing to herself and sticking her tongue out. "Oh… _great_ …" Timbre shook her head and laughed.

After clipping herself free, Timbre reflected on the events of her day so far as she swung through the trees with Sepia running below her. She was glad she had a new friend that sincerely seemed interested in her, not as a celebrity, but as a friend and a teammate. Their meeting the day before may not have been fully by chance, but landing in the forest next to each other? That had to be fate. Timbre thought it couldn't have gone better. She remembered Alice's behavior back at the second cliff after she killed the King Taijitu. What would things have been like if she had run into her first? Or Turf? Timbre shook her head. She was finally coming to terms with the fact that maybe her past didn't have as much influence on her as she thought. She needed to live the present, and eagerly look forward to the future, no matter who was by her side.


	8. V1Ch4: Artists

All was going well as Timbre and Sepia made their way deeper into the Emerald Forest. Sepia was leading them towards the temple at a blinding pace, but only a mile into their mad dash she felt a sharp pain in the side of her head. Her eyes widened as she fell face first into the dirt and leaves.

Timbre ran and knelt at her side, placing a hand on her back. "Sepia! Are you okay?"

Sepia turned over and pulled out her scroll. ' _I was cut off. I can't get to the temple. I don't remember where it is.'_ She huffed as she tried to get up, but failed and fell back down.

Timbre caught her and helped her to her feet. "What do you mean 'remember'? What happened? Are you okay?" Timbre helped her over to an outcrop in the hill they were walking down and helped her onto a large boulder. "There. Let's rest a minute…"

Sepia flopped down and took a deep breath. ' _It has to do with my Semblance,'_ she held the sides of her head, ' _I'll tell you mine if you tell me yours.'_ She closed her eyes to rest. Her head felt as though it was caving in on itself.

Timbre nodded. "Right. That makes sense. Okay. I guess if we're going to be on a team together for the next four years and all…"

* * *

A half mile away, Arty and Roland were arguing nonstop about which direction to go.

"I'm telling you, we've already been this way!" Arty yelled. He gestured to a large rock. "We've passed that rock that looks like a Boarbatusk in a tutu twice already!"

"This one is _not_ the same! I think I'd know a rock that looked like that! It'd be a freaking miracle! You can't even pull back the reigns on your own imagination!" Roland shouted back while pointing ahead. "If you have a better idea, then get on with it! Take the lead, _Burne_."

"I've told you twenty times already. Call me _Arty_. And, in fact…" He looked up through the branches towering above them. "I think I do have a better idea. Stand back." He took off the tube of white paintballs and scooped out two. They fell to the ground, meeting their end in a splat.

"What are you doing?" Roland stopping in his tracks as he watched Arty fiddle with his Dust paint. "Look, your Dust has gotten us in enough trouble already."

"Don't worry. These are Air Dust. They won't cause any huge catastrophe like the forest fire... I'm just gonna go up, get a look around, find out where the temple is, and when I get back down, we head that direction." He held up the vial to show Roland. "Wanna come with?"

"I… I suppose." Roland reluctantly took the paintballs and looked them over for a moment. Sure they were cool, but there was room for improvement in the design, like some divots on the surface to add a little speed. He finished his examination and dropped them on the ground. "How many times have you done this?"

Arty looked down at the ground, making sure he'd land on both paintballs at the same time. "Um… once. But it worked, so... it should be fine."

Roland was taken back, but not entirely surprised. Arty seemed to be some unholy hybrid of organized and spontaneous. "Right…" He took a long, deep breath, reevaluating the decisions that he had made in the past few weeks. There he was, in a forest with some artsy guy that he barely knew and surrounded by monsters. Sure, it was better than the incident that brought him to Beacon, but it was still a pain. "Let's get on with it." He glared at the paint and prepared to jump on it.

Just then, another rustle from behind them. A black boar with molten eyes and gleaming white tusks had emerged from behind its stony tutu-wearing twin. It was charging at them, and was closing in fast.

"Jump!" Arty yelled as he jumped up, stomping on the puddles of paint. When his feet connected, the Dust activated. Arty shot upwards with a strong blast of wind.

"This is crap!" Roland shouted as he leapt on top of the paint. He was sent rocketing up behind Arty, and attempted to angle his feet so that he'd stay balanced. Apparently, the paint had coated the soles of his boots, allowing him to get just enough thrust to stay up.

"I hate Grimm. I hate them with every fiber of my being…" His tail shifted around to maintain his balance.

"That's kinda why we're here." Arty said shakily, trying to remain stable in the air. "Huntsmen defend people. Grimm hurt people. Huntsmen kill Grimm to defend people. Kinda how it works." From fifty feet below him, he could see the angry Boarbatusk eyeing them. "Okay, can you see anything?" Arty looked around for anything resembling a temple.

"That's why it sucks when a Grimm kills a Huntsmen. It screws up the system," Roland scanned the horizon. "There's a clearing a ways off. Towards that mountain." He pointed to a few stone columns poking up from the trees. "That's a good mile or two away, though."

"The Air Dust won't last long, but it should at least get us a good way there." Arty said as he leaned forward slowly, allowing the air from his boots to begin pushing him towards the ruins Roland had pointed out.

"Hold up." Roland held up an orb of ink, about the size of a baseball, encased in a thin veil of plastic. "I need to give our new friend a present." He dropped the orb over the Boarbatusk and then began following Arty's lead. With a clench of his fist, the ink condensed and crushed the monster's head with a satisfying series of crunches. "Got the Boarbatusk." His voice was hardly heard over the last screech of the Grimm.

"Nice." Arty nodded. "Maybe they give awards to students who kill the most Grimm during initiation." He said with a long stare. _Forcing the sociopath to be my partner may have been a mistake..._ He picked up the pace as he reassessed his new partner's mental state. As unstable as it seemed to be, it could be useful in a battle, but it was still unnerving.

Roland trailed behind his friend with the hint of a smile. The rush of air was fantastic. Freeing, even. He looked over to his partner as they flew over the treetops. "So what got you banned from Atlas?!" He shouted over the wind. "I've heard that General Léon's a jerk, but I've never heard of her outright banning anybody that's already been through training!"

"Oh… um…" Arty's blonde hair flapped around wildly in the rushing wind. "Is _now_ really the best time to talk about this? Can we at least wait until we're, y'know, _on the ground_?" He pointed downward with his gun.

"This is as good as a time as ever!" Roland batted back. He jabbed his thumb at his feet. "We've got a bit!"

Arty felt himself dropping slightly. "Maybe not as much as you think! Dust can be pretty unpredictable" He yelled back. He saw the glare Roland was giving him. "Fine… Let's just say my Dust paint hasn't exactly been 100%... helpful."

"I've noticed! That forest fire was really something, huh?" Roland shot back. A trail of paper was waving behind him, all typed out as they flew.

Arty could hear the paper as it flapped rapidly about as their descent began to speed up. "Yeah… the forest fire was definitely not the first time my paint got me in trouble." Arty sighed. "The first time I... blew a hole in the front of Atlas Academy… after accidentally making graffiti with pure Magma Dust..." He finished quickly.

"Ni-i-ice." Roland laughed. He took note of their loss of altitude. The paper folded and condensed into a shield-like shape. "Looks like we're about to land. Be ready!" He held up his shield in preparation to bash away anything that might get in his way, including other students.

Arty didn't have time to question why Roland was so calm after hearing that his new partner was virtually a convicted arsonist. He had to keep his feet steady in his descent. Tubes and paintballs fumbled around in his hands for a moment. He readied his arm to throw a new paintball, one that glowed with a dim purple hue.

* * *

Timbre held her hand out in front of Sepia when she heard a loud _CRASH_ from overhead.

"Did you hear that?" She asked, but was soon immediately answered by a flash of purple and white slamming through the trees. It embedded itself about ten feet up the side of the oak ahead. Timbre let out a slight shriek as splinters of wood showered her and her partner. They looked up to see the purple cowboy clinging to the branches of his landing zone.

She jumped again when a quiet _splat_ sounded out higher up the tree. A boy in orange was flying through the canopy above them. The boy that she had befriended the day before shot towards the thick trunk of the same tree. As soon as he would have smashed face-first into the bark, he was stopped in mid-air by some invisible force before being launched away. Unfortunately for Timbre and Sepia, Arty was sent flying into both of them.

Finally coming to a grinding halt, Arty looked up to see the world spinning around him. "I… hate… Gravity… Dust…" He said, trying to shake the dizziness away. After he got over the impact of the crash, he looked to his left and found himself face to face with Timbre Forté.

"Timbre!?" As the dizziness faded, he came to the realization that he was dog-piled on top of her and the other girl from the day before, the one in brown. He felt his face flush and he immediately shot up to his feet. "I'm so sorry!" He reached his hand down to help her up.

Timbre let him help her up to her feet. "Thanks…" she turned to help Sepia back up, "How many times are people going to fall out of the sky and onto me today? First you, now Arty-"

"Watch out!" Roland shouted from the top of the tree. He finally lost his grip and fell into the crowd of three. When the dust settled, he was laying on top of the other three groaning students.

"Thanks for the soft landing, guys..." He pried himself off of top of the pile.

"Now the cowboy… great..." Timbre growled quietly as Arty's boot dug into her side.

Sepia, at the bottom of the pile, had her face buried in the dirt. _Why? Just why…?_ Incredibly, she pushed up and made the other students slide off of her back with ease. She wiped the grime off her face and stretched. ' _Ask them what they're doing and why they were flying through the sky,'_ she thought for a second, " _again_ ," She signed down to Timbre. ' _And get their numbers so I can text them.'_

Timbre pushed herself up… again. "Right. Um," she pointed to Sepia as she addressed Arty and Roland, "Since we're all heading to the same place, and seem to have partners, she wants you guys' scroll numbers and… she wants to know what you guys were doing, since we're all still looking for the temple. She also wants your contacts."

Roland passed his scroll to Sepia. "Well, Burny-Burns here made a forest fire that Rime and the Neanderthal put out. Then we got lost, launched ourselves fifty feet in the air, repeated our whole landing strategy exercise, failed miserably, and landed on you two. The temple is a mile northeast of here, by the way. It's near the mountain."

Sepia returned Roland's scroll, and then proceed to snatch Arty's from the front pocket of his backpack. How she knew where it was, Arty had no idea. She quickly retrieved his information and returned it. She sent a group message to Arty, Roland, and Timbre. ' _That makes sense. So we've got Angry Purple and Dumb Orange leading the charge, huh?'_

"Hey…" Arty retorted. "It was my idea that led us to finding the darn thing…"

"Play nice, Sepia," Timbre rolled her eyes. She turned to the two guys, eying Roland apprehensively. "She'll get used to you. So," she held her arm out to the path ahead, "lead the way guys."

As the four students walked down the dirt path, Arty chuckled.

"What's so funny?" Timbre asked quizzically.

"After everything Roland and I have been through already, wouldn't it be hilarious if we were the first ones there?"

Roland glared. "I wouldn't be surprised if everyone else in our orientation is already done."

Timbre returned the laugh. "Yeah, Sepia and I have been through a ton as well. Ursa, getting hopelessly lost, watched somebody kill a King Taijitu with a playing card, helping another student find a partner," she looked to Sepia and smiled, "y'know, typical stuff."

Sepia reached back into the feathered bustle on her lower back and produced four smashed chocolate bars. She passed them out with a wide smile. ' _You need energy to slaughter the nightmares of mankind!'_ She texted the group and unwrapped her chocolate bar to take a massive chunk out of the top.

"Um… thanks…" Roland looked over the chocolate bar for a moment. It seemed okay, if only a little melted. He unwrapped it and took a bite. "So what's the deal? Are you just really quiet, or…?"

' _Mute.'_ Sepia texted with one hand as she chewed noisily on the candy.

"Right, got it." Roland nodded and decided to avoid the topic.

Arty found their surroundings unusually quiet. "So… things seem… uneventful for once."

Timbre broke off a large square of chocolate, "Yeah, odd, but preferable to the alternative," she said with her mouth full.

' _Eh, I like killing things.'_ Sepia texted.

Roland was starting to like this girl, "Agreed," he gestured back to Arty, "He's scared of me, though."

' _What a coincidence! Timbre thinks I'm scary, too!'_ Sepia grinned at her idol.

"Oh no..." Arty muttered, "I think they're getting along," he whispered to Timbre.

Timbre rolled her eyes in response. "No kidding. So, how far away did you guys say it was to the temple?"

"A mile." Roland looked over a note that he made during their flight. "It'll be a steep climb, though."

"Perfect…" She rubbed her temples as she tried to figure out how she'd survive the next ten minutes with the insufferable purple cowboy. Her only hope was that the results of the initiation wouldn't lead to them sharing a dorm room.

Sepia peered up the path. She shut her eyes tightly for a moment and reopened them. ' _I don't think there are many Grimm for a while. We should be relatively safe until we get there.'_ She texted the group.

"How do you…" Roland caught himself. "Nevermind," after the strange supply of chocolate that she appeared to have on her, he wasn't going to question the girl. "So we just return to the cliffs after visiting the temple, right? Kill anything else that gets in our way and we're done?" He unconsciously went back to typing as he spoke. _And I don't have to talk to you people any longer?_ He thought, but decided it best to leave that part out.

Arty folded his arms behind his head after cramming his empty wrapper into his pocket. "Yeah, I guess so." He looked over to the two girls. Even though he knew where the conversation would go, he wanted to be polite, "So, what're you guys' stories?" he looked to the singer, "You probably don't get asked that that much."

"You bet I don't," she rubbed her arms and looked off into the trees off their path

 _I've got this!_ Sepia mouthed. She latched onto Roland's weapon and began typing. That way they would have a physical note of it instead of a text. ' _I'm from Vacuo! I directed a few indie films and acted a lot. I went to combat school, but left to pursue film. Had an accident on set, lost my voice, and now I'm here. I've taken a liking to this again, though. I remember why I wanted to do it in the first place!'_ she recounted the story she had given Timbre earlier.

Arty could only stare at the petite girl for a second before nodding slowly. "Right…" He noticed that Sepia was looking back at him expectantly, pointing to him and giving an exaggerated shrug as if to ask " _what about you?_ ".

He felt Timbre's eyes on him as the shorter girl grinned widely. He sighed and pointed to himself, "I… kinda blew a hole in a school..."

Timbre and Sepia looked at him. Timbre with shock, Sepia with joy.

"You blew up a _school?!_ " Timbre yelled accusingly.

"No no no! I blew a _hole_ in the school… completely different…" _Yep, she thinks I'm a lunatic_ , he thought to himself.

Timbre tapped her lips, "Right… so the forest fire was just… a continuation of that?" _Just get me to that temple so I can be done with this and get away from the pyromaniac and the psychopath._

' _So what about you, Kangaroo?'_ Sepia texted and looked up to Roland.

Roland grunted in annoyance, "Otter." He was hoping that he'd just get skipped over, but apparently he wasn't so lucky. "I had it rough back in Mistral. I needed to get away from my home for a while, and that's when I was forced to come here with this jerk of a Huntsman by request of Onyx Alabaster. He invited me here, but it feels like more of an order than an invitation in the end."

The group suddenly became silent. Depending on whatever made his life 'rough' back home, he may have had a reason to be a jerk in the first place. He certainly didn't seem to be the type to be open about… well, anything. 'Having it rough' could have meant any number of things.

Arty broke the stillness. He jogged up ahead, "Well, whaddya say we go get this over with? I don't want to be out here all day!"

"Alright then." Timbre pat Sepia on the shoulder and winked. She flicked her wrist, exposing her red and black glove. The other girl smiled back.

Before Arty could figure out what was going on, Timbre launched into the air over his head, her combat boot almost bashing him in the skull as Sepia dashed between him and Roland, forcing them to jump backwards.

"Race ya!" The girl in green shouted happily as she backflipped and swung through the trees.

The two guys stood there watching as the girls sped away from them. They slowly turned to look at each other. Arty slowly raised Palette, aiming it down the path. The other pair in his sights.

"What're you?"

Arty lined up the shot, "Just watch."

Two purple paintballs launched from the barrel. Paint splattered on Sepia and Timbre's backs. Both of the girls slowly came to a stop and then launched backwards. When the girls came to a stop, Arty and Roland had already taken the lead.

Arty cheered and pumped as he looked back at them. "I think we just took the lead! Maybe I _don't_ hate Gravity Dust!"

Timbre groaned. "That was a cheap trick, Painter Boy!"

"So is this!" Roland smashed a ball of ink against the paper coming off of his weapon. He whipped it forward, and the ink at the end formed a spike that dug into the ground a few yards ahead. "See ya!" He latched onto Arty's backpack strap and sent them rocketing forward, and then let go once they passed the ink spike. The added momentum served to give them an even farther lead.

Sepia took off after them while using a very specific finger to communicate her frustration.

Even though she was annoyed by the Gravity Dust trick, Timbre beamed with joy as she swung through the trees to catch up with Roland and Arty. When she finally caught up to them, she swung low against the ground. Her feet could barely keep up with Arty's blinding pace. Of course, she still had a few tricks up her sleeves. "Something tells me that you're gonna lose."

His boots clapped hard against the ground as he ran, the vials in his backpack clanking loudly. "Yeah… I don't think so." He threw a white ball at the ground. A blast of air launched him in an arc, far ahead of the rest of them.

 _Well aren't you just a Dust demon?_ Timbre mused to herself as she rolled her eyes. "Just try not to blow us up! You hear me?!"

"We're… supposed to be partners…" Roland grumbled as he watched Arty run. _Oh, you've done it now…_ His mind was preoccupied with typing out his trump card, so he hadn't even noticed Sepia sprinting up behind him.

Her eyes narrowed on Roland's paint splattered hat. _That'll do._ She ran up and snatched it off his head. As soon as he whipped around to face her with fire in his eyes, she chucked it over to Timbre. ' _Sorry!'_ She signed.

Timbre barely had time to ask why there was a cowboy hat over her face before Roland tackled her mid-swing in an attempt to retrieve his precious hat.

Sepia gave a silent laugh while running after her next target, Arty.

Arty turned back to find the shorter girl running up to him. He found that he had completely underestimated how fast Sepia could move in her long skirt. In a vain attempt to escape her wrath, he tried to pick up his pace.

Sepia just waved at Arty as she kept up with him. _Yeah, you should be afraid._ She thought while peering into his eyes. She drew her guns, and the reels on her guns spun in opposite directions to release trails of film and bullets. The grips of the guns became flush with the barrels, and the reels positioned themselves over each other at the base of the rod as a single circular crossguard. The dual layer of film and bullets trailed up the rod and formed dual whips. The smile on her face would've looked innocent if she wasn't full-on sprinting with a weapon in each hand.

With a flick of the wrist, the film whips wrapped around Arty's ankles. With a quick mid-run twirl, Sepia yanked his feet out from under him. He landed face first in the dirt.

Upon tearing himself up from the ground, he looked back to see Timbre running up from behind and Roland down the trail. He was wrapped up in Timbre's wires.

"Woah… looks like I'm surrounded by dirty tricks." Timbre caught up to her teammate, taking the lead as they came to a clearing. The clearing however, was not clear. Her eyes widened as she tried to stop. The momentum wouldn't let her and she crashed into the group of people in front of her.

Sepia instinctively kicked herself off the ground to avoid whomever it was that Timbre crashed into, but this just sent her flying into the walking brick wall named Everest. _Great…_ The impact didn't seem to phase him, but it certainly sent her tumbling to the ground.

Timbre sprawled out on the ground, her head spinning.

"Oi! Watch where ya _goi_ … oh! Timbre Forté!"

"Oh no…"

Alice helped Timbre get up and off of the ground. "It's _so_ nice to run into you again… well… not _literally…_ but… you know."

"Hi, Alice." Timbre put on a forced smile.

"Thanks for leaving us tied up in the Grimm-infested woods you two." Arty called out as he came into the clearing, dropping the film bindings Sepia left on his ankles. He noticed the red headed girl, the messy boy in the green beanie, and the colossal caveman standing in the large stone structure. "Hey there. I'm Arty. So it looks like we weren't the first to get here then, eh Roland?" He looked back to his partner, who was hugging his hat closely as if to protect it from further harm.

"Well, at least we're not the only ones still out here, but we're still pretty late by the looks of it." Instead of the group of people, Roland kept his eyes trained on his precious hat. "It's okay… I'll keep you safe." He whispered quietly before plopping it back onto his head. His eyes followed Rime as she walked up behind the caveman with a translucent sapphire ball in hand. "Rime, Everest, what's up?"

"Oh, hey Timbre!" She paused. "Roland…" She held the orb to her friend. "Here big guy. I'll let you hold onto this."

"RIME GET ART-I-FACT FOR RIME AND EV-ER-EST." Everest boomed. He palmed the orb with one hand and examined it as a chimp would a leaf. "PRETTY. COLOR."

Arty winced as he imagined the crater Everest must've left when he was launched into the forest. _Those spring plates must be a lot stronger than they look._ He just hoped that another student wasn't unlucky enough to be in the way when he landed.

"Right…" Roland glanced at the guy in the green beanie for a moment. Something about him seemed off, but he couldn't place it. "Your name is Turf, right?" He then pointed to the redhead. "And you're Alice…"

Alice eyed the Faunus suspiciously. "Right. Movin' on." She walked up to the pedestals in the temple. She looked over the various multicolored artifacts for a while. "Now which one?..."

Arty tilted his head to the side. "Has she been like that the entire time you've known her?" He asked Turf.

"Oh, you mean bipolar, don't you?" Turf asked quickly while glancing over to his partner. "Yeah, she certainly has been in the hour or so we've been stuck out here together. What about him? Has he given you trouble?" He gestured to Roland.

Arty thought it over for a second. "I'd say yes, but I honestly believe I've been the bigger issue."

"Got that right…" Roland grumbled and walked over to the pedestals. "Let's just pick one already."

Arty bowed and held his arms out towards the pedestals. "Ladies first."

Timbre laughed. "Thank you. You're _such_ a gentleman." She said, trying to copy Alice's manner of speaking. She didn't notice.

Timbre walked up to the pedestals and picked up a bright emerald orb. She smiled as she looked at the shimmering light bounce off of it. She heard Arty's boots hit the rugged rock floor behind her as he stepped up to the next pedestal, also containing a green orb.

He picked it up. "Look! Twinsies." He laughed as he held it up for her to see before shoving it into his backpack. "Okay, Roland! Got our orb thingy!"

 _This guy blew up a school?_ She watched as he jogged over to Roland. _But he's so… nice_.

"Great. To the cliffs, then." Roland looked over to Alice, and noted that she took a ruby colored orb. It seemed as though each one had a counterpart, but the ruby orb sat alone. What could that have meant? _This is nothing like the initiation at Haven..._

The four pairs of students grouped up and began to discuss just how exactly they would get back. As they tried to figure out which way the cliff was, an argument broke out as there was nowhere near a general agreement on where the school was. Alice, of course, was the most vocal and adamant that she was right.

"I'm tellin' ya, we came from _that_ way!" She shouted, pointing off into the trees on the opposite side of the clearing from the ruins.

"And I'm telling _you_ that we came from _that_ way!" Turf yelled back as he pointed off to the left.

The others watched in a mixture of amusement and annoyance, ready to get on with their day.

Turf and Alice's bickering was suddenly cut short when a deep rumbling shook through the earth beneath them. The ground seemed to shift under some sort of weight. Thundering footsteps came from the direction Alice had pointed.

"Um… guys? Do any of you… know what's up?" Turf looked around. His eyes were open wide in fear as the earth continued to shake.

Rime clinged to Everest's arm for support, "Is it an earthquake?!"

Sepia closed her eyes, and opened them to reveal a look of shock and fear. ' _A very big Grimm is coming,_ ' she signed to Timbre. ' _A Minotaurus.'_

Timbre looked over to Sepia with a shock dancing in her eyes. "Sepia… this is not a time to joke about things like that."

' _I'm not.'_ Sepia signed back.

Arty held onto one of the pillars of the structure as the ground continued to shake. The remaining orbs fell to the cobblestones at their feet and began to roll around. "Guys. I can barely read lips, much less hands, so can one of you _please explain what's going on!?_ "

"Sepia said it's a Minotaurus…" Timbre muttered quietly.

"A Minotaurus!?" Alice yelled. Turf stood next to her, ready to dash into the woods.

"What is a Minotaurus?!" Arty yelled.

The trees nearby began to shake and fall. The 4-story pines at the edge of the clearing suddenly shifted to reveal what appeared to be a large painted skull with a bull's horns. Burning yellow lights in the sockets glared down at them and the white plates on its body were covered in spiky protrusions. The gargantuan bipedal black creature towered above them before releasing a ear-shattering roar that rippled violently through the surrounding trees.

They all looked up to it. Some wanted to scream, some wanted to run, but Roland stood silently next to Arty, Timbre, and Sepia. The shrill ringing of a typewriter's reel resetting itself over and over brought the students back into reality for a moment. On his weapon was a trail of paper with lines from a textbook on Grimm. The chapter that his fingers were reciting from memory detailed just what the Grimm was. "I've read a few books on the topic, but I've never seen one of these up close. Based on what I've read, I'm going to take a guess that _that_ is a Minotaurus…"


	9. V1Ch5: Freshmen

Despite the impending doom facing the entire group, Sepia decided that one of her famous wise cracks was in order. Without even looking to see what she was typing, she sent a group text to Timbre, Arty, and Roland. It simply read ' _Oh really? I thought it was an Ursa…'_ in response to Roland's previous comment.

They quickly read the texts, then put away their scrolls. _Tough crowd…_ In an attempt to raise morale, she popped her knuckles and took a step forward. This was what they trained for. This is what a Huntress did.

"No! Sepia! Not again!" Timbre yelled as they all backed away from the massive beast.

"We need to get back to the cliff!" Arty waved his arm, trying to get Sepia to step away from the monster. He knew it was a fruitless effort. Huffing in defeat, he dashed forward and aimed his gun at the beast. A Grimm like the Minotaurus wasn't just going to let them run back to the cliffs.

Sepia looked at him, confused. Her eyes darted between him and the Grimm. Sure, she was insane enough to take it on, but she didn't think Arty was too.

"You don't honestly think you can take that thing on on your own, do you?" He smirked, showing off the gap in his teeth. "Come on, we can give the others some cover to get back to the cliffs."

"Don't be stupid," Roland growled at them both. The paper and ink that he typed out contorted into a blade parallel to his arm. In his other hand, he tossed a black grenade up and down. "You two aren't going to kill that thing. As much as I hate to say it, I'm standing by you, partner."

"Right on! I knew you'd come around!" Arty gave his partner a thumbs up.

"Don't push it."

Sepia gave an even more confused look at the Faunus. He hadn't seemed like the cooperative type, but she wasn't complaining. Between Arty's Dust and Roland's versatility, they might have actually had a chance at taking the Grimm down.

Everest stepped forward to join the forming line of students. His muscles flexed and bulged out when his hands tightened around the blindingly white club in his hands. An affirmative grunt told the group that he was more than willing to fight.

The grinding and shifting of metal followed as Turf stepped up and held aloft his shovel-gone-shotgun. "Five on one? I think we can make it happen. What do you guys say?" He rocked the pump action to ready his weapon.

Rime held up a solid ice axe that she didn't have before. She juggled the axe through the air over and over while staring down the Grimm. It seemed to be confused by their gathering for an offensive. "Why not six on one? Eh big guy?" She nodded to Everest.

A haughty huff was heard as Alice stepped up next to Arty. Her blazing blue eyes pierced the Grimm. She raised a card to throw, "I can't let you lot have all the fun, now can I?" The burning red heart on the card glowed like a raging flame.

Timbre wanted to run as she looked up to the monster at the other end of the clearing. She was so close to the trees. She could run for the cliff. _No_. _I didn't run at Koruss, and I'm not running now._

Knuckles turned white when she finally made her decision. She would take this thing down with these people at her side. Her wrists clicked, and wires reached to the ground. She stepped up to the group with a determined glare leveled at the Minotaurus. "C'mon ugly. Let us prove to you we're ready to be professional Grimm killers."

Arty couldn't help but smile. All eight of them except for Rime and Everest didn't know each other, yet here they were. All eight faced with one common enemy. A very deadly common enemy, but an enemy that they could kill nonetheless.

"Well what are we waiting for?!" Roland shouted as he lobbed the grenade at the Minotaurus. Ink exploded in its face, and a clench of his fist served to make a small crack in the Grimm's mask. The ensuing roar shook the earth. This wasn't going to be easy. "I thought that was going to be at least… semi-effective…" He mumbled.

Sepia silently laughed, gave the group a nod, and shot forwards with the reels of film and bullets trailing off of her weapons. That spur of the moment decision in the hospital was the right one. Beacon was the place for her. They were going to kill this monster. Just them with the teachers watching back at the cliff. Sepia hoped they would enjoy the show.

"I'll flank him, sound good?" Turf turned to everyone. His eyes followed Sepia on her way towards the Minotaurus. He saw that her whips weren't doing too much damage on their own. "Maybe get the heavy damage dealers out to take out those legs?"

"Sounds reasonable." Rime placed a hand on Everest's arm. A white layer of frost traveled up his arm and enveloped his torso, and Rime just smiled. "We can take care of that, can't we, Everest?"

"Awesome. If we can get that thing to fall, then I can make sure it stays down!" Turf jogged away, toting his shotgun close to his chest.

" _ **YES. KILLING TIIIIIIME!"**_ Everest roared and held up his club. He plucked Rime off the ground and threw her onto his shoulders. Together, they ran to face the beast head-on.

"Okay. I _definitely_ look normal compared to all of you guys." Arty laughed. "But that's not saying much!" He dashed forward, diving in and out between the monster's legs. He raised his gun and fired Dust paintball after Dust paintball. Fire, lightning, and even rock burst around the monster's legs with each shot. With a target this big, there was no way he would accidentally start another forest fire… hopefully.

It began stomping as the students dashed around it, smashing and slashing at its ankles. A massive fist plunged into the earth, just narrowly missing Arty. Sepia darted off away from the impact zone to regroup with her partner. When it dragged its fist back through the ground, it slammed into Everest and Rime. The limb rattled when it came to an unexpected stop.

" _ **RRRAAAAAAAAAAAAAAGGGGGGGGGHHHHHHHHHHHHH!"**_ Everest slammed his club against the side of the Minotaurus' hand like a bat against a baseball, sending the arm jerking back into the air.

"We've got your back, Arty!" Rime shouted and raised her arms. Seven ice spears formed above her head and shot towards their opponent. They exploded upon contact, but left no visible damage.

Arty clenched the grip on his gun. They needed more fire power. He cycled through his paintballs and apprehensively replaced them with bright orange ones, Magma Dust, while he, Everest, and Rime ran around the skeletal hooves of the Minotaurus. It raised a foot to stomp on all three of them while they attempted to reposition.

Sepia slid to a stop next to Timbre, Roland, and Alice. She turned her head just in time to see the Minotaurus raising its hoof to crush their friends. _No!_

"You're not leavin' me out of this _that_ easy painta boy!" Alice reared her arm back, a whole hand of cards between her fingers. She could feel Timbre, Sepia and the Faunus eyeing her curiously. She'd show them. She'd prove to Timbre that they should have been partners. She held her breath and lined up the shot. Time seemed to slow down as the heavy bone-plated hoof inched closer to crushing the other three students.

The cards flew through the air. The questionable weapons looked like thrown toys up to the point they exploded into large fireballs against the left side of the Grimm's masked face. It stumbled, making jerking steps away from Arty, Everest, and Rime.

"Woah! Nice one!" Arty gave her a thumbs-up. He only got a turned-up nose in return. "Right then." He kept circling the beast as it flailed about in its attempt to stomp on the puny students. Balls of fire dotted the bone plates of the Minotaurus' pecs with every Magma Dust-charged shot from Palette.

Roland growled as he watched his peers. "Oh no, I'm not being out done by the guy who accidentally blew up part of a school and started a forest fire…" He entered the fray and leaped onto the monster's leg. Writer's Block's blade shrieked as it cut through the air in an arc above his head. Ink went splattering around the entry wound when he plunged the blade into its calf. He continued to stab and slash at its leg, joining the effort to get the thing down on their level.

Sepia zipped up towards Roland and latched onto the leg with him. Her weapons shifted back to their camera-pistol forms and the barrels dug into the black flesh and fur. _Wow, he's kinda handsome._ She thought with her eyes trained on Roland while blasting bullet after bullet into the Minotaurus' calf. _Wonder what kind of food is at that diner Timbre told us about… No, no, need to focus._ She shook off the thoughts clouding her mind. This was fighting time.

Timbre watched as the other seven slashed at the beast, but it just refused to fall down. She knew she had the perfect method to take it down. "Everyone! Stand back and get down!" Once Roland and Sepia were off and everyone else was safely away, she lept up and shot her wires forward. They pierced into the beast's leg, making it roar. She began to retract the wires, drawing her closer. She kicked up off of the ground and began to swing in circles around the Minotaurus's legs. As her body spun around it, getting closer and closer while the Minotaurus tried to bat her away. At one point, the tips of its claws nearly took off her head. She had to act fast. With one last rapid retraction, the wires tightened, bringing the Grimm's hooves together. She clipped the wires and launched back towards the ruins. Dirt flew up in the air as she rolled across the ground.

Sepia saw her idol on the ground and immediately turned away from the falling creature in order to go to her side. Picking Timbre up and dragging her away, she checked to see if her partner was still breathing. Thankfully, Timbre just seemed to have had taken a little too much g-force on her trip around the monster's legs.

"That'll help!" Turf ran along the side of the falling Minotaurus. He thrusted his hands into the air, causing the ground to shift in its shadow. Suddenly, a thick spire of rock burst out of the earth and slammed into its abdomen. Bone plates shattered to reveal its glowing red innards. The pillar shot back into the ground, allowing the Minotaurus to come crashing down. It turned to swipe at the fighter that had brought it to the ground, but as it reeled its arm back, Turf leveled his shotgun to the exposed chest. Two loud blasts rang out, blowing chunks out of the creature as Turf backed away from it.

If only Sepia could have spoken, then she'd be screaming with joy. Before she could communicate her happiness to her unconscious friend, she realized that there was still more to be done and took off running to deal some more damage. She replaced the reels of film and bullets on her guns and made a running jump onto the monster's back. The crooked spray of bullets dotted a line up the creature's spine. The beast roared in pain as the puny young student hit every kink in its bony armor.

Everest smashed his club against the ankles of the Minotaurus. " _ **EVEREST DESTROY!"**_ The bone plates finally shattered around its hooves. There was no way that it was getting up after that. Rime cheered him on and sent ice spears down into the glowing red wounds that Everest made, her laughter masked by the pained groans of the Grimm.

"Hey! Arty! Remind me not to fight the caveman!" Roland shouted as an ink grenade exploded in a new mass of paper on his arm. The paper coiled and extended, creating what seemed to be the barrel of a cannon. "Alright, let's get down to business…" A sadistic smile formed as he loaded in a few grenades into the end of the weapon. He held it up, sending a small ball of spiked ink hurdling towards the monster's head. It exploded in a black cloud on impact, shattering the already damaged plates of its mask. "I always thought that might work!" He fired off another round from his cannon.

Even though the giant Grimm was on the ground and unable to fight back, it just wouldn't die no matter how much they hacked and slashed.

Alice sat back and watched the fight continue. That's when she noticed the back of the monster's neck, where Rime and Everest had made a wound exposing the odd glowing inside the base of its head. She knew it was her chance to take it down. Decapitation. "Everyone back away!" She ran towards the fallen beast, a card drawn back in her hand. She jumped, aimed, and-

"Take this! You ugly bugga!" she yelled as she threw her card.

A small orange object flew between Alice and the Grimm just as she threw her card. Her eyes widened as she saw her ultra-sharpened card draw closer to the small glass vial. In her focused state, she watched as the bright orange paintballs slowly bounced around inside the tube. Apparently Arty had a similar idea for a decisive blow and she didn't have time to get out of the blast zone.

The monster disappeared in a huge fireball. Black smoke burst out with wisps of fire curling upwards to the sky. Chunks of rock and bone shot every which way. From the fire and smoke, Alice shot up into the air.

Roland watched the ginger sail through the air at subsonic speeds. Truly, it was a beautiful sight to behold. The small smoke trail that followed her was the icing on the cake. He walked up beside Arty. "So is that the same kind of situation that you caused at Atlas, or…?"

" _I didn't mean to do that!_ " Arty ran to where Alice was about to hit the ground, following her through the air with his eyes. He cringed as he heard Alice slam into the ground, bouncing a few times from the impact. Luckily, he didn't have to watch as he couldn't see through the dense black smoke.

Roland jogged after Arty and held him by the backpack, "No, no, just let it happen. She'll flip out you if you're the one to help her."

"Pretty… Fire…" Everest was entranced by the hypnotic glow of the flames. Atop his shoulders sat Rime, who was just smiling from ear to ear as she examined the scene. In their own unique ways, they seemed proud of their contribution to the battle.

Turf trudged up, obviously exhausted. "I'm gonna… go help Alice…" He slumped over on his way to his partner.

Sepia shouldered a dazed Timbre and helped her over to Arty and Roland. With her free hand, she gave a thumbs up to Arty. Although she couldn't say it, she was really enjoying the whole gig at Beacon. It was more lively than she'd expected, but that was the best possible outcome that she could have asked for.

Arty didn't understand why Sepia was smiling so much when he might have just killed someone. He turned to run to Alice when she suddenly slapped him across the face.

Alice held onto Turf's shoulder to stay up and glared at Arty. Though she was up and moving, she wasn't too stable on her feet. "What in tha _bloody_ hell were you thinking?!" She yelled, getting in his face as much as she could. "If my aura had been down, I would 'ave _died_! Do you even _think_ about tha people fighting next to you before you do somethin' that _reckless_?!"

Arty couldn't get a word in through her enraged tirade.

"And anotha thing, I-"

"Alice, you hair is burning..." Turf waved his hand in front of his nose to alleviate the scent of burning human hair.

Alice stopped yelling at Arty and instead started screaming as she waved her sleeves at her head repeatedly to put the small flame out. She huffed and pointed at Arty sternly. "You're payin' ta have this dress cleaned painta boy!" She reached up to feel the singed strands of hair and pouted, "An' ta 'ave my hair done…" She elbowed Turf in the side, "Come on then, Turf! Take me back ta tha cliff!" She glared at Arty before she suddenly began to stumble. Turf caught her and helped her along. She finally disappeared into the forest with her hateful gaze still intact.

"But…" Arty stammered.

"Yeah…" Rime said from Everest's shoulders, "We're gonna head back too. I just want to be _done_ with today!" She slumped over, resting her head against Everest's. The pale girl kicked a foot against the caveman's chest. "C'mon big guy! Let's go get some lunch!"

" _ **FOOOOOOOOO**_ _OOOOOOOO_ oooooooooo _ooooooooood…"_ Everest's voice trailed off as he and his pilot ran into the forest.

Roland looked over to Sepia and Timbre. Timbre wasn't looking too great, but, despite a few spots of dirt, Sepia looked better than ever. "Is she going to be alright?" He asked while slicing off the paper that connected his cannon to his typewriter.

Sepia gave a quick nod of affirmation to Roland and kept smiling at Arty. ' _Nice work!'_ She texted the group.

"Yeah… nice…" Arty mumbled half-heartedly as he looked over to where the two other pairs had walked off.

"Arty."

He looked over to see Timbre awake and beginning to try to stand on her own.

"Woah, hey. You need to not." He held out his arms, going over to help her.

She waved a hand to let him know that she would be fine. "As much as that Alice girl… bugs me, she has a point."

Arty's spirits dropped even further. He honestly felt like his weak friendship with Timbre was already crumbling.

"But…" Timbre flashed her famous smile. "You did kill the thing, didn't you?"

And with that, his spirits came shooting back up. "Yeah… I guess I did, didn't I?"

"You blew it up like Atlas Academy, more specifically." Before Arty could make a rebuttal, Roland waved the group along, "Come on. We need to get going. We have to get there so we can be rested for the opening ceremonies tonight. I look forward to seeing who we're all with." As much as it had begun to pain him to be passably nice, these words were genuine, "And I'm hungry. I just hope the cafeteria has clams…"

"Ew, gross!" Timbre laughed while Sepia helped her along.

* * *

A crowd was already gathered around the stage. The staff and upperclassmen were all eagerly awaiting for the ceremony to begin. Above it were three giant screens to display the names, photos, and team names of students. Dim lights were scattered about in the humongous room, and bright stage lights lit the massive stage that Professor Alabaster stood to one side next to a microphone stand. On the ground in the center of the stage were four circles of light created by the spotlights hidden in the rafters above.

Professor Alabaster cleared his throat, "And now for the last of this year's orientation groups. After being thrown headlong into the Emerald Forest, these twelve students had to overcome their lack of familiarity with each other, for the most part. Though there were complications along the way, they completed what most of the staff considers a test, but me, I believe that they have successfully gone through their first mission as young Huntsmen and Huntresses. At the end of their fifth hour in the forest, an unexpected obstacle interrupted their initiation. A Minotaurus Grimm, as you know, is highly dangerous and wreaks havoc wherever it treads. Right as Professor Maple and I were about to send some of the upperclassmen into the forest to help defeat the Grimm, we witnessed an amazing spectacle of comradery, resolve, and cooperation as these students banded together to take down their foe."

Alice rolled her eyes, "not exactly _everyone_ …" she sneered, looking over to Frost. From the moment they were paired together, she knew she didn't like her.

"That is why, I'm proud to introduce the first of the last three teams," Professor Alabaster held his arm out to the group of students off in the shadows to the side of the stage, "Frost Aurora, Rime Chione, Everest Hyperborean, and Zero…" he paused awkwardly upon reaching that name, as if he were about to say a last name before realizing that there was none to be said.

The four named students made their way into the spotlights, taking spaces next to their headmaster. Everest and Rime smiled as they stood next to each other. Frost and a boy in a black hoodie took the remaining spaces. Frost didn't smile and stood rigidly on the stage as she faced her classmates.

"From now on, these four shall be known as Team FREZ, led by Frost Aurora."

Frost gave a dainty wave to the crowd. Instead of flashing a big grin, a small smile curved at her lips. The other three members clapped for her as she shook their hands one by one.

Zero was apprehensive at first, but Frost gave her new partner the benefit of the doubt. All sorts of people ended up aiming to become Huntsmen. "I don't bite, Zero," she said calmly.

He let out a short 'hmph' before taking her hand and shaking it.

Professor Alabaster cleared his throat, "Shortly after landing in the forest, Everest and Rime found each other. Unlike the other students, this pair already knew each other before coming here. I was fascinated by their near-symbiotic approach to dealing with the Grimm that they faced on their way to the temple. When they had to make the decision to keep going or help other students after seeing smoke rising from far off, they went to help. The problem wasn't Grimm, but a forest fire. This moment led me to believe that these two take one of the most important aspects of being a Huntsman or Huntress to heart; that the needs of others outweigh your own."

Rime bent her head down and twirled her hair as her cheeks blushed.

"The other pair, Frost and Zero, while they weren't involved with the brawl against the Minotaurus, they were however the first pair to get their artifact and make it back to the cliffs. The speed and tactics they displayed during their mission will aid them in their future careers greatly as a Huntsman always gets the job done swiftly and efficiently." He began to clap his hands, "I look forward to seeing you develop your skills during your time here at Beacon Academy and wish you the best of luck."

The rest of the students in the hall clapped as Team FREZ stepped down off of the stage.

"Now for our second team. Alice Crims, Navy Bulava, Turf Fescue, and Ebon Carbonado, please come up."

Arty recognized Ebon and Navy from his tour group. Knowing that Alice and Turf were partners, he couldn't help but feel sorry for Ebon knowing how antagonistic Navy had acted during the tour.

Seeing the other pair next to her and Turf, Alice was happy to see that she had teammates that were at least _cleaner_ than her partner.

"Please help me welcome Team ANTE, led by Ms. Alice Crims."

Alice gasped in seemingly mock surprise before her cheeky smirk reappeared across her lips. "Well of _course_." Unlike Frost, Alice made a huge show of her being named leader. She blew kisses, curtsied, and gave them all a ginormous, cat-like grin.

After what seemed like an eternity of showing off, Alabaster finally took the show back from Alice. "While there was some bickering and disagreement among these pairs, when faced with danger, they were able to put aside differences in order to focus on the task at hand. I watched as Grimm fell from the use of knives, pistols, clubs, a shovel, skiis, and even playing cards." He allowed himself a quick bit of laughter before carrying on, "I swear, every year, prospective students come up with more and more interesting weapons. Turf and Alice were there to aid in the fight against the Minotaurs as well, doing their part to take down the monster. I'm anxious to see what the four of you do within the next four years and hope you go very far, after you learn to get along a bit better, of course." He began clapping, nearly having to shoo Alice off the stage in order for the last of the orientation group to take their place.

As she walked past the remaining four students, Alice couldn't help but sneer at Arty. "Well, this kinda kills the surprise, don't it?" She rolled her eyes, "can't wait ta hear what he has ta say about _you_ nutters."

Arty's brow furrowed as he watched her swagger her way into the crowd with her new posse at her heels. He leaned over towards Roland "is it just me, or did her ego inflate by about forty times just from being on that stage?"

"Spotlights tend to have that effect on vain, stuck-up, self-indulgent, pompous, megalomaniacs," Roland recited half of his insult dictionary with his eyes still locked onto Alice, "I think that about covers it."

"No, wait, hold on," Arty grinned.

Timbre and Sepia stood a few feet behind the two boys as they continued adding words to their new mocking moniker for the girl in red, "Oh man…" Timbre was rubbing her hands together nervously, "This is so nerve-wracking…"

' _Aren't you used to being on stage…?'_ Sepia looked up at Timbre. She looked back at the audience and then back to Timbre, ' _This was your job.'_ She put a lot more gusto into the last motion for the word ' _job_ '.

"I know, but that was as a _singer_ … this is… pretty different, don't you think?"

The room fell silent as the old man cleared his throat again, "And for the last team of new students for this school year," he began as the remaining four students took to the stage, their pictures and names flashing on the screens overhead, "We have Arty Umber, Roland Wells, Timbre Forté, and Sepia Hughes. I present Team ARTS."

Arty, Sepia, and Timbre beamed while Roland stood perfectly still.

"Led by…" he paused, "Arty Umber,"

Timbre and Sepia seemed overjoyed by the team placements. Arty went numb.

"I… _I'm_ a leader?..." he muttered in amazement as the two girls patted him on the back. The guy that blew a hole in the military academy of one of the strongest powers of Remnant. The guy that let his friends down by getting kicked out of school. The guy that had to go halfway across the planet to get Huntsman training. Here he was, the leader of his team. Arty couldn't help but smile.

The white knuckled fists that Roland had seemed to suggest that he was less than pleased with the selection of their leader. "We need to have a talk after this…" He glowered at his leader.

"Are you bloody _kiddin' me?!_ " They heard the posh accented girl scream from the crowd. "He almost _killed_ me!"

Ignoring Alice's comment, Alabaster continued, "Unlike ANTE and FREZ, all of the newly formed Team ARTS was present during the fight with the Minotaurus. At first, I believed their actions were brash and reckless,"

"They _were_!" Alice yelled out again.

"But their skill with not only their own weapons, but with their abilities to assess any situation put before them is something that we've never seen in Beacon. Timbre and Sepia, when they ran into a student without a partner, suggested that he come along until they could find him a partner rather than allowing him to walk off on his own. Arty and Roland, after a forest fire had started as a result of their fighting a pack of Beowolves, stayed put until they could find a way to put out the blaze as to not burn down the Emerald Forest. This team exemplified quick wit and situational awareness, two aspects every Huntsman and Huntress should have. The creativity they possess outside of combat has bled into their training, and it shows, and I'm eager to see how this continues in the future, and what they'll achieve by doing so." He allowed the applause to die down as Team ARTS left the stage. "I've seen some impressive things today. While all of you could use some more practice, well, that's what you're here for, right? Thank you all for being here. Good luck on your classes, now go on and get something to eat. You all have a big day to prepare for." As the entirety of the student population applauded, Onyx Alabaster descended the stage and disappeared out of the main door.

Hustling and bustling to get out of the crowded auditorium, the students began spilling out into the courtyard in groups of four. Finding solace in a little bit of peace and quiet, Team ARTS retreated to the base of the statue in the center of the Beacon courtyard. They had a perfect view off of the cliff and down to the city of Vale. Airships buzzed around the lake, ferrying students from Beacon to Vale as they went to celebrate the beginning of a new school year.

"You're the leader, huh?" Roland finally broke the contented silence.

Arty, not taking his eyes off of the landscape bathed in the setting sun's light, nodded, "Yeah… I guess so…"

"Well, I'm glad it was you and not me," Timbre kicked her legs back and forth against the base of the statue, "I probably would've had a panic attack if I was given that much responsibility all at once. I think you'll do fine, Arty."

' _I'm with you, T. I wouldn't be able to communicate much. I'd freak out too!'_ Sepia hopped up next to her partner nudged her arm. Her hands contorted into a few more signs, ' _I've also got my money on Roland in the fight that's about to happen.'_

"Sepia, stop it!" she snapped quickly, preventing her from egging them on.

Roland shifted his jaw as he thought about what to say, "You know, I really want to punch you over this, Burne…" but his mother would have frowned on that. She would have told him to just trust that things would go at least semi-okay. He finally huffed, "Excuse me, _Arty_. Just don't go screwing this up. I'll beat the snot out of you if we all go down because of you."

"Thanks for the vote of confidence, Roland." Arty said as he let his gaze sink to the cobblestones at his feet. "To be completely honest with you guys, I'm not exactly sure what it _means_ to be a team leader. I wasn't even supposed to be one."

"Well now you are now, so act like it," Roland gave a less than light punch to Arty's arm, "Doesn't matter what you were or what you're going to be. It just matters what you are now." He glanced ahead to one of the arriving airships, "You guys want to head down to Vale to… you know, celebrate?"

Timbre smiled and clapped her hands together, "Sounds good! I know the perfect place!" She suddenly remembered something, "Oh yeah! I was going to ask Turf if he'd want to come, too!" She jumped up and dashed towards the hall, where some of the straggling students were still flooding out into the courtyard.

Luckily, Timbre noticed the red, black, and white of Alice's dress. As she drew closer, she noticed the bright green of Turf's beanie sticking up above the crowd.

"Hey! Alice! Turf!"

Team ANTE turned to face her.

"Timbre Forté!" Alice said with a big grin, "what brings you over here without your…" she peeked over Timbre's shoulder, "team?"

"Um, well," she stammered. Alice's demeanor was still very uncomfortable to deal with, "When Sepia and I ran into Turf in the Emerald Forest, we talked about how we should celebrate team formation with a dinner out in the city. I know a great cafe down there and I thought that maybe you guys would like to jo-"

"As much as I'd love to dine with you, Timbre, I'll have to decline your offer," Alice said quickly and forcefully.

"Come on, Alice. Timbre and Sepia are pretty fun to be around, and Arty and Roland don't seem too bad either. We could all have a pretty good time," Turf piped up and gestured over to the airships.

"I said, _no_." Alice put a hand defiantly on her hip, "and that's my final ansa. _Nobody_ on Team ANTE's going down with you four ta Vale."

"What? Why?! We have nothing going on tonight, come on." Turf began walking towards Timbre to head down to the city with Team ARTS, "Whatever, I'll just meet up with you guys later. I already said that I would go back in the Emerald Forest."

Navy latched onto Turf's forearm.

"What the?" Turf looked back at the boy in blue camouflage. "Hey, bud, what're you doing?!"

"She said, no." He gave a quick glance to Alice, "She's the leader now. What she says, goes."

Timbre didn't understand the scene unfolding before her. She'd never met Navy before, but ever since she saw him on the stage, she knew there was something off about him, and his over-obedient and cold behavior was off-putting.

"Hey, Alice," Ebon tapped her on the shoulder with a mittened hand. "Why are you so against Turf going? A celebratory dinner doesn't sound too bad…"

Roland jogged up behind Timbre, "Hey, what's taking so long? We're starving over here, and you're the only one who knows where we're going." He glanced over at the scene unfolding, then to Navy's hands on Turf's shoulders, "You guys coming too, or…?"

Alice whipped her head around to face Ebon, "because nobody on a team under _my_ leadership is going to sit at the same table as a dirty _Faunus_!"

Timbre was going to say something, but didn't get a chance to before Roland shoved her aside.

"Wanna run that by me one more time?!" Roland shouted in Alice's face.

The whole situation had gone from awkward to hostile in a matter of seconds.

Alice raised an eyebrow at Roland. Timbre could've sworn she saw a smirk cross Alice's lips. "Oh. I guess you heard that, then?" She giggled, "Oops. But I stand by what I said. _My_ team doesn't need ta be around people like _you_. They might catch some of your… violent tendencies. Or maybe your _beastly_ behavior."

"Oh boy…" Roland took a deep breath. _Don't beat up another student. Don't beat up another student._ "Alice… I'd be happy to demonstrate some of those violent tendencies and beastly behavior on you." He raised a fist to begin the long lesson that he was going to teach Alice.

"Woah! Woah! Let's just chill out. It's okay. We'll just walk our own ways and get on with the night. Everyone is tired." Turf held up his hands, "We don't need to break out in a fight with so many people around. Team ANTE will stay here. It's fine."

Timbre saw the disappointment in Turf's expression. While prejudice against Faunus was more common than some would've liked, she bet he wouldn't have thought he'd have someone like that on his team in a million years, much less lead it. "Turf, are you su-"

"I don't want this to get out of hand." Turf eyed Roland's raised fist, "Just get him out of here before we all get in major trouble. Alice said that we aren't going to eat with you guys, and that's her decision." He looked back at Ebon and Navy, then to Alice. He knew that she was less than kind, but he thought that Faunus-hate was gone for the most part, but in Remnant, anything could happen.

Timbre wanted to do something to diffuse the situation and still let the more pleasant half of Team ANTE eat with them, but she didn't think that she could calm Roland down no matter how hard she tried. She was defeated. She nodded solemnly, "Okay, Turf," she waved one hand to him while latching onto Roland's arm with the other, "see you around, then?"

"Yeah… see you around…" Turf turned to the rest of his team.

As Timbre dragged him away, Roland finally turned and walked beside her, "You should've just let me take a swing at her. I knew she was mean, but I didn't think that she was… that. I thought that kind of thinking went out the window after Menagerie was given to Faunus."

Throughout her tours as a singer, Timbre had met plenty of people, all with different backgrounds and viewpoints on the world. "You'd be surprised, Roland… and you just got a prime example."

"Believe me, I had plenty of examples back in Mistral. I just thought that things were different in Vale. You know, since you guys are known for being inclusive to us." Roland's tail slumped low to the ground, "Come on, let's just get a move on to the restaurant."

"Right…" Timbre walked silently as Roland fumed beside her. They quickly met up with Arty and Sepia at the airship station at the end of the cliff.

* * *

"Like I said, you guys are going to _love_ this place!" Timbre said excitedly as they walked down the well-lit and lively streets of downtown Vale. Despite it now being dark, the city's nightlife had just begun. She decided to push the events with Alice to the back of her mind. She was going to help make her team happy and forget about the negatives and doubts brought on by the day they had. They were a team now, and she was going to play her part.

Arty gazed at the buildings in wonder. Originally, he had only seen Vale's architecture and layout from the air, but now that he was _in_ it, all of the small quality detail began to appear. The shop windows, the lights, even the holographic street lights were all completely different than his home. "Woah… there's so much… color."

Timbre giggled, "You act like you've never seen color before."

"Not in a town really… The most color I saw in Atlas was in my mom's flower shop or the museum. That's nothing compared to all this."

"It's a lot like my home in Mistral. Dad designed the estate so that it had the same kind of architecture that you typically see in Vale." Roland peered around, taking in the bright beams of color that dotted everything around them, "Still, it's really cool to see it everywhere. Beautiful, even."

Sepia walked between Roland and Timbre. She sent a message out to the group, ' _So, food, or are we just going to keep gawking at the sights? I could use some coffee. Maybe a burger, or some ice cream.'_

 _Did she just?..._ Timbre shook her head, "Yeah, you're gonna fit in just fine around here, Sepia."

' _Cool, but I still want food. Come on!'_ Sepia messaged out again.

"I'm with her, where is that place you were talking about, Timbre?" Roland looked around for a sign or some kind of holographic display. The motto in Vale seemed to be 'Go big or go home.'

"Right here," she said as she stopped in front of a simple brick building. The archways made a supported half-indoor, half-outdoor courtyard where a spread of tables and chairs were organized underneath the roof. The front door lead straight to the counter where a barista was ready to take quick-service orders. Despite the time, it seemed to be a pretty popular spot.

"Um… Timbre?" Arty began.

"What is it, Arty?"

"No offense, but this is a bit more… hole-in-the-wall than I was expecting."

Timbre rolled her eyes, "Okay, first thing you guys need to learn about me is that just because I'm famous, it doesn't mean I don't enjoy the smaller things in life. Not everything is about fine dining and extravagance for a celebrity."

Roland peeked inside, "So do we get a discount with you around, or…?"

' _Student discount. It's like ten-percent off if it's just you, and twenty-five-percent off if you're with your entire team.'_ Sepia sent out a message, then turned to Timbre.

"Yeah, what she said… er… typed…" She winced and looked apologetically to Sepia, who just shrugged it off.

Team ARTS, a name that all of them thought felt fitting, proudly announced their status to the attending barista, got their food and coffee with a lovely twenty-five percent discount, and picked a table near the sidewalk. After a few people recognized her, the team was slowed down as Timbre was dragged off to take pictures and sign autographs. After that was said and done, they all began taking their seats, Sepia made sure to not stray too far from Roland, and quickly claimed the chair to his right.

"Haven't had to do that in a while!" Timbre laughed and took a bite of her crepe.

Timbre and Sepia laughed, or at least Timbre did, and signed back and forth with some awkward interjections from Roland and Arty. Something was becoming blatantly obvious to the singer.

"Are… are you two okay?" She asked the two guys through a mouthful of food, "You seem kinda down." She suddenly nudged the two partners from her place at the table, "C'mon! Cheer up! The day is done, we killed a huge Grimm, you got on a team that… doesn't seem to absolutely hate each other yet! You should be happy!"

"I am! I am." Arty said defensively. "Just… super."

Timbre wasn't convinced, but decided to turn to Roland for his answer.

"No." Roland took a sip from a coffee cup with a massive swirl of whipped cream on top. No one expected him to be the one to order a mocha with about five extra things tacked onto it.

Timbre set down her fork and sat back in her chair, her arms crossed. "You guys… whether you like it or not, we're stuck together for the next four years… don't forget that."

Arty looked glumly down at his plate, completely uninterested with his grilled cheese sandwich. With a sigh, he leaned down and unzipped his bag.

The rest of Team ARTS watched as Arty dropped a crinkled and folded piece of paper in the center of the table. It was obvious he had carried it with him for a while from the wearing and slight tears around the folds. Sepia, Timbre, and Roland looked at him, waiting for an explanation.

"You guys… aren't my first team." He said glumly, purposely avoiding eye contact with them.

In the forest, Timbre couldn't help but hold the fact that Arty accidentally blew up part of Atlas Academy against him. She knew he wasn't a bad guy, but that didn't mean it never happened. Had she known that Atlas Academy did their team placements earlier than Beacon, she would've figured that Arty had a former team assignment. She gingerly lifted the paper and unfolded it, careful not to be too forceful as to not tear the page.

Student Name: Umber, Burne

Team Assignment: Team MLBC (Malbec)

Midas Ankara

Ledning Coyle

Burne Umber

Curie Geiger

Timbre could barely make out the original text through the dark red "ANNULLED" across the paper.

"That sucks." Roland leaned back in his seat and crossed his arms.

Sepia typed out a message, ' _I'm sorry that happened to you. Did you know those three people personally, or…?'_

"Midas and Curie have been my friends my entire life. Ledning's Midas's cousin. They acted as if everything was fine after… my screw up… but I still feel like they resent me for it."

Roland raised an eyebrow. Everyone seemed focused on Arty's issue, so maybe he could get them frustrated enough to leave him out of it completely, "Probably do. I would too."

Timbre's mouth fell open in shock. Arty looked at his partner in sudden disbelief.

"Roland?!" Timbre said as she handed the paper back to their leader, not breaking her eye contact with the Faunus across the table from her. "What the heck?"

"Wouldn't you resent the guy? I mean, imagine how much of a pain it was to find a replacement." Roland jumped as he felt an elbow get driven into his side. He looked to his right to see Sepia glaring at him. He rolled his eyes, "Look, I'm just saying that it makes sense that he feels like they hate him for it. They very well could."

Arty was feeling upset now. Yeah, he felt like his friends resented what he did, but that didn't mean it was the absolute truth. His emotions told him one thing, his reasoning another, and Roland was bashing him for that. "Well what about you, huh? Surely even you had some friends back home that're going to Haven. How do you think they felt when you up and left for Vale, huh?" He was fuming, but he wasn't going to let things get too out of hand. He didn't want his new team to fall apart as quickly as his first one did.

"They felt upset that I was leaving, but they understood why. We had a going away party for me. It was nice." Roland kept sipping as his coffee. He didn't like where this line of questioning was heading, but at least it was staying on the subject of his friends. Keeping it that way would help him continue to avoid the subject of his past. "You know, I even asked them if they would be fine without me, and they told me to do what I needed to. We parted ways with hugs and smiles instead of tears and an exploded school."

"Okay," Arty snatched up the paper, shoved it into his bag, and stood up, "I'm not dealing with this right now." He went to leave, but stopped, "You know, I actually thought we were getting along pretty well. You know, after you saved my life after I bought you time to type out a weapon, which, may I remind you, is the reason I got cornered in the first place. I came back to make sure you weren't _dead_ when I saw those Beowolves coming for you. Now here you are bashing me for my mistakes. I know what I did. I know I screwed up. But I'm sure you've screwed up too, and you know what?"

Roland kept his eyes level with his new team leader's as Timbre and Sepia sat by in stunned silence.

"I barely know you, but I wouldn't hold those against you." Arty stormed out of the cafe and into the lit street.

 _You're right, I did screw up, but my screw up got her killed._ Roland clenched his fists. Even though Arty was out of earshot, he still said what he wanted to, "No, I actually think though you would. I know you'd hold my screw up against me, partner." Even if it Arty wasn't the type to hold things over someone's head, Roland, with his twisted view of what had brought him to Beacon, believed that anyone would.

Timbre stood up and, not caring about drawing attention to herself, called after the offended painter, "Arty! Wait!" She snapped her attention back to Roland. "What is _wrong_ with you?!" Without giving him time to respond, she began to head to the exit.

Roland stood up and caught Timbre by the shoulder, "Look, I'll take care of this, okay?"

"I think you've done enough, Roland…"

"Yeah, that's why I should tell him what I was doing." Roland pushed past her, "Don't ask about it. Leave it alone. I'll handle my partner."

Timbre eyed him warily before sitting back down. "Fine. But if I hear paintballs and typing, I'll be out there to stop you two from killing each other."

As Roland left, Sepia let out the breath that she had been holding. She held up her hands, ' _Why are boys so stupid?'_

* * *

"Hey!" Roland sprinted to catch up with Arty before he boarded an airship. He grabbed his leader by the backpack strap and yanked him back. Once he had Arty off of the entrance ramp, he let go. "Can we talk about what just happened?"

Arty didn't even turn to face his partner, "Please, you're the last person I want to talk to right now. Let me enjoy my last night of solace before I have to share a dorm room with you for the next four years."

"Arty, I started all of that to keep you guys from prying into me. Timbre had her sights on both of us, and I knew that you were okay with talking about yourself to some degree." Roland panted to catch his breath.

"So you use the mistake I already feel terrible for to make them forget about you? Correct me if I'm wrong, but it sounds like it was your _choice_ to come here." Arty turned to Roland and pointed to himself. " _I_ didn't have a choice because of what I did. Do you know what General Léon did while I was knocked out for _half a day_ after the explosion?"

Roland went to ask but was cut off.

"She told the headmasters of the other three schools not to let me in. Not only did she not want me going to Atlas, she didn't want me going to Shade, Haven, or Beacon either. She believes I'm a danger to everyone around me because I'm so reckless with Dust… She didn't want me to develop into a Huntsmen. If I can cause that much damage as a novice, what could I do when I'm fully trained…?" Arty sighed, "The only reason I'm here is because Alabaster looked beyond that. He believed that one fluke shouldn't screw up your whole life, your hopes and dreams. It really didn't help you sitting there and telling me that _more_ people close to me resent me for that fluke."

"So you're who she was talking about…?" Roland felt the weight of what he made Arty relive sink down in his chest.

Arty shook his head impatiently, "What are you talking about, Roland?"

"I… know the headmistress at Haven Academy. I overheard her talking to someone in her office, and she said something about how she would be sure to bar 'that little menace' from ever gaining entry into her academy…" Roland pat his leg as he thought on what to say, "Look, I never connected the dots. I didn't think about what I was saying too much. I only wanted to avoid talking about my past, and I did that in a crappy way. I'm sorry for that much."

"Yeah… you should be. You're not the only one with a past they don't want to talk about in great detail. I showed you and Timbre _and_ Sepia that paper because you're my team now. I'm team leader. I thought I should be open about what brought me here. If you don't want to talk about yourself, that's fine by me, but what you said back there… that wasn't cool."

"I know, I was already really pissed off anyway. I thought that I should be leader, and that really got to me. How I just acted proved that it's best that I'm not. Timbre would panic, Sepia can't communicate easily, and it looks like I still let my emotions get the best of me. Then Alice went and said... well, some unsavory things about Faunus. I stayed pissed over you being leader, then Alice's... well, blatant racism didn't help. Then I got on the defensive when we started talking about personal stuff, and..." Roland took a slow breath to clear his head, "Look, I didn't mean to hurt your feelings that bad. I was being stupid and selfish. Do I need to keep apologizing for an hour, or can we just move past this? I was way out of line. Boom, that's it."

Arty was hesitant, but he knew things needed to get better between them. If he kept resenting Roland like this, the next four years were going to be miserable. He held out his hand. "Fine. Apology accepted. Just forgive me if I'm a bit hesitant to help you the next time you're getting charged down by a pack of Beowolves."

"To be fair, I could have handled them myself. I just wanted to try out a little cooperation instead of being a lone wolf. I know I said to stay out of my way, but I remembered that a wise woman always told me to lean on your team," Roland took Arty's hand and gave a hearty shake. He slowly grinned, "The spear was great, but I thought a hook-blade would suit me better."


	10. V1Ch6: First Day Jitters

"This is _not_ going to work…" Timbre said as she struggled to get between a pile of books and a painting easel to the bed she had claimed before the team had moved all of their stuff in. Their dorm room was a mess of various art supplies, records, filming equipment, and paper along with the rest of their textbooks and luggage.

"Yeah…" Arty was pinned the side of a bed by a group of matching green suitcases. The one planted on his foot felt like it was full of bricks, but logic told him that it had a better chance of being a soundboard or some instrument that he'd never heard of. He finally managed to jerk his foot out. "I think we have too much stuff."

"Why don't you take it all then? You'll burn it in no time," Roland jeered with his feet propped up on the foot of the bed that he had claimed the night before. He had his nose stuck in a book thicker than most people's heads, except maybe Everest's. Several pages were churned through every second.

Arty held up Palette and aimed it at his partner. A violet paintball glowed in the chamber. He wasn't going to allow Roland's behavior to escalate again. "With pleasure. I'll start with the dictionary you're reading there."

Timbre pushed the barrel of the paintball gun down. "Stop it you two. We're a team now," she looked to Roland, "and that means _no fighting_. Got it?" She leaned against the wall and crossed her arms. "I don't want to upset Gavin any further just by being associated with you two."

"Oh, right, because you're all smiles and rainbows." Roland scoffed. "Because the girl who gets up on stage and sings about how she's so _sad_ and _angsty_ is totally grounds for good team dynamic. Throw an incompetent leader and a mute into the mix, and that's a recipe for a team that's just fine and dandy." As rude as he was being, he wasn't going to allow himself to bash Arty where it actually hurt again. Anything else was free game. "By the way, it's also a thesaurus, dimwit."

Sepia glared over at the Faunus from behind one of her bucket-shaped stage lights. Cords fell over her shoulders when one of the lights popped off of its stand and clattered to the ground. Her nose wrinkled while she picked it up.

"Oh, so _I'm_ the angsty one?" She rolled her eyes. "Says the guy that likes to be all silent and brooding. You only speak to either say something mean or to… well, you really don't say much else, do you? You're such a jerk that you'll kick Arty while he's down just so _you_ don't have to talk about yourself! Please, enlighten us on why such an antisocial jerk would want to go to a school like this!"

"Hey… guys?-" Arty tried to cut in.

Roland shot up from his bed and threw his dictionary/thesaurus against his sheets. "How about you mind your own business, huh?! I earned my place here. That's all you need to know!" He kicked one of Timbre's suitcases across the dorm. "I don't have to explain anything to you. I've honed my skills, but then we have someone like _you_ who just barges in here for no reason!"

Timbre leapt through the mess. The next thing Roland knew, he was being held against the wall by his collar with one hand while the barrel of the other hand's glove was only a few inches away from his face. Her eyes burned with fury, her grip tightening at his neck. "I did not just _barge_ in." She slammed him back against the wall again. "I _earned_ my place here just like you, so don't you _dare_ sit here and lecture me."

"And you have no idea what I've gone through to get here, so back off." The impact stung and certainly left at least a small dent in the wall. Roland raised a hand to cause a flurry of papers to come rushing up between him and Timbre, pushing her off of him. "You think you're important, huh? Surely you don't think that your celebrity status carries over, do you? I mean, come on, who the hell even listens to your crappy music anyway?"

The sound of a metal bar being snapped rang across the room. All eyes fell on Sepia, who still had a stage light clenched between her fists. It was broken, one end in each hand. Malice flashed in her shining golden eyes.

They sat staring at her for a second before somebody appeared in the open room door.

"Will you four… er… you three stop with all the _yelling_?" Team ARTS turned to find a pale girl with long grey hair and piercing grey eyes glaring at them from the hall. "My team's having enough trouble getting settled in next door as it is without you hitting the walls and arguing in here. If you're going to kill each other, can you at least do it quietly? Thank you."

"Yeah… sure thing… Frost, right?" Timbre murmured with her gaze cast down at her feet.

Frost nodded and turned to go back to Team FREZ's room next door, but ran right into someone coming out of the room across the hall from Team ARTS.

"Hey!" Alice looked up to her nemesis, "Watch where you're goin'!"

Frost rubbed her temples. "Please… don't start with me today, Crims."

"I was just going to tell Timbre Forté and these idiots to please keep it down, but I see you got here first," Alice waved a hand. "So if you excuse me," she turned and slammed Team ANTE's door behind her.

Frost shook her head dismissively before returning to Team FREZ's room, leaving all four members of Team ARTS sat stunned.

"Well…" Arty began as he finished setting up his drawing table next to his bed, "at least we're not the only dysfunctional team around here."

Roland kept his eyes on Timbre. Though they had both been silenced for the moment, he didn't believe that the peace would last but a few more seconds. Something still itched in his brain. Even after that little spat between him and Timbre, he still felt just as frustrated. It was the room. It wasn't tidy.

"You know what? I'm pretty fed up with being extra pissed off with the room like this." He held up a hand to his mountains of books and focused. They seemed to vibrate for a moment before slowly sliding a few at a time under his bed. In a few moments, all of his books were stacked away neatly. It took up all of the empty space between the floor and the box spring, but it would seem that all of them together all fit perfectly under the bed, though without any more space for any extra books.

He looked over to his teammates, "That help a little?"

Timbre was still fuming. "Yeah. Sure." She snapped as she began moving her stacks of records and CD's into a bookshelf near her bed, which was to the right of the window. Despite Roland's sudden compliance, she refused to just forget about what he had said to her.

"Hey! I can see the floor!" Arty said from his bed as he tapped his boot against the carpet. At this point, he was just trying to defuse the tension in the room.

Sepia locked eyes with Roland as she slowly used thumbtacks to pin up a Timbre Forté poster directly above her bed. In her little corner, she could spend her nights staring up at her idol like she always did. What made it better was the fact that the _real_ Timbre would be on the other side of the window from her. Still, she kept her eyes on Roland's. This was her own way of defending Timbre.

A look of disturbed confusion spread across their leader's face as he looked at the flashy poster of Timbre. "Are uh… are you gonna be okay with this?" He asked Timbre, not taking his eyes off of Sepia's new ceiling decoration.

She was rubbing her temples. "I'm just… I'm just going to _pretend_ I have a normal life…" She looked back over to the aggravating otter Faunus, who was busy reassembling his reading material. "And pretend like my entire team is actually cooperative."

Arty nodded solemnly. "Right…" He suddenly jumped up and clapped his hands together. "Well, now that the room's pretty much put together, I think I'm going to head down and get some lunch."

"Ooh! Nice setup guys! Really living up to your team name, too!" A loud and cheerful voice called from the door. Xannie Rhea stood with her sister, Lurida, beside her. "You guys definitely put all your stuff together a lot quicker than Team GLXY did last year when _we_ first met!" She grinned at the girl in the black and purple skinsuit. "Isn't that right, sis?"

"We did have Yamuna ripping up our stuff, though…" Lurida yawned tapping her foot impatiently next to her sister. "Are we actually going to get food, or are we going to keep wasting more time?" She asked with her arms crossed. She began walking down the hall, mumbling something about coffee to herself.

"Yeah, hold up." The energetic blonde turned back to Team ARTS. "C'mon you guys. You can walk down with us! Celebrate getting along and having your room setup!"

Roland was about to object when Timbre suddenly cut in.

"We'd love to! Thanks!" She jumped up, grabbing Arty and Sepia by the arms. She seemed to want to get away from Roland as quickly as possible.

Just to spite Timbre, Roland jogged down the hall to catch up with the group. "Hey, Xannie, could you tell us about the kind of music you're into?" He asked. He thought he had an idea answer, but to have her aid in the petty war that Timbre kept going.

Xannie put a finger to her cheek and thought for a second.

Timbre glared at Roland.

"Um… mainly pop, techno, a good bit of dubstep. You know, club music." A genuine smile was still plastered across her face while she rattled off a few examples.

"That's really nice! I'm into classical mostly, but I shake things up a bit with some dubstep every now and then. You'll have to let me come by and see your music library sometime." Roland nudged the blonde's arm. "That rock crap that's been put out in recent years kills me."

Timbre's eyes flashed with anger. How dare he talk down about her passion. How _dare_ he insult the entire genre her music fell into. She wouldn't let this slide. "Yeah. That'd be cool! I can show you my collection, too. I have vinyls from all over Remnant!"

"Awesome, then I guess we won't be limited to just _your_ music." Roland rolled his eyes at her. He wasn't backing down.

As the two began to bicker again, Arty tried to calm them down, but he ended up just getting booted out of the argument.

With a discontented sigh, the purple Rhea sister stopped and turned around. "Will you two just stop?!"

Roland and Timbre froze and stared at Lurida.

"We could hear you yelling at each other all the way from Team GLXY's room… on the _other end of the dorm building from you_. The only reason we stopped by was to tell you all to shut up." She shot a look to her sister. "I've seen people go on bickering like this before. Heck, I was one of them. It does not end well, and you've only been a team for about twelve hours." Lurida spat at the two. "Would you two just chill out and move on? You won't survive here if you can't." She turned back around and kept on her way with her sister close behind. "It's too early for this crap… I haven't even had my third cup of coffee yet… I sleep in a few hours and this is what I get..."

A few seconds passed before anyone said a word. Finally, Roland broke the silence, "Um… Lurida, it's like… noon…"

Xannie skipped ahead. "She needs a lot of caffeine to even keep her eyes open!"

As Team ARTS followed the Rhea sisters, Sepia looked to her feuding teammates and wagged a finger at them.

"Seriously guys. Can we not piss off the second years?..." Arty whispered. "If I'm going to get expelled from another school, I'd like to last at _least_ a semester before that happens."

"Right, I'll just go on when they're not around." Roland whispered back.

Sepia elbowed him in the ribs surprisingly hard for a woman of her stature.

He rubbed his side and groaned. "Fine, fine… play nice, got it…"

* * *

Team ARTS walked with Xannie and Lurida around the bustling food hall. All of the students milled around and talked as they ate.

Arty held his tray as he scanned the room for a place to sit. "So… anybody see any actual open space in here?..."

"Yo! Xannie! Lurida!"

"Gavin!" Xannie hurried her way over to her team leader, careful not to spill the contents of her tray. "Thanks for saving seats for us! We were scared we'd have to take our food outside."

"Yeah. When I heard you guys invite Team ARTS over here, I decided to go ahead and grab seats for all of us." Gavin explained as he took a sip of soda.

"Glad we got here when we did!" Yamuna shoved a whole half of a double-decker ham sandwich into her mouth. She hardly seemed to chew before she swallowed.

Sepia seemed to instinctively sit across from Xannie. Maybe it was the mutual positivity between them. ' _I'm glad to hang out with you again. I was in your tour group, remember?'_ She presented to Xannie on her scroll.

"Yeah! You were definitely the most talka… tive… Oh god, I'm sorry. I didn't mean it like that…"

Sepia silently laughed and waved her off. ' _It's fine!'_ She typed. ' _I've only been mute for a little while, and I don't get offended easily.'_

Roland sat across from Yamuna, seemingly drawn to the other Faunus. "Hey. I think we met earlier. I'm Roland."

"Right! You're the guy that Gavin doesn't…" She thought about her words before speaking. "That Gavin doesn't… care for…" she winced when she realized she didn't exactly pick much better wording. She looked to Gavin to give him a silent apology.

"I don't dislike the guy!" Gavin jumped in and laughed. "Don't take it the wrong way! I just want to see the new teams cooperate, and your attitude could be… better."

Roland grumbled and sank in his seat.

Lurida looked to Timbre and Arty. "How do you two feel about your new team? Do you think that you'll ever… you know… get along?"

Arty took a quick glance over to Roland. "Uhhhhhh…"

Timbre butted in. "We'll manage."

Lurida rolled her eyes. "I think the better question would be," She leaned forward. Timbre found her bright purple eyes somewhat unsettling, "do you think that you would fare any better if you had teamed up with any of the other first years from your orientation group?"

None of them could respond.

"That's what I thought. You may have your dysfunctional qualities now, but trust me. You ended up together for a reason. Professor Alabaster has a way of making things add up."

"Got that right." Yamuna nodded. "We were a mess when we started! Lurida and Xannie were their own thing, Gavin struggled to get any of us to think about each other's talents, and I just refused to work with any of them. We're pretty good now, but we have our little bumps every once in awhile even today!" She nodded to Xannie. "Just ask her about the time we were playing chubby bunny and I took on a whole bag of marshmallows just to spite him!"

Xannie shook her head. "Yeah. She won. And Carmen wasn't happy that we had to get Yamuna to the medical ward when she almost choked to death."

"Haven't eaten marshmallows since!" Yamuna said giddily.

Lurida groaned and took a sip of coffee from a rather large mug. "The point being, you guys just need to give each other a chance. Why not… like… I don't know… try and say something you all like about each other? That's what Gavin made us do." She glanced over to her leader. "It sounds stupid, and I hate to admit it, but it works."

Gavin laughed. "Not to pat myself on the back or anything, but convincing these three to do that is probably one of my proudest moments as leader. Works like a charm!" The bright glow that he seemed to give off faded. He leaned in close towards the first year team in front of them. "Well… when there's no sarcasm involved…" He sat back down. His usual smile returned. "Otherwise it won't do you any good!"

Team ARTS seemed put off by Gavin's shifting attitudes. Timbre thought back to how quickly he defused the situation between Roland and Rime through sheer intimidation, so she guessed it was more effective than it seemed. Whether or not is was a conscious shift, she had no clue.

"Right. We'll be sure to do that…" Arty said as he forced a confident smile.

"Sup nerds?!" A tall blond guy that seemed a few years older than any of the members of Team GLXY said as he walked up. The odd combination of a dull yellow sweatshirt, brown track pants, gold scaled armor around the waist, and leather shoulderpads made him stand out amongst the rest of the students. He looked ready to fight, but also ready to laze around, a regular look found more commonly among freelancer Huntsmen.

"Hati!" Yamuna jumped up and hugged the taller student.

"Hey sis!"

"What are you doing here? I thought Team Ashes was heading off on a mission today."

Hati grinned stupidly, "Well, we were..."

"Until _some_ of us went off and got in trouble during the first year initiation yesterday." Another student, a pale guy much shorter and noticeably younger than Hati walked up silently, stopping next to him. He was wearing a black leather jacket, a large dull gold piece of jewelry that looked like a broad collar draped over his shoulders. His most notable features were a curving gold symbol resembling an abstracted eye tattooed around his own right eye and the pointed black dog ears sticking through his jet black hair.

Gavin hopped up and enthusiastically shook Hati's hand. He quickly turned and gave the newcomer's hand the same treatment. He gave him a hearty slap on the back, much to his displeasure. "Hati, Anubis! It's awesome to see you guys! So, what'd Ashes do this time?"

"Well…" Anubis began, "somehow, Team Ashes was given the task of taking the relics out to the temple for the newbie's initiation. We get out there and _some_ of us thought it'd be a good idea to play dodgeball with them." He glared at Hati.

He held up his hands defensively. "Hey, I only joined in after most of them were already broken."

Anubis shook his head. "My point exactly… Luckily, Alabaster had another set in case the first one was broken," he paused, "in other words, we're kind of not allowed to leave school grounds right now."

"Well, it'll be nice to have my bros around to help the first years for a little bit," Yamuna smiled.

"Wait…" Arty said. "You three are siblings?"

"Yes, why?" Anubis shifted his jaw.

"I mean, Hati, are you a Faunus?" He stammered to the taller brother, careful not to accidentally let his gaze shift back to Anubis. Even though Arty only been around Anubis for a couple of minutes, he was already the most intimidating student he'd met at Beacon, and he was scared he was already getting on the Faunus' bad side.

"Uh, dude." Hati turned around, showing off the bushy golden wolf tail swishing around behind him.

"Oh…"

"You'd think an artist would notice something like a wolf tail a little easier than that." Timbre sniggered through a mouthful of mashed potatoes.

Gavin laughed and patted Hati on the back. "Well, I guess a wolf tail is a little less noticeable than say…" he pointed to Roland, "an otter tail."

Roland pet his own tail and glared at Gavin. He didn't think that his tail was that obvious. It was just… bigger than most Faunus tails.

Having noticed the discomfort of Team ARTS' leader, Lurida tapped the table in front of him. "You must not see many Faunus up in Atlas, huh Arty?" Once she had his attention, she took another sip of coffee.

"Not really… sorry. I didn't mean any offense..." Arty turned bright red.

"Hey, not a prob man." Hati said grinning. "That's the life of a Faunus. People notice you have a tail or ears or horns or feathers or… whatever, they go wide-eyed for a minute, and then they forget about it."

"Right…" Anubis suddenly paused. One of his pointed dog ears began to twitch a little. He let out an exasperated groan, "Not again… We need to go find the _troublemakers_ before they turn our in-school suspensions into expulsions." They turned to leave. "Oh, It was nice meeting you, ARTS."

Sepia ran up to Hati and nearly broke her neck trying to look up at him. She gave him a meek wave and gave Anubis a bow before returning to her seat. ' _Tell them I said that it was also nice to meet them.'_ popped up into the group text.

Timbre nodded. "She says she's also happy to meet you." she relayed to Anubis and Hati.

Anubis eyed the odd girl in the sequin dress, who just sat there smiling at him whilst kicking her legs back and forth under the table, "Right… okay," he said as they disappeared into the crowded mess hall.

"Your brothers' team got in trouble _again_?!" Xannie burst out laughing.

"You've known them for a year now, Xannie. They've been in trouble every day since you met them." Yamuna laughed with her teammate. She hurriedly took a bite from her sandwich and swallowed it without chewing. Her mismatched eyes flicked around as, like Anubis, one of her ears twitched. "On that note, I think they're about to start a little brawl out in the courtyard," she brushed off crumbs from her kimono, "Anubis isn't a big fan of his team goofing off, so it might get a little brutal. Gotta go." She got up and and ran after her brothers, her sandals clapping against the floor.

Strangely, Lurida seemed to smile at Yamuna's observation. "Anyways, ARTS, don't end up acting like a fool like those… idiots." She got up and cracked her knuckles. "Time to play damage control again."

Xannie stacked her and Lurida's trays. "Yeah, we'll see you guys later!" She waved goodbye before trailing off after her sister and the itty-bitty wolf Faunus.

Gavin watched as the twins walked away. He shook his head, "Guess I better go, too." He stood and followed the rest of his team. "Good luck on your classes tomorrow, guys!"

After Team GLXY went on their way, more students began filing out of the cafeteria. Team ARTS still sat in silence while they finished up their lunch. The tension began rising. Roland and Timbre occasionally caught each other's hate-filled gaze, and Arty and Sepia looked on helplessly.

Roland finally stood and looked to the rest of his team. Though it pained him to admit, Lurida was right. They were on a team together. "Timbre," He started. When she began to get up with anger burning in her eyes, he held up a finger. "I think that you're a talented singer. If you weren't, then you wouldn't have had such a successful career. I'm sorry for the way that I acted earlier." His toes curled in his boots as he restrained himself, but he felt that his words were at least somewhat genuine. He'd already apologized to Arty for being such a huge jerk, so he might as well do the same for Timbre.

Timbre was taken by surprise. She raised one of her eyebrows as if she didn't believe what she'd just heard. She must've heard him wrong. He wasn't actually… apologizing, was he? If he was, was he actually telling the truth? She didn't sense any sarcasm like what Gavin had warned about. She sensed anger, yes, but truth nonetheless. She really didn't want to, but she swallowed her pride. "Roland. You may be a completely insufferable jerk…" _Probably the wrong note to start on…_ "but I truly want us to be friends. You're an incredibly flexible fighter and… I can plainly see the effects of the training you talked about earlier." She smiled. "And you definitely deserve to be here, and I don't want anyone to tell you different," she sighed, "and if you really don't want to talk about yourself, I'll respect that, but I expect to learn about _who_ you are while we're stuck together, got it?"

Roland thought over her comments before nodding. Something felt warm inside his chest. Something… comforting. The feeling was reminiscent of when he would visit his mother at her apartment or in her classroom.

' _Now hug it out!'_ Sepia messaged the group and shot up from her seat. She latched onto Timbre and Roland's arms and yanked them together.

A previously unheard sound rattled Team ARTS. Roland was laughing. He put an arm around Sepia and Timbre's shoulders and grinned at Arty. For what felt like the first time in forever, his haze of anger was fading. "You know what? I'll go with that. Arty, get in here." That feeling that his mother had always told him about was becoming less and less foreign: Comradery.

"Wait… what? Why?-" He found himself shoved into Roland and Timbre by Sepia, who in turn hugged him against the two. "Great… group hugs…" He said, barely able to breathe from Sepia's surprising strength.

As they all took in the first real moment of cooperation in their first day as a team, Team ARTS heard a slow clap from somewhere down the aisle between the tables.

"Oh boy… the princess is here." Roland sneered as their team separated.

Alice stood before them, her team standing behind her like servants to a king… or rather a queen in this case. "It's adorable. It only took you…" She looked at her scroll. "Almost 24 hours ta actually stop screamin' at each otha'. Good on ya." Her fake smile was nauseating.

Turf shrunk back behind her. Navy stood at her side obediently like an attack dog ready to pounce. Ebon seemed pretty indifferent to the situation as they picked at their sandwiches.

Arty wasn't having this. "Hey, back off Alice. Getting teamed up with almost complete strangers is kind of a big thing to get used to."

She smirked. "Really? Team ANTE is already perfectly in sync. Our room's already set up _and_ we're set for our first day of class tomorrow. Isn't that right lads?"

"Actually, you were panicking because you lost a few decks of cards just a few-" Turf began, but was cut off by Alice's poisonous gaze.

"So," she continued, "saw you talking to the little… wolf girl and her siblings," she exaggerated a disgusted shudder, "What were they having to say? Anything about picking pockets or how unfair the world is towards them?"

"Hey!" Arty stood up, "They didn't do anything to you, leave them out of this."

Roland felt that haze of anger return. He jumped to his feet and pushed Arty back, stepping closer to Alice, separating ANTE from ARTS. "Look, Carrot Top, you should really choose your battles a little more wisely." Roland popped his knuckles. "Don't talk crap unless you can back that crap up."

Sepia stood beside him with fire in her eyes. The urge to fight was contagious, it would have seemed.

Roland waved a hand to tell her and Arty to sit down. "Unlike you, I let people's actions speak for them, not how they look, and let me tell you, I've seen plenty from you over the past couple of days and you are pretty low on my list. So, you can either ante up and stay in the game or cash in and back off."

Alice looked offended, as if she were the victim. Her scowl and furrowed brow convinced Roland he hit a nerve.

"Well queenie, what's it gonna be?"

The clean-cut blond in the blue camo fatigues stepped between Roland and Alice. "Maybe you're the one who should be backing away, _Faunus_." He put a lot of emphasis on the last word, as if it were a swear.

Alice put a hand on Navy's shoulder. "Stand down, Navy. We don't want ta mess up everyone's lunch now do we?"

"Too late for that, Alice." Timbre said in hopes of getting her to back off.

The girl in the red dress glared at the singer with an almost hurt expression. "Whateva." She snapped her fingers, gesturing for the rest of her team to follow her.

Timbre was absolutely shocked by Alice's behavior towards her. Granted, she wasn't near as mean to her as she had directly been towards Arty or Roland, but she was obviously acting much different than the near obsessive fan she was the two days prior. But then again, maybe she had just started showing her true colors now that she was in a state of imaginary "power" that came with the title of leader. _I could have been her partner_.

As the members of Team ANTE filed by her, Turf turned his head back and mouthed ' _sorry_ '. The small ordeal was almost done, but Navy decided to shove his way past Roland by knocking him with his shoulder while keeping an icy glare.

This offense wasn't just going to be ignored. Roland's tail caught Navy's ankle as he passed. He didn't even bother turning his head to look at the guy that he'd tripped. "If you _ever_ call me a Faunus as it were a derogatory term again, I'll do a lot more than make you fall down." He clenched his fists. The anger was back full blast thanks to Alice, but it was angled at a new target. Arty and Timbre were just nuisances. These two, they were enemies. "My mother drilled it into my head that Faunus are just as good as Humans, and I will not let you talk as if she lied to me."

Navy was fuming. He kicked himself up off of the ground in one fluid motion. He kicked his foot forward into Roland's stomach, knocking him to the ground.

"Hey!" Arty stepped forward to protest, reaching instinctively for his backpack, but realized it wasn't there. He cursed to himself, remembering he had to put Palette and his paint in his locker. Despite this, he still tried to run up to help Roland, but found Alice pushing her hand against his chest to keep him back. A bright red card flashed between her fingers, the top edge pointed at Arty's nose.

"Nuh-uh painta boy. You may be leada, but this is _his_ fight."

"You know your weapons should be in your locker. There's a schedule we're supposed to follow for that sort of thing." Arty sneered back. He tried to look brave, but he knew he had seen what her cards could do.

Alice chuckled, "Oh, you _care_ about rules now? That's a laugh, but that's besides the matta at hand."

Arty tried to ask what she meant by that, but she continued to command the conversation.

" _Your_ teammate started this and _my_ teammate is going ta end it." She looked to Navy approvingly, "go get him, Navy. Teach Team _FARTS's_ pet _Faunus_ a lesson."

"Real clever, Alice," Timbre said from behind Arty, leading him away from the destructive card.

Roland held his stomach as he stood up. "Navy, buddy, you just gave me permission to do some serious damage…" he stared down Navy and Alice, "to your face. You think I'm lesser than you? I could tear you limb from limb. You want feral, then I'll give you feral!" He rolled up his sleeves.

Navy threw his hat to Ebon before widening his stance and balling up his fists.

Alice nodded to him. "Go ahead Navy," she grinned at the rest of Team ARTS while egging him on, "show tha _Faunus_ what it means to be a fighta in tha _real_ world."

"A fighter in the real world, eh?" Roland tipped his hat to Navy. Using his Semblance, Roland could "feel" the collection of ink pens amongst the dozens of his pockets in Navy's combat vest. _Big mistake, partner_. "Carrot Top, you have no idea what you've just gotten your lackie into." He stepped forward towards Navy. Instead of balling his fists, he calmly strided towards him. "Last chance before I break the floor with your face, buddy."

Alice did the thinking for Navy. She pretended to mull over Roland's proposition for a moment. "Ah… Nope. Destroy him."

Navy flew towards Roland ready to drive his fist into his face.

The other members of Team ANTE and Team ARTS could only watch as Navy threw punches and kicks at Roland. The whole cafeteria was now aware of the brawl and watched on eagerly. Obviously, student-on-student fights weren't an uncommon occurrence and were seen as a kind of show to enjoy.

Roland did nothing but hold up a hand, and the pens in Navy's pockets exploded. He held him so that his fist was mere inches from his face, but that's as far as the soldier-like student was going to make it. "I've got to hand it to you guys, I was really pissed off. Then I had an idea! What if I could beat the crud out of you without even touching you?!" With his smile renewed, he looked back at his team, "In case you guys were wondering, Navy had about six… no, seven ink pens on him. Seven. Arty, please tell Alice about my semblance."

Arty just wanted to leave. "He calls it Inkheart. Long story short, ink control," He pointed to the dark black splotches sprayed across Navy's chest, "kinda how he's kinda… holding you by your pocket protector there. He exploded your pens. I know, it sounds weird and impractical, but it makes the typewriter make a lot more sense."

" _BOLLOCKS!_ What kind of _bloody_ Semblance is _that_!" Alice yelled.

"The kind that my mother gave me, like the tail." Roland flicked his wrists so that Navy flew into Alice. He released his hold and grinned at Arty. "Anyway, what's the plan for the rest of the day, Captain Umber?" A hand came up to the brim of his hat in a mocking salute.

Once again, Arty and Timbre were fascinated by Roland's Semblance. Sepia just silently laughed and clapped as she watched Navy flail on the ground.

Arty heard Roland say his name again. "Oh… well. How about we go back to the room and get our materials ready for class?"

"Sounds like a plan to me." Timbre looked over to Alice as she angrily shoved Navy off of her. "I've had enough drama for today."

As they left for the dorms, Roland gave Alice and Navy one last grin. Strangely, he was starting to feel good about being in a team.

* * *

"So… that was fun." Timbre said as Arty held the stairwell door open to let them onto their floor.

Sepia smiled wide as she hopped up the stairs. ' _That was so cool! We can totally be the tough corns!'_ She signed, then looked at her hands for a moment. ' _I mean tough kids.'_

"Yeah. No kidding!" Timbre skipped enthusiastically.

"She needs to start translating more often…" Arty groaned and looked over to Sepia. "Cuz no offense, but I'm already getting lost in conversations with you, Sepia."

Timbre stopped abruptly and grabbed her arms as her teeth started chattering. "Wow! Why… why is it so… c-c-c- _cold_ out here?!"

"Doesn't matter. Let's just turn the heat up when we get to our room. We've got to get ready for tomorrow." Roland opened the door to their dorm room. "I'll be messing with some minor explosives, so say on your toes."

"Normally, I'd object to that," Arty stepped into the room, "but I'll actually be working with highly unstable Dust to stock up for tomorrow's combat class!" He grinned, showing off the missing tooth again.

"Oh god…" Timbre said still shivering, "I am _literally_ going to die living with you guys…" She rushed towards their dorm with her team close behind. "We have a lot to do, so let's get to it."


	11. V1Ch7: Difficult Lessons

Students sat in the seating of an amphitheatre of a classroom while being addressed by their new instructor. Of the students in this class, Teams ARTS, ANTE, and FREZ were in attendance. For the twelve of them, this was their first day of class at Beacon. This particular class just so happened to be a combat class, and was taught by the notoriously scatterbrained Professor Carmen Maple.

"Now, I understand that you all are still getting to know each other, but I want to use that to give you all your first lesson in my class." Carmen stood alone in the battlefield in the center of the semicircle of seating, her hands clasped firmly behind her back as she childishly paced back and forth. "So, I'm going to be pairing you up and having you fight with some…" she burst out laughing. After a few moments of maniacal cackling, she finally managed to stifle her laughter. "Excuse me, I'm having all of you fight with some _special_ limitations."

The looks across the student's faces were a mix of confusion and curiosity. This was a good thing. This would prove to make the lesson more effective. Professor Maple was a professional, regardless of how unprofessional she acted.

"I trust that you are all prepared for battle considering I asked you to wear your combat attire today and to be sure to get your weapons from your lockers. Since that is the case, I would like to call Bur-, excuse me, Arty Umber and Everest Hyperborean to the battlefield!" She couldn't help but smile at the shocked silence of her students.

"Haha! Have fun, Arty!" Timbre's words were confident, but her incessant tapping told Arty that her confidence was a straight lie.

Roland just shook his head. "You're dead, bud."

Arty pulled Pallette from his bag before throwing it over his shoulder. "Thanks for the encouragement guys."

As Team ARTS's leader walked down the aisle, he heard someone snicker. He turned back to find Alice twirling a pencil in her fingers with a malicious smile curving her lips. She waved. "Have fun, Umba."

Arty shrugged off her sarcasm.

.

After he had stepped into the flat circular battleground, Carmen touched a small console against the wall, causing a clear light blue forcefield to separate the battleground from the sitting area. As the energy in the field settled, it became virtually invisible. Still, a hazy blue glow reflected off of the polished vinyl tiles of the battlefield.

"Don't want anyone getting caught in any crossfire," Carmen grinned, "you should've seen last year when I accidentally forgot to put up the field during Lurida and Anubis' fight! Good times… good times…"

.

"Woah cool!" Timbre's mouth fell open as she looked at the metal base of the forcefield. She poked it. A bright shimmer rippled across the surface of the field from where her finger bounced off of it as if it were a solid sheet of glass. "This would have been nice to have on stage…"

"It's Force Dust." Alice snarked, "they use it in _every_ decent combat arena, but I guess you wouldn't know that, hm?"

Timbre narrowed her eyes at the girl in the red dress. _Less than three days ago you were goo-goo ga-ga over being in the same class as me, and now you're acting like a total bi-_ her thought was interrupted by a light tap on her shoulder. She turned to Sepia, who was flapping her hand and rolling her eyes as if to say ' _ignore her'_.

"Yeah… you're right." She nodded. This was Arty's time to shine, not her time to mope.

.

Arty walked up to the instructor. His opponent towering above both of them.

"EVEREST. GOING. TO. CRUSH. ARTY." Everest boomed as he tightened his grip on his club. The massive white bludgeoning weapon was about as thick as Arty's head.

Arty gulped and felt the color drain from his face. He had a strange feeling he was going to die. Or get eaten. Or both.

Carmen just laughed at the remark. "Now now, Everest. Wait a minute. For this battle, Arty may only use Ice and Water Dust in his weapon, and Everest may not use his own weapon."

"Aww…" Everest looked down meekly and walked over to the seating to pass off his club to Rime.

.

The class laughed as they watched the small girl trying to handle the weapon that was almost twice her size. It fell to the ground with an earth shattering thud, and then was dragged away by Rime with a little help from Zero.

Everest returned to his spot in the ring in silence.

.

Arty quickly pulled out the two allowed types of Dust. As he loaded the water Dust into the receptacle of the paintball gun, he frowned. _It took me forever to find this stuff, I order it from the Dust shop in town, and now I'm using it my first day of class..._ "Awesome." He threw his bag up to Timbre before returning to the center of the ring. He looked to Carmen and held up his gun.

"Great, now," Carmen took a few steps back to give the students space to get on with their fight. "You two may begin when you are ready."

Everest looked down at the puny man before him. "IS. THE. DWARF. READY?!" He shouted at him. Despite the vacuum seal on the void within his skull, he still seemed to have at least some consideration for his opponent. He didn't enjoy unfair fights.

"Um… sure?" Arty watched as Everest popped his knuckles… right before he was punched with the force of a pickup truck right into the center of his chest, launching him backwards and slamming into the wall dividing the ring and the seats. He groaned as he pushed himself up from the new dent left in the wall.

.

"Ow!" Timbre called out, her hands over her mouth. "That had to hurt…"

"That was insane!" Roland shot up from his seat in excitement. He checked his scroll. He gawked at the device. "His aura's already down by nearly a _third_! Only _one punch_!"

Sepia clapped happily at the first strike of the match. This was going to be good.

.

Everest's feet shook the stage with each gigantic step. "EVEREST. DESTROY." He roared.

"You go, Everest!" Rime shouted from the stands. "Show 'em who's boss!"

Roland glanced at the girl and back to his partner. Something dawned on him. If Arty lost, then they would never hear the end of it from Alice. "Well come on, Timbre! That's our leader out there! He can take more than that!" He told his teammate before beginning to chant. "Arty! Arty! Arty!"

Timbre was a bit confused by Roland's sudden desire to actually be supportive for once, but she accepted it and hesitantly began to chant with him… until she remembered that Sepia was sitting next to her. She realized it might upset her to be the only one not able to cheer Arty on. That is, until she turned to find Sepia wildly flapping her arms.

.

Arty shook his head. "Okay… not off to a good start…" He mumbled groggily to himself. "Let's try this on for size." He began running towards Everest, picking up speed with every step. The behemoth of a student raised his arms up, ready to crash them down on Arty. Before he could do so, Arty shot a paintball downwards. He knew that no matter which type came out, it'd do the trick.

A pool of water formed beneath Everest. Arty lowered himself down and slid between the caveman's legs. Tiles shattered behind him.

Everest was obviously confused by the sudden disappearance of the smaller, orange student. As he turned, his fur boot slipped in the water. His feet slipped out from under him. More tiles cracked as Everest's form smashed into the ground.

.

Frost just watched with little to no emotion across her face. She was busy analyzing her new teammate. _Everest is a big brute, but Umber is obviously better at thinking on his feet…_ She looked over to Rime and thought about Alabaster's mention of their " _near symbiotic relationship"_. What he meant by that, she didn't know yet, but Everest was obviously struggling to fight back against Arty without Rime there. _He's too big and slow, but if he could just land a couple more hits._

 _._

With his back pressed against the wall, Arty aimed his gun at Everest. From his practice back home and his fights with the Grimm in the Emerald Forest only a couple of days before, he knew Ice Dust made an effective immobilizer. Water Dust on the other hand, he didn't have as much experience using. He had no idea what kind of effect it would have upon hitting an opponent. _Might as well try it_ , Arty thought to himself as he began pulling the trigger. As the paintballs began to shoot from Palette's barrel, splashes of water began to soak the caveman. The chilling power of the Ice Dust began to solidify the water as Everest lay on the floor.

.

"Is he… is he trying to cement Everest to the ground?" Timbre questioned, trying to figure out what her team leader was doing. Before anyone could respond, she heard almost maniacal laughter from her right. She looked over and saw Rime with tears running down her face and Frost looking ready to scold her.

"What's up with you?" Roland glared over at her.

When Rime was finally able to compose herself, she looked angrily at Roland before answering his question to Timbre and Sepia. "Let's just say that Professor Maple is making this purposely difficult for Arty to win, because he's about to get a taste of Everest's true power."

.

As Arty began to prepare for another attack, Everest began to chuckle. "PAINTER. MAN. SCREW. UP." He stood up with ease, seeming to slightly glow as he got up. He towered over Arty. The grin that he gave Arty was one of almost feral glee. " **CRUSH**." He boomed as he threw a punch towards Arty's head.

The tiles behind Arty shattered to pieces, leaving a crater nearly three feet across. At this point, he really wanted to just accept the loss and run. That seemed to be all anyone could do against a guy like this. That crater could have been his face.

.

"What the-?..." Timbre was now legitimately scared for her team's leader.

Rime was about to explain the situation when Roland held up a hand.

"Just hold onto your little head, sweetheart." He chided her. "You about froze him over in the Emerald Forest, and then he went to town on the Minotaurus. Now Carmen tells our leader that he can only use Dust that can make things colder. I'd take a guess that Everest's Semblance allows him to get a power boost in the cold."

Rime crossed her arms. "Looks like _somebody's_ been paying attention," she unenthusiastically pumped her fist into the air, "10 points for Team ARTS..."

Roland was about to snap back at her when Timbre realized what that meant for Arty. "Wait… so… if Arty's attacks only make Everest stronger, how is he supposed to beat him?" Timbre asked.

Rime shrugged. "Beats me. I'm usually _helping_ Everest beat opponents, not stopping him from doing so. Something tells me that your leader _won't_ beat him..." She watched as Everest stomped a hole in the floor, almost cracking Arty's leg in half. "He's a tough cookie. But if he gets much colder…" She began to nervously twirl a lock of pale blonde hair with her finger.

Roland cupped his hands around his mouth. "Arty! Go for the head! Bash his head in like a watermelon!" His eyes held a sadistic gleam to them.

.

Between dodging and looking for a chance to strike, Arty did manage to catch his partner's message. "Kinda busy right now, Roland!" He jumped out of the way of a flying fist and slid across the ice on the floor. His fingers curled around the barrel of his gun, and in a whirr of mechanical parts, the gun began to unfold and straighten out.

.

"Wait…" Timbre stammered, "the paintball gun's also a… baseball bat?..."

"Oh he is _so_ dead…" Roland muttered as he remembered what Arty had said about getting to know one another back in the forest. Knowing everything about one another apparently meant that Arty needed to know everything about Roland. Not the other way around.

.

 _Yeah, so is_ this _a_ ' _real weapon' Roland?_ Arty smiled his toothy grin as he watched Everest charge towards him. _Curie really did wonders with the new weapon form_. He slammed the bat down on the ground, hoping the right paintball was loaded. The crackling of crystals as a block of ice enclosed the end of the bat told him that it was.

As Everest lunged, trying to grab at Arty, he found a boot slamming into the back of his head as Arty launched himself upwards. As the caveman turned his head, he saw the orange-clad boy turning in mid-air.

Arty brought his frozen weapon down on the back of Everest's head.

A shower of ice crystals sprayed across the battlefield.

The force of the attack slammed Everest's head face-first into the ground. He sat there groaning as the effects of his Semblance wore off.

.

"Yay, Arty!" Timbre yelled. Her trained voice echoed across the room.

Roland pumped a fist in the air while Sepia silently cheered.

.

Carmen walked over to Arty and held his arm up like a referee in a wrestling ring, "And the winner of your first battle is… Arty Umber, leader of Team ARTS!" she clapped as Arty returned to his seat. "Now think about what you've just witnessed. I hope that you all learned from this fight and use the lesson that Mr. Umber and Mr. Hyperborean here have demonstrated." She spoke to her students in a suddenly professional tone. "Brute force and strategy go hand in hand." Her eyes flicked over to Rime. "Strategy can get you through any situation and brute force can be a great tool when applied correctly. If that power has no direction, it won't be very beneficial to any party and can lead to disaster. If you have strategy, but no power, well… you get the same results." She paused and flattened her white coat. "Now, for the next fight. Roland Wells and Rime Chione, please, come on down." She seemed a bit anxious as she watched Roland descend the stairs.

.

In a few moments, the two students stood face to face. Carmen looked back and forth between them. "Now, for your fight, both of you have the same restriction. Neither of you may use your Semblances." She pressed a few buttons on the console. As if by magic, the craters caused by Everest and Arty's battle flattened out and disappeared, returning the battlefield to its original pristine condition.

Both of them looked at her in shock, but Rime was the one to speak up. "Um… Ms. Maple? You do realize that I rely pretty much _exclusively_ on my Semblance… right?"

"Same goes for me." Roland looked down at the fresh reel of paper that he had loaded into his weapon that morning. The passages from a book that he had already looked back over weren't going to be of use.

"I am aware. That's exactly why that's the stipulation for your fight." Carmen nodded.

"Well, that's going to be troublesome. Your Semblance and weapon are the same, aren't they?" Roland sneered.

"Yeah, um, sure. Let's go with that." Rime tapped her foot as she played with her necklace again. Before Carmen or Roland could add to the conversation, Rime quickly moved over to where Everest stood before his fight started.

Roland stood across from Rime with determination burning in his eyes. This fight was for an audience, and if his partner could beat a brick wall with some paint, then he _had_ to beat someone of Rime's stature. Sure, he couldn't use Inkheart, but nowhere did Carmen say that he couldn't keep Writer's Block on his person.

"You ready, cowboy?" Rime asked with a smirk across her face.

Roland cracked his knuckles and took up a fighting stance. "Yeah," He shifted the typewriter that weighed down on his arm. "I'm as ready as ever."

Carmen nodded at the combatants and took a few steps back. "Begin."

Rime took the first opportunity to attack. She crouched low to the ground and tried to throw a few uppercuts into Roland's gut, but her fists only struck metal. "Ow!" She exclaimed while she pulled back.

.

Timbre and Sepia watched with tense anticipation.

"Ooh… that had to hurt…" Timbre winced as she watched Rime shake the pain out of her hand.

"Wait wha-?..." Arty muttered exhaustedly from the seat next to her. He looked down to see his partner sniggering at the pale girl, who was still shaking the pain out of her hand. "Oh… ow… yeah… punching metal. That has to hurt… _Much_ worse than getting punched by the two-ton caveman she has for a partner…"

.

Writer's Block was held over Roland's stomach to work as a shield. He flicked the silverish parts of his weapon and winced. "Tungsten and steel alloy. It makes for one tough typewriter." He kept his fists raised to attack. It wasn't the right time yet. For someone as speedy as Rime seemed to be, he'd need to wear her down a bit.

"Quit bragging," Rime spat and threw a left hook. She managed to get a solid hit on his jaw, but coughed when she felt an impact in her right side. Despite the pain, she drove another punch home and sent Roland stumbling back a few steps.

"I don't need to brag." He rubbed his cheek where she hit him. "I don't gotta worry, either. I can't lose to someone as pathetic as you."

"Play nice, children." Carmen chided. Her eyes were still trained intently on Roland. She didn't seem to be looking directly at him. Her gaze seemed to have settled right over his shoulder.

While Rime fumed, Roland took a second to watch her movements. She let her guard down on her right when she took a swing from the left, so maybe he could exploit that.

Rime shot off towards her opponent, but kept her guard up as she got close. "I am _not_ pathetic!" Her right fist flew towards Roland's face, and was met with his typewriter as anticipated. Fingers curled over the paper reel on the back plate of the weapon and she yanked it downwards. "I'll make sure you won't be using that mouth much more!" She shouted as she pushed herself upwards. Her feet lifted off of the ground. Thankfully, she was light enough for a man of Roland's large stature to keep up. Keeping her balance on Roland's typewriter, she delivered a series of quick kicks right to his face.

The grip on Writer's Block was so tight that he couldn't shake her off. Each strike sent a wave of pain through his head. After the sixth or so hit, he grabbed his opponent by her annoyingly loose jacket and threw her, sending her crumpling to the ground. He groaned as he got a little distance and wiped off his lip. "Oh, now you've gone and ticked me off…" His tail swung menacingly. Logic and reason flew out the window as he closed in.

.

"Oh crap…" Arty groaned as he rested his head on the desk in front of him.

"What?... What's going on?" Timbre asked confused.

"He's gone full kill mode…"

He received nothing but a confused look from the singer.

"Ugh… I saw him do it with a bunch of Beowolves in the Emerald Forest… not pretty. Gonna make you think he'll smother you in your sleep or something. He goes _mental_ …"

"Must be nice having a legitimate basket case on your team." Alice said mockingly from across the aisle.

"Shut up, Alice…" Arty said, returning his forehead to its place on the table in front of him. Roland's outbursts had already caused them trouble, but Timbre and Sepia still hadn't seen him at his worst. In fact, Arty doubted that even he had seen the full extent of his partner's rage. He did seem to have more fun than anything against the Beowolves...

.

Rime rolled away just before Roland's heel would've stricken her in the head. It seemed that he was ready to get a little more brutal. Butterflies fluttered in her stomach as uncertainty set in. She hopped up and tried to get some distance, but Roland wasn't having it.

"What's wrong?" He lobbed his fist at her face, but missed by mere millimeters. "Come on, I thought you were prepared!" He shouted at her and drove his fist into her sternum. She was sent sprawling backwards.

Rime sat up and struggled to her feet. "Bring it on…" She growled and held up her fists. She was going to be a Huntress, and would seem things far scarier than some psycho on another team. Fists rocketed towards Roland's ribs, and she kicked in an attempt to take out his legs. If not for his tail keeping him balanced, she could've made him fall.

Roland tried his best to defend against her blows, but took his fair share. Any normal student might've gone down, but he wasn't the average student. As much as he wanted to fall, he refused. He wouldn't let his body crumple.

"I'm done with this…" He growled and threw two rapid body shots from his right. He grabbed her jacket on the last punch and pulled her close. "Nighty night." He locked gazes with his victim before bashing her across the head with Writer's Block. She was sent to the ground without any sign of getting up.

.

Students sat in shocked silence.

Turf was the first to speak up. "Looks like he's got a little… pent up aggression…"

"He's been like that since we got here." Navy scoffed. "Trying to pick fights with anybody and everybody." He shook his head. "He'll be out of here in a week at this rate."

.

Carmen slowly approached. "Mr. Wells, don't you think that was a bit far?" She scolded.

"Right…" Roland shook his head to snap himself out of his rage. He knelt down and gave Rime a few light pats on the cheek. "Hey, Rime, good game. I'm sorry I kind of… knocked you unconscious. Are you going to be okay?" He asked his classmate as she slowly came to.

As her eyes fluttered open, she shot her fist upward directly into Roland's jaw. "Jerk…" She got up with help from Professor Maple and walked back over to her team. Her trembling fingers clutched her jacket. Beads of sweat formed on her forehead as she recounted her battle. In those last moments, she had no memory of a human attacking her. All she could think of were the molten eyes of a Grimm.

.

"I said I was sorry… I lost my cool…" Roland made his way back to his team and sat next to Arty. He rubbed his side where Rime had gotten him more than a few times. "Looks like I've lost a few points with everyone here, huh?" He said with his eyes still on the battlefield.

"Well, on the bright side, once you get below zero points, more deductions can't really do anything else, right?" Arty said with a not so convincing smile.

Timbre elbowed him in the side.

"Sorry…"

.

Carmen paced. "Now, while Mr. Wells' fighting methods may not be the most… orthodox, they were effective, despite him not relying on his Semblance. If you take away anything from this fight, it's that none of you need to rely too heavily on your Semblance. It's important to train your natural fighting ability. You never know when you'll be at the disadvantage because you aren't able to fly, or make fire… or bend ink… or… well, you get the point. The Creatures of Grimm will not just back down out of sympathy. They'll take advantage of your weakness and go in for the kill." She looked around at the still silent students. "Anyway, next we have Frost Aurora and Alice Crims. Please come down."

The two girls looked down at Carmen with surprised looks.

"No. No. No. _No_. Anybody but _her_." Alice said pointing to Frost with a gleaming red fingernail.

Frost slowly stood. "What's the matter?" She said calmly, "I'm perfectly content fighting with you." Half of her team had already lost, but this was a learning experience, not a time to show off.

Alice narrowed her eyes at her rival. She really wanted to smack what she perceived to be a smug look off of her face. "Fine." She turned, flipping her red hair as she began making her way down the stairs. She kept her posture and composure. She stepped into the ring with Frost as the force fields reappeared. She looked up to the instructor. "Professor, I'm ready for my battle." She curtsied.

.

"What a show-off…" Arty mumbled to himself. He immediately shut up when he saw Navy glaring at him. He ducked his head behind his sketchbook and mindlessly scribbled to avoid his gaze.

"Frost!" Roland waved at the paler girl. "Break her neck! Stub her toes!" He thought of more acts of violence that he wanted Alice to endure. "Snap her fingers back! Shatter her nose!" He went on, despite the death glare from Navy. It didn't matter much to him, especially after their earlier encounter.

.

Alice began stomping towards the stands. "Now you listen ta me _Faunus_ , I am _not_ afraid ta fu-" A light blue pulse radiated away from her face as she ran her nose right into the invisible forcefield. Her face pressed against it as if she had run into a glass door cleaned to near invisibility.

The ensuing laughter made the girl in red even redder.

.

"Hey, uhm… Alice?" Turf scratched his head. "I, uh… think the force field is still up." He bit his cheek to keep from laughing.

.

Before Alice could say anything, Frost cut in. She was already in the battlefield next to Carmen. "The entrance is over there, sweetheart." She angled a finger to the console by the edge of the arena a few feet to Alice's right. "If you would _really_ rather kill the cowboy from Team ARTS than fight me, be my guest. But I'd recommend doing it in a less… self-destructive way."

Still red, she turned towards Frost, and then back to Roland. "I'll deal with you some otha time, _Faunus_ ," her index finger pointing at him. She stomped her way back over to Carmen and Frost. "It's fine, I'll just take my anga out on you."

"Girls… please. Behave." Carmen began to think about how combative this new group of first years seemed to be as she looked between the leaders of ANTE and FREZ. "Now, for you two, I have a very... let's say simple yet disabling restriction. Both of you will be required to trade weapons for the duration of your battle."

Frost looked at her in shock. "Um… Professor? She has… cards…"

"She has…" Alice scrunched up her nose, "I don't even _know_ what you 'ave."

"That helps a lot. Thank you." Frost unclipped the dull silver bracelets from around her wrists. Freshly polished triangular blades that fitted over the back of the hand glimmered in the intense overhead lights. "Here." She smiled as she held them out to the girl in red.

"Thanks," Alice took the bracelets with a look of disgust on her face as she held out a deck of cards. As Frost reached for them, Alice tilted her hand over, spilling the cards to the floor. "Whoops!" She giggled as Frost bent down to pick up the cards. "Clumsy me! Didn't mean ta start a game of 52 card pickup." She fumbled to put on Frost's bracelets. "Now 'ow 'bout you be a dear, and tell me 'ow these things are actually weapons? Are they filled with Dust? Do they shoot bullets? What?"

"Do I have to tell her?" Frost asked Carmen as she crouched low in order to pick up the weaponized cards.

Their instructor thought for a moment, "Hm… No, you don't have to if you don't want to."

"Perfect." Frost smiled as she fixed the cards into a neat stack. "I appreciate that." She finally had all of the cards back together in a deck. "I assume that you just throw these, huh?" Her fingers pinched a card, the Queen of Hearts, and looked it over in her hand. Alice's heart-shaped emblem was emblazoned the back, and she noticed that it felt warm to the touch. She tossed it at the forcefield towards Team ANTE. It exploded upon impact. "That answers my question."

"Don't go an' waste 'em all, now." Alice reared herself back in an awkward fighting stance. Obviously, she wasn't big into hand-to-hand combat.

"I'll be sure to use them up before we're done." Frost said as she took three cards out at random and held them as if ready to throw. "I'm ready when you are."

"You're paying for a replacement deck."

"Bite me."

Carmen looked on, eyeing the two rivals before nodding and stepping back out of the ring. "Begin!"

"With pleasure." Frost whipped her arm out to launch the cards at Alice. Two flew off to either side, but one hurdled towards Alice's abdomen.

Alice felt herself flying through the air after the impact. She slammed against the wall hard. _Damn… why did it have to be one of the_ spades?! Alice stood up and considered aiming the bracelets at Frost, hoping they'd do something. She pushed the idea out of her head. _What will I do if they don't actually shoot anything?_ She ran forward, charging at Frost. She chopped her hands into her sides, careful to dodge the heavy metal belt around the Frost's waist.

Frost's movements were quick and graceful. She turned and sidestepped to dodge Alice's assault. "Careful, now." She took a step back and threw a card at Alice's feet. A small, localized explosion shook the room. Fortunately for her, it sent Alice upwards, a few meters in the air.

Unfortunately for Frost, she was sent flying backwards and spiraling to the floor. "Okay, so the hearts are all explosive… got it…" She groaned and struggled to get to her feet.

"Having fun, love?" Alice smiled as landed much more elegantly than the ever so graceful Frost Aurora.

As Frost was still recovering from the blast, Alice noticed the small buttons at the underside of the bracelets. "Hm, wonder what these do?" She aimed her right arm at Frost and pushed the button with her free hand.

The triangular blades shot forward with the loud hiss of compressed air. Trailing behind it was a length of shiny white ribbon. The blade hit Frost hard and launched her onto her back again.

"So, _that's_ what these do." Alice said as she examined a length of the silky ribbon, running it between her thumb and index finger.

An icy feeling crawled up Frost's neck as she realized that Alice knew what her weapons did. They were on equal ground now in terms of experience, but Frost was having much more trouble adapting. "Yeah, that's right." She tried to compose herself. She held up three cards. All of them were spades, so that would hopefully do her well. _Well if all the hearts exploded…_ She tossed the cards.

Thinking on her feet, Alice began spinning the bladed ribbons in front of her in a windmill movement. The ribbons smashed the cards before they could hit her. The concussive slams of her heavy-hitting spades forced her backwards through the air, but she kicked off the wall relatively unscathed.

She flew back towards Frost, arcing across the room, but felt one of her extra-sharp clubs slice against her dress. "Oh, now you're paying for _much_ more than tha cards!" When Alice hit the ground, she took off running towards Frost again. The blades recoiled back into the bracelets, ready to be fired once more.

Cards whizzed by her ears, some sizzling and some roaring. As unnerving as it was, Alice's pride in her weapon was reemphasized by her own fear of them and her understanding on how to counter them. She ducked down to avoid an Eight of Hearts, sliding sideways while launching the blades outwards towards her opponent.

Frost stepped aside, allowing the blades fly past her. "You missed!" She raised her arm to throw another card.

"Wasn't aimin' for ya." Alice whipped her arm to the side.

Eyes went wide as Frost suddenly found the weight of the blades spinning around her, effectively tying her up in the ribbon.

Alice sneered, "At least, not directly."

"Stop it! This isn't how you _use those!_ " Frost demanded.

"Maybe not for you, but for me," Alice ducked down, using all of her strength to lift Frost off the ground and throw her across the room. The girl in the white skirt slammed into the wall, leaving a good-sized dent in the plaster panels before sliding to the ground.

Carmen had to duck to the side to avoid the ensuing explosions and ice crystals from the remaining cards as they spilled from Frost's hands.

.

Rime and Zero watched the screen of Rime's scroll as their leader's aura gauge quickly flashed red, stopping right before the bar went completely empty. She had lost the fight.

"Darnit…" Rime punched her hand against her knee, "0 for 3 for Team FREZ…" She shut her scroll and crossed her arms in a huff. She looked over to the quiet boy in the hoodie while rubbing the knot on her head. "Um… Zero?"

He looked slightly over to her.

"Looks like you're the last hope to prevent us from getting the reputation of the team of losers…"

' _We've still got two of two. Take that, b****es!'_ Sepia texted her team, but the scroll that she had been issued by Beacon automatically censored her profanity.

Timbre couldn't help but laugh, "Looks like Team ARTS is the best so far, huh? Sure Alice won, but maybe that'll make her tantrum even worse if her teammates lose, huh?" She nudged her partner and Arty as they watched Alice return to her seat.

Alice scoffed, her crinkled nose pointing at her idol turned enemy, "That may be, but we have more chances than you psychos to make up for that. And besides," she looked over to Team FREZ, "at least _my_ team has actually _won_ a match already."

Frost stayed expressionless, "I don't see why you're making such a big deal out of this. It's a learning experience, not a tournament."

Before Alice could retort, Carmen restarted the lesson.

.

"Alrighty-o! So, what do you do when you don't have your weapon?"

No response came from her students.

"You adjust!" She gave Alice a thumbs up in approval. Her hand quickly flipped to give her a thumbs down, "But your attitude does need an adjustment, Ms. Crims. If I were on Team ANTE, I'd prefer if my leader was a little less… ill-tempered."

Alice stomped her foot underneath the desk and opened her mouth to retort, but a thick padded glove covered her mouth.

"She's fine miss! Sorry about the attitude. She just hasn't had her coffee today." Ebon smiled wide, hoping Alice got the hint to cool down.

Alice leaned back and huffed. Quietly, she began to whisper, "I don't even _like_ coffee…" She crossed her arms. "I'm a _tea_ type of girl." She looked over to the skier. "If you're going ta lie, at least make it _seem_ like the truth, Ebon."

"My point exactly…" Professor Maple shook her head, "Anyways! Ebon, dear, how are you liking it here at Beacon?"

Ebon jumped back a bit, obviously not expecting the conversation to continue before two more students began wailing on one another. "Um, it's pretty great. A lot warmer here than home. And I've definitely met some… interesting people."

"I'm glad that you're enjoying your new home. It's good to see that our facility is enough to keep you happy." Professor Maple paced and kept a calm smile on her face, "Unfortunately, I think that ripping away that feeling of safety that you all begin to develop is incredibly fun. In addition, the greatest lesson that you can learn is that the world hates you and will do everything it can to rip you apart. You'll be fighting next, and against Zero." She finished her sentence with a cold grin.

While Ebon processed Professor Maple's words, he turned to examine his opponent.

Zero held an apple in one hand and a thin blade in the other, a katana. He skinned the apple with the tip of the blade while turning his head to catch Ebon's look of curiosity. After a few moments of painful silence, the spiraled apple skin fell onto the desk. The skin was bright red on both sides. The apple skin had been perfectly separated from the meat of the fruit.

Finding the apple skin to be a sufficient indicator of what he was up against, Ebon raised his hand. "Professor Maple, I haven't written my will yet…"

"Good, then you have incentive to do well! Come on down!"

.

With a final pleading gaze to his team, Ebon stood and pulled his ski goggles over his eyes. At least Zero wouldn't see him cry. With a final huff, he made his way down the stairsteps and into the ring.


	12. V1Ch8: Lights, Camera-Guns, Action!

Zero looked at Ebon with his cold, piercing eyes. He didn't look particularly friendly, "I'm sorry if I end up hurting you too badly." His voice was muffled underneath his scarf. Before long, he stood next to Professor Maple and Ebon in the center of the ring. The katana that he held to his side held a strange addition to it. On the back of the blade was a pair of shotgun barrels, and this was only made stranger by the fact that the weapon didn't seem to have a stock of any kind. The barrels and firing mechanisms seemed to be tacked onto an average sword.

Ebon stared at the blade, his eyes like dinner plates behind the blue mirrored lens of his ski goggles.

Zero popped his shoulder to get a little more comfortable, and Ebon jumped in fear from the sudden movement. Frosty blue light burst from the soles of his boots. Out of panic, he activated them. A torrent of snow poured out with a howling gale, and Ebon was sent tumbling back onto the vinyl tiling.

.

"Woah!" Arty called out while blocking his face from the flakes of snow and ice.

The rest of the students either laughed, watched in amazement, or clapped when they witnessed this spectacle.

"You know how I said that you were going to die, but you ended up, you know, alive?" Roland nudged his leader, "I mean it without any doubt that Ebon's a dead man walking."

Timbre chuckled. "Well, he's already almost killed himself. I don't think that was exactly intentional." She could feel Alice's eyes stabbing into the back of her head.

.

Professor Maple laughed maniacally, "Oh, this is going to be a grand old time!" she crossed her arms and leveled her sadistic smile on the pair, "Ebon, no skis or snowboard. Zero, you can only use the shotgun form of your weapon."

Zero nodded with his weapon held out. The mirrored silver blade cast dots of light across the battlefield. The urban ninja threw the blade up into the air. He caught it by the blade, and the whole apparatus collapsed around his hand, the metal finger guards keeping him from slicing into his aura by just using his gun. Metal clanged against metal, but when the sounds finished he held a short barreled shotgun with the blade as the stock. Silence twisted around his opponent's throat.

Ebon could do nothing but point at the hooded kid's weapon. "How did that?... What?"

.

"Ebon you stop bein' such a _lummox_ right now!" Alice screamed from the stands. "Get yourself ready!"

.

Ebon shook his head and pulled up the two cylinders hooked to his belt. With one in each hand, they extended into two full-length ski-poles. Their sides glowed bright blue with Ice Dust. After a minute of consideration, he flipped up the pole in his right hand. It folded and collapsed into a small pistol, still glowing with Dust power. Once he was ready he stood and faced his opponent. He was nervous to say the least. He wasn't used to fighting with so little mobility.

Professor Maple was still giggling maniacally while standing behind the students. She seemed to be having a little too much fun. How did she still have so much energy after the first three fights? "Okay, so remember to have fun. Please try not to kill each other… too much. This is sparring, remember?" she walked to the edge of the arena and held up a hand, "Alright! Begin!"

Zero nodded and lifted his gun towards Ebon. His eyes were dead as he fired a shot into the chest of his still shocked opponent. The bang shook the room. The force sent Ebon tumbling to the ground onto his backside.

.

"Ebon! You get your butt off of tha floor _right_ now!" Alice yelled. "You're startin' tha fight off just like Umber did!"

.

 _He still won though, didn't he?_ Ebon thought to himself as he pushed off of the floor. He poised his ski pole, the bladed edge arcing with frozen energy. Waves of frozen air rushed towards Zero as Ebon chopped in his direction with the weapon.

To the ninja, the icy waves looked like ethereal scythe blades being brought down on him, but they weren't intimidating at the slightest. He sidestepped them with ease. Ice was _his_ element after all.

.

"Ebon, you've got this!" Turf rooted his teammate on, "You've got this!" He turned to the rest of his team, reconsidered, then turned to FREZ, "He doesn't got this, does he?…"

"Honestly…" Rime muttered. "I don't know. I haven't seen Zero fight before."

Frost crossed her arms. "Come to think of it, I haven't see him fight much either. Even back in the Emerald Forest. He just… _appeared_ when I got to the temple." She shook her head. "He's strange... I can't quite seem to get a good read on him..."

Alice humphed. "Yeah. I'd say Ebon is _very_ dead…" She looked disappointed while watching Ebon swing and shoot at the hooded student. None of his attacks hit, and Zero seemed to refuse to shoot in favor of just dodging in order to toy with his opponent.

"Awesome… get an application ready for the open slot…" Turf continued watching Ebon's fruitless struggle.

.

The more Ebon attacked, the more frantic he became. _Why isn't he fighting back?!_ He yelled internally while staring into Zero's emotionless eyes. He swung again and again, making sure to keep his distance in order to avoid any devastating blasts that might have come from the katana's shotgun form the moment Zero decided to counter. Ebon was used to fighting at a distance, but that was usually when he was on the move. On foot, he wasn't comfortable battling at all.

Keeping up with the whole routine was becoming tiring to Zero. He just thought it would be rude to just take the guy out in two seconds, but that feeling of hesitation was a fleeting one. As soon as Ebon came in close, he sidestepped him and kicked his opponent in the ankles. While Ebon fell forwards, he fired three shots into his back in rapid succession.

.

Team ANTE watched as their teammate's aura-meter nearly emptied on Alice's scroll. She quickly snapped it shut and shoved it into a pocket in her dress before crossing her arms.

"What were you saying about your winning streak, Alice?" Frost smiled slyly to the other leader.

Alice was about to jump out of her seat, but Navy held his arm out in front of her. "Calm down, Alice. We still have two more fights. Team FREZ is done." He looked over to Arty and his teammates, "Turf and I just need to worry about the ARTS girls," he scoffed, "and that shouldn't be _too_ difficult." His confident demeanor faded when he heard laughter and a repetitive knocking noise from Team ARTS. Timbre was holding her stomach, laughing uncontrollably. "What's so funny, pop star?" he sneered.

Timbre wiped a tear from her eye, trying to control herself. For some reason, the banging continued. "Oh, it's just that, maybe you're underestimating us by a _long_ shot. If I remember correctly, you weren't there when eight new initiates took down a five-story tall Minotaurus during orientation. FYI, Sepia and I were a part of those eight."

Navy shrugged. "So? We've all killed Grimm. Fighting a _person_ is another story," his face barely budged from its stoic, stone-cold serious expression, "and can you stop kicking your desk? You're driving me crazy."

Timbre tilted her head in confusion, "Excuse me?"

That's when Navy noticed the other girl next to Timbre, the one with the brown flower in her hair and the sequin shirt. Her head was face-down on the long desk and she was slamming her fist against it. Her shoulders were heaving back and forth.

"Uh… Sepia?" Arty said, reaching towards her. "You okay?"

Sepia shot up, her mouth open wide in a fit of laughter, but no sound was coming out.

"Oh," Timbre smiled, "she's laughing. Glad I'm not the only one."

.

Professor Maple spoke to the class while helping Ebon up, "Now, go take a well deserved rest." She shooed them back to their teams and grinned, "Remember, odds are almost _always_ stacked against you. You can't be afraid to rely on others to compensate in areas that you are lacking." She looked over all of her students, noting the few laughing students. She had heard the little debacle between ANTE and ARTS, and thought it best to switch her plans around a little bit to spice things up. "Originally, I had planned the next fight to be Navy against Timbre, but… Sepia, Navy, you're both up next," she held up a long piece of black cloth, "and one of you has to put this on."

Navy turned to their teacher. "Why? I'd gladly take on the washed up celebrity."

' _Watch out for the splash zone, guys,'_ Sepia signed as she got up and made her way into the battlefield, ' _It's going to get messy!'_ She bounced down the stairs to meet up with Professor Maple, her boots' high heels clacking loudly as she skipped.

The shocked look on Timbre's face caught Arty's attention. "What is it? What'd she say?"

Timbre sat there quietly. "You'd be better off not knowing," she assured him.

.

Assuming that it would be her taking the blindfold, Sepia gingerly took it from her instructor's hand and tied it on.

"Who said that was for you?" Navy jeered.

Professor Maple shrugged. "She isn't wrong, Navy. There's a very specific reason I'm having her go blind this fight. I recommend that you take this a little more seriously," she pointed to her tablet, "If you could read what this girl was capable of, you'd be... concerned."

Even without her sight, Sepia seemed to be perfectly at ease. After all, it wasn't like a director wouldn't plan out her scenes prior to filming. Before the scene, every action was being planned out. The surprise, struggle, a heart drop, and the climax of the film. A lovely screenplay circled around and around her brain. She simply gave a thumbs up to say that she was prepared.

"Great," Professor Maple responded, "Navy, you will only be able to use one weapon from your…" she looked over his black combat vest, which was stuffed to the brim with guns, knives, and other offensive gear, "arsenal… for this fight, so choose carefully."

Navy was taken back a bit by Professor Maple's stipulation. "But… but…"

" _No_ buts. _One_ weapon." Professor Maple stood firm.

He looked over his combat vest, making a mental list of pros and cons to everything there. He decided to go for his most versatile weapon. He reached and pulled a solid black glock off of his belt, "Fine." He held up the gun and cocked it.

"Interesting choice. Alright, if you are both ready, then you may begin," Professor Maple took her position as an observer.

"Bring it on, girly!" Navy raised his arm, pointing his gun straight at Sepia's blindfolded face and pulled the trigger. He reeled back, a knot forming deep in the pit of his chest. Missing the target wasn't something that this soldier did, but there Sepia was, totally unscathed. The actress moved her head just a few inches to the side, allowing the bullet to whiz by her ear without even leaving a mark.

Camera-guns out in front of her, Sepia began giving return fire to her opponent. Although he tried to run sideways to avoid her onslaught, the guns didn't waver from him. The trail of bullets followed him closely. The first bit of her scene took place: the surprise.

.

Roland gawked at the girl, "What in Remnant…?"

"You'll understand in a little while." Timbre patted him on the back.

.

Navy kept on the run, firing every few steps in hopes that he might manage to hit the little weasel that Sepia was proving to be. He was used to running from gunfire, but that was when his opponents could actually see what they were aiming at. An enemy that was basically blind was keeping up with him. Not only that, but dodging his return attacks. _What is going on here?!_

The great thing about being mute is that you can hum your own battle music without being heard, or so Sepia believed. A guitar riff here, a few cymbal crashes there, and she had a full soundtrack going in her head. Her return fire seemed to be quite a shock to the jarhead.

If she could have spoken, she would've been talking smack while he ran around in panic. That would have made the next part of the scene, the struggle, a lot more effective. Instead, she had to send that message with an unrelenting spray of bullets. For a moment she ceased her fire, but then she sprinted towards Navy with the butts of her pistol ready to bludgeon Navy's skull in. He fired off a few rounds, but she dodged them with ease.

Though the girl seemed to know what was going on despite not being able to see it, she was still just an opponent. The two of them threw hits back and forth, but blocked with their forearms. Bullets were exchanged, but no damage was really being done.

Sepia was enjoying every second of it.

.

Arty watched the battle intently, but, given his short attention span, his eyes began to wander around. Team ANTE looked just as confused and enthralled as everyone else, Alice obviously fuming as she watched Navy struggle. Frost and Rime looked amused. On his own team, Roland looked like he was both trying to understand the situation and reveling in Navy's frustration. Timbre had a knowing smile as she watched her partner hold her own.

That's when Arty noticed a small ball of light at the top of the room. It wasn't part of the light fixtures. No. It was a literal ball of light _floating_ at the apex of the ceiling.

"She doesn't need her eyes to see…" Roland muttered to himself as he watched the fight.

That's when Arty began to piece things together. "Hey. Roland." Arty nudged his partner and pointed to the ceiling. "Do you see that?"

The Faunus's face scrunched up in confusion before slowly fading away into a smile, "No freaking way…"

.

Seeing that her attack was proving useless, Sepia bounded over her opponent in an attempt to get in a few back shots on him.

Navy saw his chance. Once she was in the air, she couldn't do much to change her trajectory. He dove to the ground and rolled onto his back, aiming up at the girl flying over his head, narrowly avoiding being hit in the head by a brown boot heel in the process. Once her head entered his iron sights, he fired.

The bullet missed Sepia's face by inches. Though it didn't hit what he was aiming at, Navy did manage to hit another target.

.

The captivated students jumped as the glowing orb above the battlefield shattered upon being struck, sending shimmering, glass-like shards raining down upon Sepia and Navy.

.

Instead of landing cleanly like usual, Sepia fell face first into the ground and slid a few feet. She shivered, clearly disturbed by the turn of events.

 _What the hell…? She lost her balance?_ As he went to push himself up, Navy winced when he felt some sharp objects digging into his free hand. He looked down at his palm and saw what looked like shimmering bits of glass stuck to his skin. Only a second later, they began to dissolve into small flecks of light before disappearing, reminiscent of a Grimm after it died, only with light instead of shadow. He clenched his fist and stood up to face the clearly shaken girl, who was facing the wall away from him. "I don't know what tricks you're pulling, but it's time to end them," he pulled his gun and aimed at the back of her head.

 _That was the heart drop, soldier boy..._ Sepia thought to herself. Her grin was hidden from his view, just like the three glowing orbs floating behind his head.

.

"Navy! Look ou-" Alice couldn't finish her sentence in time to warn her teammate.

.

Sepia held her guns over her shoulders and fired backwards at Navy's firing hand. His shock gave her enough time to dig her heels between the tiles and the wall to push off. The orbs began flying around and around Navy, just as she willed them to. She could see every angle of his poor little face.

Navy still didn't understand what was happening, but he knew that these strange orbs had to go. He shot his glock randomly around him at the spinning lights. The more he shot, the more frustrated he got. His aim began to suffer. Bright pulses of light rippled off of the forcefield as the stray bullets collided with it.

Sepia stopped dead in her tracks. She faced Alice, though wasn't able to get the full effect of looking her in the eyes. Her gun slowly was leveled at Navy's face, and the orbs flew back to her. They were positioned in a triangle around the barrel of the weapon, and Navy looked up just in time to get a view down its opening.

 _And now for the climax! The grand finale!_ Her trigger finger didn't hesitate for a moment. Three bullets were fired, and slammed into Navy's face. She didn't so much as flinch while firing upon the soldier, ' _And… cut,'_ she mouthed to the leader of Team ANTE.

When some of the past fights ended in cheers from onlookers or sounds of disappointment from teammates, Sepia's victory resulted in nothing but stunned silence.

.

"So…" Turf looked at his teammate, who was rolling around on the ground and holding his face. He didn't feel too terrible, "That… was actually pretty cool."

"No kidding!" Rime chimed in.

Roland couldn't help but grin, "Got what he deserved, huh?" He gave Sepia a thumbs up of approval.

.

Sepia pulled off the blindfold and returned the gesture. The three orbs shattered into countless golden flecks of light all around her. With a final curtsy, she ran back up to take her seat with her team. Butterflies still bounced around in her stomach from the look of shock and rage in Team ANTE's leader.

.

Alice's face was as red as her hair. "You know what? You _bloody_ know what? This mess doesn't prove a _thing_! So what if Navy and Ebon lost?" She looked to the teacher at the front of the room. "These _stupid_ limitations would _neva_ 'appen in the _real_ world. We're trained ta fight Grimm here. Grimm. Are. _Predictable_." She shook her head. "What in Remnant do you think you're actually teaching us by 'aving us do this our first day of class?" The girl in the red dress turned. Her boots clattered on the steps as she headed for the exit at the back of the room.

"Alice?" Ebon reached out to grab her arm, but she pushed it off. She glared back at him before continuing on to the exit.

Right as she reached the last landing, a previously unseen person held an arm out in front of her. "An' who exactly do you think you a-..."

A man donning a white suit jacket and black slacks looked up at Alice from behind tinted bifocals. He straightened his checkered tie and cleared his throat.

"P-p-professor Alabasta?..." Alice stammered.

"Ms. Crims. If you would, I'd like you to return to your seat and listen to what your instructor has to say," Professor Alabaster smiled kindly at his redheaded student, "I hope that won't be a problem."

"N-no sir," she rushed back to her seat. Her face still red, but more from embarrassment than anger.

As always, Professor Maple had a happy gleam in her eyes, "Alice, you seem to have a misunderstanding as to how Grimm work. They aren't mindless killing machines. They can think, and they can learn. As you may know, the longer a Creature of Grimm lives, the wiser and more powerful it becomes. Just look at the Kokonatsu, for example. The fox Grimm only gets smarter with age," she made her way to the walkway between desks, "There may well come a day when you're pitted up against something much bigger and stronger than yourself. Trust me, the Minotaurus is not even close to the biggest or strongest thing that you might take on," she nodded towards Arty and then to Everest, "and there may be a time you can't rely on your semblance to bail you out," her gesture was directed at Roland and then Rime, "In fact, you may not have your weapon of choice, or be limited to just _part_ of your weapon." She smiled at Alice, and allowed her to look to Ebon, Navy, Frost, and Zero for herself, "Gods forbid that you're blinded," she didn't even have to tell Alice who she referred to with that quip.

Professor Maple walked back to the center of the arena, "You see, being a Huntress or a Huntsman doesn't mean that you can predict what will happen next. It means that you can adjust to unpredictability. On top of that, it won't just be Grimm that you fight, but also other _people._ Criminals. Maniacs. Rogue Huntsmen. _Those_ are the definition of unpredictable. So, please tell me if you're here to learn how to be a Huntress, or if you're just here to make yourself feel large and in charge?"

"I…" Alice felt the eyes of her classmates dig into her. And if her classmates were digging, Professor Maple and Alabaster were burning holes into her very being, "I…" she took a deep breath, "I'm here ta be a Huntress, ma'am."

"I was hoping that would be your answer," Professor Maple looked to her boss and nodded. Her attention was returned to her students quickly, and she carried on with the lesson, "Now, we still have one last fight. Timbre and Turf, the green T's of ARTS and ANTE. Are you two prepared?"

.

Timbre turned to Turf, "Guess that's to be expected. We're the only ones left."

"Yeah, but I feel bad about it. We worked together back at initiation, after all," Turf stood and propped his shovel up on his shoulder as he made his way to the arena, "but I've gotta bring in a victory for ANTE, so I'm sorry. Can't let ARTS be the only team with a perfect record."

"Hey, how it goes is how it goes," she smiled, "just don't think I'll go easy on you."

Professor Maple clasped her hands together and motioned for them to come down. Her grin took on a less sadistic, more excited gleam. Once they were down, she got right into it, "Alright, this one is simple," she stepped a few feet away and pulled out what seemed to be a laser pointer. With a press of a button, a blade of red light shot out from the end, but stopped about three feet out. She used the laser sword to singe a circle just large enough for someone to be able to lay down in, "Turf, you cannot leave this circle. Timbre, you may only use about one foot of your wires on each hand," she explained while putting away the laser sword.

Timbre shrugged and released a length of the thick cable from each sleeve, "Kay," she turned on her heel and walked to the end of the arena opposite of the burned circle. One arm reeled back as she took on her fighting stance.

"This is gonna be interesting," Turf stepped into the circle and shifted his weapon into shotgun form. He planned to use the distance between them as long as he could, "I'm ready," he looked over to his fuming leader for a moment. As much of a she-demon as she might've been, Alabaster chose her as leader for a reason. He had to trust that much.

Timbre looked over to her team. Arty and Sepia were giving hearty thumbs-up. Roland just held his hand out flat and tilted it side to side. _Thanks for the vote of confidence, Roland_. "Ready, Teach."

"Then get on with it!" Professor Maple quickly got out of the way of the impending battle.

A pair of shotgun blasts shook the floor as soon as Professor Maple was clear of the arena. Turf pumped his shotgun to reload, seeing that Timbre was just far enough away to avoid being hit, "Come on!" he called, "Come at me, singer!" his tone was more playful and taunting than combative. Instead of the glazed over daze that he usually had, he held an air of happiness about him. It seemed that he was just happy to be there.

Timbre smiled and dashed forwards. She dodged another shotgun blast by flipping up and over Turf, "With pleasure," she whispered in his ear before swiping her arm at his neck.

"Crap!" Turf ducked to avoid the wires. He hoisted up his gun and worked the pump action to ready a shot. The barrels were angled Timbre's stomach and a pair of shots boomed, but it seemed that she was too quick on her feet. Two misses already. Neither of them were getting anywhere in the match.

Timbre ducked low and swiped with her heavy black boots, attempting to knock the boy off of his feet. She felt her heel connect and watched as Turf tumbled to the ground. He barely remained within the circle, his nose stopping only inches from touching the tile outside of the singed ring.

He coughed, having had the air sufficiently knocked out of him. He looked up at Timbre and aimed his gun at her one more time. He fired, landing a blast in the center of her corset. Though it wouldn't do much damage, he was really just trying to make some space.

Timbre spun through the air from the knockback before hitting the ground.

.

Arty watched her aura slowly dropping. "Dang it…" he looked back up to her, "C'mon Timbre! You can do better than that! Get up!"

.

"Easier said than done, Umber!" she kicked herself back onto her feet and dashed towards Turf, who continued to pump and shoot his shotgun.

Timbre closed in, but Turf was ready. He switched weapon form and swiped the sharpened end of his spade at his opponent. He missed, but on the rebound he twisted the weapon so that the flat of it struck Timbre in the side.

Timbre sprawled to the floor. She knew she had to strike back fast. She was in a state of weakness. All he had to do was -

Timbre turned to counter, but found the twin barrels of the shotgun pointed right at her.

"I'm not a showy guy," Turf aimed for the open space between her collarbones and fired. She was sent sprawling backwards. He slowly lowered his weapon, noting the groaning Timbre on the ground in front of him, "We're still cool… right?" he asked slowly, holding out his hand to help her up. He didn't want to ruin one of his new friendships already.

Timbre looked up at the boy that had just shot her in the chest with a shotgun. His emerald green eyes looked down apologetically. She began to laugh and took his hand, "Of course we're cool. It's just a practice battle. Why'd you think I'd hold it against you?"

"Because half my team would," he pulled her up, "but I'm glad you're not the same way," he looked down at their hands, noting that he had held hers for just a bit too long. He felt his face turn red and quickly let go, "Uhh…. we… we have to exchange notes sometime. We could learn a little from each other."

.

Roland nudged Arty, "Did a fight just… end on a happy note…?" he whispered, "I know a thing or two about romance novels, and the guy shooting the girl usually doesn't end like… like _this_."

Arty ignored the literary allusion, "I don't think Everest wants to _kill_ me, and I don't want to kill him. Does that not count as ending on a happy note?" the leader of ARTS looked over to the caveman, who was being entertained by Rime folding some paper into small birds. When Rime saw him looking at them, she glared at them and turned away in a huff.

"But then again, maybe I'm guilty by association because of you clocking Rime over the head with a forty-pound typewriter," Arty patted Roland's weapon, which was still affixed to his left arm. As much as Roland's outbursts scared him, he was thankful that the guy was on their side.

"Yeah, I'll have to find a way to make up for that…" Roland groaned, "I like to choose my enemies, and she isn't that bad. I'll break Navy and Alice's necks, though. I don't give a fu-"

A message appeared on the scrolls of Team ARTS and showed a single word.

 ** _Sepia Hughes : _**_'Language.'_

"Right…" the Faunus crossed his arms, "Anyway… Maple! Are we done here?" he called to their instructor.

Professor Maple looked around the room, "Well, I already gave the speech that I planned on giving at the end, so I suppose we're about ready to wrap things up. Does anyone have any more questions, concerns, or tantrums they'd like to share?"

Professor Alabaster stood in the stands, "If I may, I would like to have a moment," his grey eyes scanned the room, critically looking over each student, "What I have seen today has made me worry in some ways, and feel relieved in others. Forgive the metaphor, but I see many pawns, and perhaps even a rook or a knight here before me. All of you have ways of making a difference, but few of you have the desire or will to plan more than a move or two ahead. Allow me to leave you with this question," his eyes settled on Arty, the boy he had personally asked to come to Beacon only the summer before, "What moves will you make in the coming turns?"

He let the question sink in, seemingly amused by the nervous glances that the students gave each other, "I will let you all think about that for a while. I hope that you all have a great rest of your day," he turned and left without so much as another word.

Professor Maple nodded slowly, "Wise words..." she sounded unsure of herself as she looked around the room, hoping that someone in the room would be able to decipher the meaning behind her boss's little speech, "Well, I hope that you all get plenty of rest. I look forward to what is to come. You'll all grow and I hope that you all do great."

As the students filed out of Professor Maple's classroom into the hall, there was a lot of chatter about the six fights they had just witnessed. Critiques were given and awe-struck praise was passed on. Ebon and Turf congratulated Arty and Roland before Alice and Navy came to move them along. Arty was the last in line to leave the room when he heard Timbre talking to Professor Maple at the front of the combat arena. He stopped to look over to the teacher and student chatting, occasionally smiling, laughing, but at one point or another he could swear that he saw them wipe tears away.

"Oh, Mr. Umber! You're still here?" Professor Maple called out.

Arty tensed up and was tempted to run out of the room in a panic.

"Come down here, Arty. I'm not going to hurt you," the redhead chuckled, "I'm done with that for today."

After that lesson, Arty could see that Professor Maple's teaching methods were a bit unorthodox compared to Atlas Academy, but they were definitely effective. That still didn't mean he wasn't absolutely terrified of her.

"Arty," Timbre beamed, "I'd like to introduce you to Professor Carmen Maple, long-term family friend of the Forté family."

Arty was taken a bit aback, "You two know each other?"

Timbre leaned up against the wall, "Yeah, she was on the same team as my mom. She practically helped raise me."

"Aw, now don't give me _that_ much credit. Your father was the real caregiver. I was more of just the fun aunt that you got into trouble with every now and then," she grinned wildly as she swung a laser pointer around her finger by the keychain.

Arty could just nod, "Okay… so, not to sound rude, but, why are you two telling me this?"

Maple put her hands on Arty's shoulders, "Because I wanted to say thank you for so readily accepting her as a member of your team… not like you had a choice, but nonetheless! Thank you. It can't be easy having somebody of her… reputation being on your team. Must make Team ARTS rather popular, huh? Or maybe less popular, as it seems," she narrowed her eyes, her tone becoming much more serious, "if anything happens to her and I find out you didn't give 500% to help her, then _I'll_ be the one you answer to," her wild smile reappeared, "okay?"

Arty felt like passing out on the floor. He looked over to Timbre, who was rolling her eyes, "Yeah. Of course… You got it."

Professor Maple nodded and released the student. Her eyes passed over him one last time. Her examination told her that she could trust him with Timbre, so she waved her hands to shoo them off, "Now, run along. You've both got lots to do. Other classes and all that."

The pair of students left to catch up with their team, knowing full well that they would probably have some situation to attend to between Roland and Sepia.

.

The four of them could… no… _would_ go far, and Carmen knew that much. When she knew that they were out of earshot, she pulled up a photo on her scroll. Four young women stood side-by-side, all beaming, "See, she's in good hands…" her voice trailed off. She put away her scroll, looked ahead, and set off for her office, "She'll make you proud, Aria."


	13. V1Ch9: Down the Rabbit Hole

The crunching of leaves underfoot could barely be heard beneath the sounds of exploding paintballs, a clacking typewriter, whipping wires, and fully automatic pistols. Each attempt to strike the target ended in some different iteration of leaves rustling. Four students ran after their objective, a small black rabbit covered in bone plates. This, though seemingly not a threat, was in fact a Creature of Grimm.

"Hey, Burne, are we just gonna keep hitting leaves, or are we gonna put a bullet in this thing's head?!" Roland shouted to his leader. He ripped off a trail of paper, morphed it into a spear, and then lobbed it at the creature. It missed by millimeters, "I _**hate**_ this thing!"

"Just don't let it out of your sight!" Arty yelled, "Last time it got away we got confused and started chasing after Team ANTE's Tuu!" he shot a few yellow paintballs. The rabbit Grimm zigzagged to avoid the bolts of lightning shooting up from the paint blotches.

As Roland, Arty, and Sepia ran on foot after the creature, Timbre swung from the branches of the crimson trees by her wires. "I don't think I've ever seen a Grimm move this fast before!" she called out, thrilled by the rush of their current assignment. If it had been a couple of weeks earlier when Team ARTS was still dysfunctional, or rather completely against one another, they'd have given up a long time ago and accepted the failing grade. Now that they'd actually gotten used to each others' quirks and unique fighting styles, they were able to put their powers to use, "Sepia," she called down to her partner, who stopped firing her twin guns at the call of her name, "need a boost?"

The brunette smiled knowingly. She launched up to the swinging girl and grabbed onto her black combat boots. Timbre used the momentum of her next swing to throw the director down the rows of Forever Fall's iconic red-leaved trees.

Sepia launched like a missile between the trees, far ahead of the rest of her team. Had she had her equipment, she would have loved to film their whole chase.

Arty yelled after her, "We have to corner that thing! None of us are fast enough to take it out while it's moving!"

"Hold up! I've got an idea!" Roland shouted. He watched Sepia shoot ahead, "Moviemaker! Catch this and throw it ahead of the thing!" he yelled whilst pitching a live ink grenade towards Sepia.

She held a hand back and caught the explosive without looking, _Nice throw, Author,_ she thought to herself. The fuse dwindled down inside the black casing. It was pitched once again, and soared over the Tuu's head.

"Perfect!" Roland shouted to her. The ink grenade exploded, then condensed into a black web between two red trees. The plan was foolproof.

Joy washed out of the cowboy's eyes as the Grimm hopped through one of the holes between the sticky strands of ink. Sepia slammed into the web hard enough to shake leaves off of the two trees, then Timbre came crashing in behind her. If only Arty and Roland were given enough time to react, otherwise they wouldn't have found themselves joining the girls of Team ARTS. Their combined weight ripped the bark off of the trees that supported the trap, wrapping the team up in the process. Red leaves puffed outwards when they slammed into the ground as one tightly bound team.

"Roland…" Arty grumbled as the feathers on Sepia's bustle tickled his face, "when does this plan work?" He sneezed, sending dirt up in a small cloud as the ink liquefied and flowed off of them.

"Probably not next time, but they say the third time's the charm," Roland stifled a laugh, "By the way... where is my hat?"

"Roland," Timbre interjected, "nobody cares about your stupid-"

 _ **"MY HAT!"**_ he roared and sat up. His eyes narrowed on the tan cowboy hat resting on Timbre's head. One tackle and a tumbling Timbre later, the hat was returned to its rightful owner.

"You could've just, y'know, asked…" Timbre grumbled as she brushed the dirt off of her shoulders.

"Looks like ya let your little _friend_ get away there, loves," a familiar shrill voice rang out through the trees.

Arty groaned, "Not in the mood, Alice," he turned to the aristocratic-looking girl, who was twirling a playing card around mindlessly between her fingers as she batted her eyes at the team before her.

Sepia shot up to her feet and glared at the redhead. Despite her silence, she managed a convincing snarl at the leader of Team ANTE.

"Woah there," Roland latched onto the back of her sequin shirt, "Down girl," his efforts to hold her back were only minimal. It would have pleased him greatly to see her rip that bigoted invalid to shreds.

The urge to kill burned in Sepia's gut. It took just a few moments for it to fizzle down to a simmer, ' _Are we going to hurt her later?'_ she signed.

In the short time that he'd known her, Roland picked up at least a few words in sign language, or a few by his standards. Luckily, language came easy to the cowboy, "Yeah, we'll teach her _and_ Navy who's boss later."

At the mention of Alice's crony, Arty noticed something, "Hey, Alice. Shouldn't you be helping the rest of your team catch your Tuu?"

Alice scoffed, "They're managing just fine. I just wanted to stop by to see how gloriously Team FARTS was failin' this assignment. And I have to say, it's been a _riot_."

Timbre pushed her soiled hair behind her shoulders, "Yeah, well, if you excuse us, we'll get back to actually working together to catch Professor McGouran's stupid bunny." Timbre shot a wire into the tree canopy and quickly flew off of the ground down the path where the Tuu they had been chasing dashed off to.

Arty watched as she zipped off. "Can't help but to agree with her," he gave Alice a quick two-finger salute, "See you later Queen of Farts!" His boots slammed against the ground as he dashed after Timbre.

"It's Queen of Hearts _! Hearts!_ " She corrected him as he disappeared between the trees. She'd grown fond of the new nickname, and she refused to have the likes of Arty Umber defile it.

For a moment, Roland debated giving Sepia the okay to attack, but didn't want to get a lecture about respecting leadership. One thing did stand out in his mind, and he believed that he and Sepia could catch up to the other members of ARTS without an issue.

Alice began to turn around to leave.

Roland kept a hand on Alice's shoulder to halt her advance, "What are you trying to accomplish by being a total…"

Sepia signed a word referring to a female dog, but it didn't seem that Alice knew sign language.

"Yeah," Roland nodded, acknowledging the validity of the title that Sepia gave. Sadly, saying it to Alice's face might have taken away the effectiveness of his line of questioning, "Being a butt. What are you trying to accomplish by being a total butt?"

Alice narrowed her eyes at the pair, but her expression slowly shifted back to her cocky smile, "Nothing major," she gave them a quick glance, "just trying to show everyone how much better I am than them."

"Alice!" A voice shot out from down the path. Ebon was shooting towards the three students on a torrent of ice that seemed to magically form underneath him. The black and blue snowboard attached to his boots ripped across its surface. "We found the Tuu! Navy and Turf have it cornered, but they can't hold it long. We could use some of that eagle-eye of yours!" he reached out a mittened hand to her.

"Well," Alice chuckled, "looks like I'm off." She was snatched up by Ebon while he zoomed by. As she rode off with him on the track of snow, she wagged her fingers towards them, "Ta-ta losers!"

"Hey!" Roland shouted after her, bits of ice pelting his face, "Send Navy my regards! I love that jar-headed jerk!"

As they faded off into the distance, Sepia signed a message to Roland, ' _I really hate them.'_

"Got that right," he set off to catch up with the others, "Let's get a move on. We're going to have to explain to Arty that we didn't so much as hit her."

 _Right,_ she thought, _like he's gonna believe that._

 **.**

"About time you two caught up!" Arty yelled back to Roland and Sepia while they ran up next to him.

"I just wanted to ask Alice a question. That's all," Roland didn't so much as look at Arty, but instead looked around for the Tuu.

' _Alice isn't dead. I promise.'_ Sepia sent through the group text.

Timbre landed on the ground and pulled out her scroll. "That's good to hear, er, read!"

"Yeah," Arty laughed, "where would the fun be without someone like Alice around?"

"Probably everywhere," Roland rolled his eyes, "Ever hear of the Fun Police? Well she's like the Fun Atlesian Military."

' _Got that right!'_ Sepia texted. She had already made it clear that she advocated for chaos as much as possible, but she still wanted to get the lesson wrapped up and over with in this case. Killing one Tuu was taking way too long. Their new professor had given them a quick rundown of Grimm tracking.

' _Look for a trail of crushed leaves. This is Forever Fall, so the leaves will allow us to see where it went. A Tuu will hunker down when it feels safe,'_ she texted. Her eyes in the sky scanned the area. Finding a thin strip of misplaced leaves would mean finding their Tuu.

Arty saw Sepia pointing up the hill off to the left. He followed the direction her finger was pointing to find a series of large metal and concrete arches. "Oh great…" He looked back to his team, "It's under the rail line," he paused, the gears in his head turning, "wait… no no no… this is _perfect_. Guys, I have an idea," He pulled a sketchbook and pen from his backpack and gestured for his team to come closer. Holding it open for them to see, he began drawing a series of lines and symbols as he explained the strategy for killing their target. He slammed the book shut, "So, that's the plan. Any questions?"

Timbre raised her hand, "Yeah, did you seriously come up with all that just now?"

Arty nodded proudly.

Timbre's eyes widened a bit, "Wow. Okay. So, why were you kicked out of a military academy again?"

"That had nothing to do with my strategy skills."

"Right."

"Yeah, that all had to do with arson," Roland chimed in.

"Shut up, Roland." Arty put his things back in his bag. "Let's just get this over with."

 **.**

The black rabbit-like creature milled around in the tall grasses below the train tracks twenty feet above its head. It's spiked black paws crunched the dead red leaves as it explored the shady knoll.

Arty and Sepia were at their places on top of the rail line. Luckily for them, there wasn't a train to be seen in either direction. They looked over the siding, making sure the Tuu hadn't run away from its spot underneath them.

"Okay, Sepia. You ready to cut that thing off?"

Sepia nodded. A golden light flickered in her eyes.

The Tuu began to panic as golden orbs of light flashed into existence. More and more popped up, forming barriers between the arches on either side. It tried to get as far away from the strange orbs as possible, running in circles in the middle of the space, but there wasn't an escape to be found. It was trapped.

"Tuu don't like bright lights and noises," Arty recited part of Professor McGouran's lesson, "Cut it off and make it panic. They won't do anything when they're scared," he pulled out his scroll. His team's portraits showed up in the voice call, "Okay, Timbre, you ready to try out Modernism?"

At the bottom of the hill, Timbre and Roland sat together, watching the orbs and listening to the panicked cries of the monster.

"You got it, Painter-boy." Timbre stood up and aimed her hand towards the metal structure. A length of silver wire shot forward and latched onto the metal beams. She propelled herself upwards, "Arty! Now!"

The leader aimed his gun downwards. Two yellow paintballs launched downwards while Timbre arced towards them. He watched as she retracted her wire.

Timbre flew freely through the air up the hill, aiming both of her wrists in front of her towards the yellow orbs shooting downwards from the bridge. With a slight flick of her fingers, both wires shot forward and pierced the paintballs, coating the cords in popping arcs of electricity. The wires wrapped around the two support arcs to aid her in coming to a stop. Arcs of power jumped from the now yellow wires. The Tuu, now completely surrounded by light and buzzing noises, panicked even more.

"Roland! Now!" Timbre yelled at her teammate.

A trail of paper contorted into a blade, "Got it!" Roland sprinted towards the flashing lights that immobilized the Tuu. A few stray sparks made his skin crawl when he dived over the electrified wires, "You're dead!" he shouted with the freshly typed sword raised to strike.

A white and cyan colored club slammed into the side of the Tuu, propelling it through Sepia's wall of orbs and into one of the metal supports. Only the fading legs of the Grimm could be seen twitching around the edges of the impact crater.

The cowboy slid across ground face first. Grass, mud, and dead leaves caked up in his between his jaws. He rolled onto his back once he finally stopped, but a wad of nature still squirmed in his mouth. Spitting the wad out, Roland found the source of the squirming: a six-inch-long earthworm.

"Oh, come on…" he covered his mouth and wretched.

Sepia held her head and let out a silent scream as she crumpled and fell off of the side of the bridge. Her brain was overloaded with dozens of vague fields of view shattering. Her head throbbed. It felt as though an arc of lightning pulsed between her temples. She slammed down into the dirt only a few feet away from Roland.

"Did you kill it?!" Arty jumped down from the rail line. He found the very familiar club still protruding from the freshly bent metal frame, "Oh crud..."

"I commend you on your efforts, Umber, but uh, you should have looked a bit closer at the paint job on that rabbit," a calm female voice came from down the hill.

Team ARTS turned to find Frost Aurora walking up the hill, chuckling. A rare deviation from her usual deadpan expression. Rime and Zero trailed close behind while Everest went to retrieve his club.

"That was seriously… _your_ Tuu?..." Timbre said in despair as she clipped the electrified wires from her gloves. They fell to the ground, the electricity fading away from the lack of aura to keep the Dust activated.

"Yeah, didn't the bright blue mark on its head not give it away?" Rime said, smiling as she poked the middle of her forehead with her finger. "That was Team _FREZ's_ bunny." She looked over to the mess of shining glass shards and yellow wires. "Nice strategy though."

"Thanks..." Arty mumbled.

Roland wiped mud and ink off of his face, "Funny… I thought something was off about it," he coughed and made his way to Sepia, "Moviemaker… you gonna make it?"

Sepia came to and nodded slowly, ' _I don't like falling very much. Bad memories,'_ she signed.

"Right…" he helped her up, "so, FREZ, how is everyone? Frost, are you still being all stoic? Rime keeping the meathead on a leash? Everest eating… everything? Or how about Zero? He still giving you guys the _cold shoulder_?" There was some attempt to be friendly, but it didn't come off as very genuine.

"Yeah…" Frost replied with a slightly judgemental look, "Pun aside, you can say that." She looked over her team, "We're not as… dysfunctional as we were when we first met."

"Well," Arty began, "I guess it kind of helps that you're all kinda… _cool_." He paused, waiting for somebody to laugh at his joke.

Timbre pinched the bridge of her nose before punching her leader in the head. "No more ice puns, Painter-boy."

"Ow!… but Roland did it…" He said, rubbing the new welt on the back of his head.

Roland shrugged, "I was pretty _chill_ with mine. You made yours too obvious."

Rime stood by, grimacing. "We've only been here two weeks, and I'm already sick of the puns." She looked to Frost, "Should I just like, start wearing red or something? Would that fix things? Would that make everybody stop with the stupid _puns_?!"

Roland leaned against the metal arch closest to the group, "Then I'd just say that you had _freezer burn_ ," he forced back a wave of laughter.

Rime went to say something, but just stood dumbfounded. She held her hands up in defeat. She turned and began walking down the hill. "I'm done, Frost. I'm done. I'm going back to the school. I feel like if I hear one more ice pun, I'll end up killing somebody."

Frost rolled her eyes and chuckled, "Sure thing, Rime."

"I don't want his blood on my hands, Frost!" Rime yelled back as she disappeared into the trees.

"Yeah! Go _cool down_ for a while!" Roland shouted after her. There was a high-pitched whizzing noise. The color faded from Roland's smiling, frozen solid face. Impaled in the metal only a few inches to the right of his head was a spear made of ice. The chilly mist rolling off of it sent shivers down his spine.

"Point taken…" he murmured, "I think I found her _freezing point_ …" he whispered, hoping that Rime wouldn't hear.

Arty shook his head, "You keep that up, and she'll put you _on ice_ , dude."

Frost held her hand up, "Okay you guys. With that, we'll be on our way. Good luck completing your assignment." The three remaining members of Team FREZ turned to start their trek back down the hill and to Beacon, but Frost stopped, "Oh, Umber."

Arty looked down to her. Her dark grey eyes looked back at him.

"According to McGouran's messages, the Queen and her court haven't killed their Tuu yet," she gave a sly smile, "so why don't you and your friends go beat them to the punch?" She waved farewell as she followed Zero and Everest into the trees.

Sepia shot up with guns at the ready. Once again, she brushed off the aching in her bones to fight with her team. After the last encounter with Alice, she was rearing to go if it meant embarrassing her.

"Yeah, and this time, Arty," Timbre said as she spun one of her wires around, "make sure it's actually _our_ Tuu."

"Well, ours _and_ ANTE's," Roland went on typing out a new weapon.

Timbre made her way down the hill with her team, "Would that count as an F or extra credit?"

The other three thought for a second before a ding came from their scrolls.

 _ **Sepia Hughes:**_ ' _Both.'_

"Who cares? Pissing Alice and Navy off is enough incentive for me," Roland held up his arm and clenched his fist. The paper condensed into a razor sharp blade reaching towards the sky, "It's simple, guys. We kill Team ANTE's Tuu."

Arty folded his arms behind his head and considered Roland's plan, gazing up at the sky as they walked. "Eh, whatever. I don't have any objections," he pointed at Roland, "but we're killing ours _first_. It's already given us enough trouble."

' _I'm totally down for that,'_ Sepia skipped along ahead. She was ready to get down to business. Her eyes slammed shut, and three orbs of light flashed to life around her. They all shot off in different directions. It was only a few seconds later when she opened her eyes once again. Already beaming, she pointed in the direction that they came.

The scrolls of Team ARTS all dinged when she sent her text.

 _ **Sepia Hughes:**_ ' _It's about a quarter mile ahead. Green painted markings, and nearby is one with red paint.'_

"Right," Arty led the charge, "Good work, Sepia. Now let's go hunt us some rabbits."

Roland ran after his leader, "I'll flank left with Sepia and try to loop around them. You and Timbre wanna block them off from one end while we get the other?" he asked. A quick glance to Sepia told him that she approved.

Arty agreed, "We'll take the green and you two troublemakers take the red."

"We're on the same page." Roland snatched a grenade off of his belt, "Yo, Pop-star, that good with you?" he called back.

"Modernism worked back there. I'm sure without Everest there, we'll be able to manage," she looked towards the cowboy, "You two think using Screenplay can take out ANTE's Tuu?"

"More than that," Roland grinned, "I think it'll give enough stall time for ANTE to watch as we take it out," he looked ahead to Sepia, "Kinda sucks that I got paired with Arty originally, you know? Sepia's a heck of a lot more fun."

"Thanks dude," Arty added, "Let's just go kill those Grimm." He and Timbre veered off to the right, "Good luck you two!"

"And you!" Roland waved them off and caught up with Sepia. Though he didn't say anything, they began having a sort of silent conversation. Being around her taught him the true volume of silence. The lifting of an eyebrow or the shifting of the nose meant a lot from someone who couldn't speak.

It wasn't a break in the silence per se, but Sepia did make communication a little easier by signing. She made sure to only use words that she knew Roland had picked up, ' _What was that about wishing that we were paired?'_

"Nothing," he said quickly, "just that we have similar mindsets. You know, not afraid to rush into conflict, willing to bash a few skulls in, the basics," he listed off. If only she could have spoken, then he wouldn't have to look at her to know what she had to say.

' _Right, totally,'_ she silently giggled, ' _By the way, Alice and Navy are ahead. I think they're closing in on the thing. Care if I do something a little sneaky?'_

Something sneaky? Of course he was down for that! He nodded in agreement, "Yeah! By all means, sneak away. You're real good at that, huh?"

Her smirk confirmed his theory, and before long they could see the redheaded wonder and her sidekick through the trees. She slowed down to avoid being heard while she made her way up behind the two.

Roland, having gained a vague understanding of the plan, kept going at full speed, "Hey! Queenie! Jack!" he slid past Alice so that they'd keep their eyes on him.

The Tuu huddled in fear within the hollow of the tree before the pair, and that was right where Roland wanted it. He tore off a sheet of paper covered in text from Writer's Block and threw it at the opening of the hollow. It sealed the rabbit Grimm off in its own little prison, "Oh, was that your Tuu?" he looked to the A and the N of ANTE, "Sorry, otters are colorblind... I think. My bad!"

Alice shook her head, wide-eyed from the sudden appearance of her biggest nuisance, "Ugh. Wells! I thought I left ya behind after you accidentally inked up your whole team? And if I remember correctly, color-blindness isn't a trait special to you _Faunus_." Her right arm was arched up next to her head, ready to throw a card.

Navy stood by her side, drawing his glock and what appeared to be a stun baton, "Out of our way. McGouran wouldn't like to hear about you preventing us from completing our assignment. Not like someone like _you_ would comprehend that though." He held the gun up, aiming it at Roland.

Having a typing speed of one thousand words or more a minute was useful in Roland's case, and it allowed him to have a new weapon at the ready. This time he went for a stubbier, wider blade, "Listen here, you two have got to stop with the whole prejudice thing. So what I've got a tail? It'll help me kick both of your behinds. In short, if you want the Tuu," he tipped his hat with his free hand, "then come and get it."

Alice sneered and turned to her lackey. "Navy, keep him busy for me will you, love?" She raised up her scroll, "I'm calling Turf and Ebon."

He held his stun baton at the ready, "With pleasure." He charged towards Roland, his combat boots kicking up plumes of fallen red leaves.

Although the gun might've been a threat, the stun baton seemed to be what Navy would lead with. Knowing this, Roland batted at it with his blade. His eyes traced his opponent's arm as it came up to level the gun at him. That might've hurt a bit, so he spun on his heels and used his tail to smack Navy across the cheek, "Learn your place!" he shouted, swinging his arm. He hoped to bash Navy's face in with his typewriter.

Navy ducked, sweeping his leg low and firing a few shots of his glock upwards at Roland's head.

Meanwhile, Alice was swiping through the menus of her scroll before holding it up to her ear. "Ebon! Turf! We found the Tuu! Get over 'ere righ-" she stopped, feeling her scroll being yanked from her hand, "What the- oi!"

Sepia stood behind her, taunting her by waving the stolen scroll in her gloved hand.

Alice stomped her foot, "Are _all_ of you ARTS freaks 'ere?!" She spun around, throwing cards down at Sepia's feet. Explosions rang out, but the girl was nowhere to be seen. Alice whipped her head around, searching for her, "Navy! Get Turf and Ebon over 'ere! The little runt just nicked my scroll!"

Navy kicked Roland away, backing away for a minute to carry through with his command. He reached down to his belt, but found his scroll case empty. Surprised, he looked back to see Sepia hanging by her legs from a tree branch. She was waving his and Alice's scrolls in her hands, her tongue sticking out.

"They're toying with us, Alice! Just kill the damn rabbit already!" he turned back to Roland, hate in his eyes, "I'll hold these two off."

"Yeah, right, hold us off," Roland brushed himself off while he stood, "It's two versus two. You can't take us both," he winked at Sepia.

 _Seems like someone likes seeing a plot through too, huh?_ Sepia thought to herself. Messing with these two gave her the most joy that she had had in awhile. ' _Screenplay?'_ she signed.

"Oh yeah," Roland tossed a black plastic ball into the air. This grenade was different. It had no fuse. It was simply a plastic ball full of ink, but that worked perfectly for this attack, "Sepia! Now!"

 _Right!_ Sepia cranked off a barrage of bullets into the black ball. It exploded into a mist of ink when the bullets made their mark.

Out of the corner of his eye, Roland saw Alice making a break for the Tuu, "Woah there, little lady," he flicked a wrist. The bullets left behind inky trails as they sailed through the air. Their trajectories shifted and curved, thus sending a few rocketing into the small of Alice's back.

"Alice!" Navy charged through the black mist towards his leader, who was still being barraged by the unrelenting bullets. He wrapped his arm around her and dragged her off to the side.

"Bollocks!" Alice coughed, "How the hell are they so _bloody_ coordinated?!"

Navy let her down behind the tree lining and began charging back at Roland. He held his arms against his face, swinging his baton to deflect the bullets curving towards him. There were only two targets in his sights, a demon rabbit, and a dirty otter Faunus. When he got within a few yards of his rival, he jumped, his stun baton at the ready. That's when he felt the bullets begin slamming into his side.

"Man, I've wanted to do this since I saw your stupid face!" Roland grinned maniacally at the onslaught that he gave the two, "We're coordinated because we are equal, Alice! We aren't better! We are _ARTS_!" he held his hand to the air. The bullets left Alice and Navy and rocketed into the hollow that held the Tuu.

Shrill squeaks were barely audible over the sound of splintering wood. Then silence fell upon the four.

Alice stepped out from the treeline, cards at the ready. She seemed to glow with rage as she clenched her fists. "You flashy twits aren't _equal_. If either of our teams are truly _equal_ , it's the one that doesn't have a bloody _Faunus_ mucking it all up!" Her heavy boots slammed into the leaves with every venomous word.

The remainder of Teams ARTS and ANTE trudged up through the leaves, but their silence seemed to indicate that they heard Alice's comments. Roland looked dumbfounded, but Sepia seemed to be taking her words in a different light. Her fingers flew on Alice's scroll, and then it was tossed back to its owner along with Navy's scroll.

' _Yeah,'_ it read, ' _and it seems like the Faunus and the disabled members of Team ARTS just put you and your boy-toy on the ground. We did the job that you two couldn't: taking out the Tuu. You said yourself that we aren't equal, right? Well, I'm calling you a liar, and Roland and I just proved my claim. Now you can keep going on and on about how incompetent Arty is, or now disgusting Roland is for being a Faunus, or how disappointing Timbre is, or even how uncivilized I am, but now we gave you a dose of reality. Remember this, Alice. Remember the day that we put you two in your place.'_

As for who the message was addressed to, it was sent to the entirety of both teams. Alice held her scroll up. Still keeping her eye contact with Roland and Sepia, she pressed the screen with her thumb. The chime of a message being deleted rang out. She didn't have to remember all of it if she didn't want to, "I don't _care_ about what you two think of me. I don't _care_ about whatever lesson you _think_ you can teach me. I stand by what I said," she turned her back to them, "I don't 'ave ta listen ta anything you 'ave ta say, and I won't."

Another chime dinged when Navy deleted the message as well. Never once did he seem to leave Alice's side, be it physically or mentally. As expected, he began making the trek back with her.

She began charging her way back into the forest, keeping her head high and her shoulders flat. She walked between Turf and Ebon with Navy close on her heels. "Come on you two. Let's go tell McGouran how Team FARTS purposely made us fail this assignment. One of you can show McGouran the message as proof. I don't want that _filth_ on my scroll."

Turf didn't budge from his spot. , "Hey…," he didn't even bother to look back at his leader, "I'm sorry that my leader sort of… yeah. It's sad to see someone go on a rant like that totally unprovoked," he also pulled up his scroll and deleted the message. The ding rang through the trees between them, "I don't know why Alice is so mad. She blew that Tuu to pieces with her cards, so… I guess we passed. Isn't that right, Ebon?"

The boy in the heavy down coat looked between the seven other students. He wanted somebody to tell him what to do. He wanted somebody to give him guidance. He felt his team's eyes dig into him as he hesitantly reached for his scroll.

"Don't you _dare_." Alice snarled. Without the message on Ebon's scroll, her account of what happened would come off as fiction. Turf and ARTS would just play coy. She curled her fists, "Ebon, I will make sure you regret it if you delete that message. Do you understand?"

Ebon looked down at the notification. He steeled himself, "No, Alice. That wasn't cool. At _all_ ," his mittened hand tapped down on the screen. The ding rang out. "Sorry." He looked over to Turf, who nodded in thanks.

"You _cretins_!" Alice shouted as she stomped into the trees.

"Hey," Arty said as he held up his scroll, "you were the first to press 'delete'," He tapped the screen, "We're just following your royal highness."

"Yeah, that was really something seeing that Grimm get killed by a _card_ ," Timbre smiled as she tapped her scroll.

"Really impressive. It was so nice to have our dear friend Alice demonstrate how a _true Huntress_ does it," Roland tapped the delete button without so much as a moment of hesitation.

Sepia hopped down and joined her team. A ding came from her scroll as she too deleted it. Her hand was held high as she walked past Roland, and was met with the pleasing crack of a high-five.

Navy made sure to give everyone there a glare before turning to follow Alice.

Ebon followed closely behind. He looked like he wanted to say something to Turf, who was looking down at the ground as he passed, but he stopped and kept on walking.

Arty looked over to his team, "So… shall we get back and tell McGouran how we all annihilated our Tuu?" he smiled widely, the gap in his teeth showing. They began walking back to the cliff where Beacon Tower's spire jutted up into the sky.

Arty, Roland, and Sepia moved ahead, talking and laughing as they reflected on the past couple of hours. Timbre, on the other hand, straggled a few yards back. She walked up to the boy in the green beanie and put a hand on his shoulder. "Hey, that was really something. Standing up to her like that."

"Thanks, but it wasn't… really anything," Turf tried to brush off the compliment, but smiled anyway, "But… I suppose it was sort of cool. I just couldn't stand hearing her talk about Faunus like that. She and Navy got what was coming to them. Maybe this will help her… you know… try and work together a little bit more. Not just with Team ANTE, but other people, too, you know," he walked beside Timbre. It felt good to stand up for other people, and he guessed that Huntsmen had that feeling in everything that they did, "I'm just glad that you guys backed me up. I've got to thank, and I suppose apologize to, Ebon for helping me with that. I'm happy that I'm in a class with so many good people."

Timbre folded her hands behind her back, "Yeah! How else are we going to survive the next four years? I mean, imagine if you were surrounded by a bunch of Alices instead!" she shared a short bout of laughter with him, "I'm sorry. I shouldn't be making so much fun of her. She's your leader after all, prejudiced or not."

"No, you're cool. I just reserve the right to call your leader scatterbrained," he shook his head as the last few giggles passed through him, "I'm so dead, though. I'll never hear the end of this," he thought on the idea of Alice berating him everyday for the next four years, "but I can't say that I regret it. I did the right thing, and that's it."

She nodded, "My dad always tells me that the right thing is the only thing worth doing. You'll never be happy with yourself if you can't do that." Her smile faded as her eyes drifted down to the leaves as they passed beneath their feet, "That's… kind of why I came to Beacon." Her cheeks turned red when she realized she was beginning to ramble, "S-sorry! Didn't mean to get preachy for a second."

"You're not. You sound like someone who really was meant to be a Huntress. They're your dad's words, but it sure sounds like you really took them to heart," Turf looked up at the massive spires that made up Beacon, "You know, I wouldn't even guess that you were famous had anyone not already told me."

Timbre was surprised by that comment. She had only been at Beacon for a couple of weeks and already her fame seemed to be slipping away. She smiled at the thought of not only having friends who saw her as one of them, but also enemies that hated her for just being her, not because they were jealous of her. She actually felt like she found a place where she belonged, with people with similar goals rather than stagehands and fans.

"Wow, Turf. Thanks," she realized they were really behind when her team appeared as small dots down the path, "Oh crud," she grabbed Turf's hand and began to drag him along. "C'mon! We need to catch up!"

"Right!" Turf hurried along while holding his beanie so it wasn't lost in the leaves. They ran hand-in-hand on their way back to the school.

* * *

A black cloak cracked with red fissures blew in the wind. Underneath the hood was the skeletal face of a kangaroo, broken up by the same crimson fissures as the cloak. Molten eyes glowed in their sockets.

"I can't believe it worked, Echo," the figure giggled from behind its mask. It knelt next to the decimated hollow of a tree to get a good look at the faint flashing of a red light. The glow was caught by the nest of paper and ink that had been left behind.

Crackling came over the earpiece tucked beneath its mask, then a voice broke through, "Told you. Did you retrieve the devices?"

"Yeah, yeah," the masked figure held a pair of black cubes, flashing red lights on each corner. One was coated in dried mud, the other splattered with yellow paint, "The cowboy busted this one up, though," it commented while examining the fragmented remains of the cube that was in the hollow.

"How well did the devices work, Oro?"

"The Tuu under the bridge huddled up right over the thing. The one that got picked off by the painter and the singer nearly nuzzled the leaves off of that device. The third Tuu curled up with the device inside the hollow. Each one worked perfectly," it giggled while gathering up the parts of the shattered cube. With all of the debris cleaned up, it turned to leave.

"Those devices worked perfectly on those dumb little Tuu," the figure ran deeper into the forest, "Let's try them out on something a little… smarter."


	14. V1Ch10: Field Mission

The first few weeks of the semester seemed to fly by for new first-year students. Professor Maple had critiqued their fighting, McGouran made sure they knew all that they could about Grimm, and the students began to resemble actual teams. No longer were most of the teams bands of misfits, but, rather, groups with some semblance of organization. Arty showed signs of at least some will to lead, Roland attempted to cooperate, Timbre began to shed her celebrity status, and Sepia was… well, her growth could only be explained with one word… surprising.

The year-one teams were poised to accompany some of the year-two teams on a field mission to give them some time to learn from their upperclassmen in the morning. In addition, having four extra hands on a dangerous mission could mean the difference between failure and success. The team pairings would only be announced minutes prior to the mission for the year one teams to help them gain a better understanding of the nature of being a Huntsman or a Huntress. Overall, it all seemed a little more organized than Beacon normally appeared to be, which was a relief to many and a concern to others.

.

The night before the field missions, Team ARTS felt the same mixture of fear, anticipation, and excitement as the rest of the year-ones. All of ARTS had finally managed to bed down despite their shared anxieties.

Between the team, Timbre was already sprawled out and snoring with her headphones audibly blaring. Sepia seemed to be neatly tucked in her bed and letting out the occasional peaceful sigh. Roland laid with his eyes wide open and staring at the ceiling in thought. Arty, similarly, couldn't sleep. His mind went over the past day, going through every detail and thinking over every interaction that he had with other students. One that stood out in his mind was, as always, Alice.

"I can't sleep," Arty muttered, his eyes drifting to the sketches pinned to the wall next beside his bed.

"I never can," Roland kept his eyes glued to the ceiling, "I've been thinking about someone that really made me mad today this time around…"

Arty immediately knew. "Let me guess…" he rolled over and faced the Faunus on the opposite side of the room, "Alice?"

"Yep," Roland turned his head to address his partner, "I mean, her usual comments tick me off, but I can't stop thinking about what she said in Forever Fall back a few weeks ago. It just got to me, you know?"

"Yeah…" he sighed, "I was out in the courtyard working on getting my two-point perspectives with the pillars and the horizon and…" he saw Roland glaring at him, telling him to get to the point, "anyways, she came by and 'accidentally' dropped one of those, eh, cutting cards of hers right on my sketchbook. Went straight through. Would've sliced through my leg had it not been for my aura," he crossed his arms, "That sketchbook was nearly full too."

"Wait, she did something like that to you too?" Roland's eyes widened, "That little redheaded menace 'accidentally' jammed a freezing card into Writer's Block. I had to mix up a little of your Fire Dust paint and my ink so I could use that to help thaw my baby out."

Arty shook his head, "Isn't there like, a rule about that?"

"Not if it's an accident…" Roland crossed his arms, "I'm gonna 'accidentally' beat her to a bloody pulp one of these days…"

"To be fair, and I'm not defending her here, but I guess we did kind of… antagonize her with that whole text message fiasco. It really peeved her to get that kind of talking to and not be able to do anything about it, even if she and Navy did delete the message in the first place. It only makes sense she'd want payback," he scowled, "but she didn't have to ruin a day's worth of sketches…"

"Didn't you say that your sketchbook was nearly full…?" Roland questioned.

"I don't think the guy with a typing speed of a thousand words per minute has any room to judge how fast I can fill the pages of a sketchbook."

"Fair point…" the writer thought for a few moments. He smiled, remembering his early lessons with his Semblance, "You know," he began, "my mother used to have me type fairy tales from memory to teach me to use Inkheart. I remember how she would tell me to focus on the meaning that the stories held, and I would remember the words naturally, and she was certainly right."

"Wow. Looks like we won't be bored if we get sent out into who-knows-where tomorrow," he laughed, "'cuz you're full of campfire stories at least."

"Horror stories are best for that, and I know most of them word for word. You know, Call of Tcuhu, Faunus Cemetery, The Cask of Amontito. The works. Pretty much all of H. E. Loverust," Roland continued, "She pretty much let me read whatever I wanted, except for the Fifty Tints of Grey series… but then I read that to use as ammo if I needed."

"So in other words, you're a walking library. Got it," Arty smiled, "so, if you have all that info, how'd you fail McGouran's last test on Grimm weak points?"

"I remember things that I read, and I only read what I want to read," Roland said simply, "If you're like me when it comes to writing, you quickly come to realize that the Huntsmen that wrote that textbook haven't the first clue how grammar works. I nearly have an aneurysm when I try to read that stupid textbook… Unfortunately, the questions come from that one book directly… It is torture..."

Arty thought for a second. "Didn't… didn't you copy Timbre's notes?"

"Timbre is good at writing music lyrics, but those are pretty much all sentence fragments. You can see where I'm going with that," Roland cringed at the thought of her notes, "I'm just going to copy notes from someone like Frost next time. She seems… refined." Relying on someone else for notes wasn't a great idea, though. Maybe he could take notes by writing them into a story, or just go through and make a corrected version of the textbook.

"Her hand writing is nice at least. But why don't you copy from me or Sepia? You actually have regular interaction with us. ARTS and FREZ may be cool with one another, but I don't know if it's at the level of 'here, take my notes because you don't have any' quite yet."

"You doodle too much in your notes, and Sepia-" Roland was cut off by his own muffled screams as a pillow was pressed down over his face. He flailed about, but his assailant just kept pressing harder.

"I-i-is smothering you." Arty let his head fall back against his pillow, "awesome."

Right then, a second pillow was slammed down into Arty's face. Sepia stood between their beds, smothering one idiot with her hand and the other with her outstretched foot in order to reach both of them at the same time. They had woken her up, and she sought to make sure that didn't happen again. Ever.

Arty flailed his arms and legs. Somehow, the smallest member of his team, and arguably, one of the smallest people in all of Beacon, was strong enough to keep his face covered by the pillow. After what seemed like an eternity of not being able to breath, he was finally allowed a breath of air. That didn't last long as he was yanked off of his bed by the collar of his t-shirt. He slammed into the floor, his face pressing into the carpet before he felt his skin being burned as Sepia dragged him towards the door.

Arty clawed at the carpet in search of some kind of salvation from Sepia's wrath, "Timbre! Please! Help! Your partner's trying to kill me!"

Timbre snored away, unable to hear past the music playing in her ears.

"I'll break all your CDs!" Roland shouted as he pounded his fists against the floor. Apparently Sepia used her other hand to give him the same treatment as Arty, "Timbre! TIMBRE! _**TIMBRE!**_ "

Timbre began to stir, giving Arty and Roland a glimmer of hope of escaping their situation alive. That glimmer quickly dulled as Timbre rolled over onto her stomach and continued to snore away. The two boys continued to kick and yell as they neared their door.

"Arty, whatever is on the other side, I just want you to know…" he looked to his partner, "your handwriting is the worst that I have ever seen. I mean, seriously man. Everest breaks every pencil he uses, and he still has better handwriting than you."

"Since we're in the confession mood," he looked over to Roland, "your quarter of the room has smelled terrible since we moved in and I've been too scared to ask why or how or for you to clean it."

"My eating habits are none of your busi- woah!"

The two were thrown out of their dorm and sent crashing into Team ANTE's door across from them. The door rattled at the impact of the pair, and the sound of the door of Team ARTS's room being slammed shut only served to further disturb the silence of the hall even further.

Team ANTE's door flew open. Alice stood there in a red nightgown, a sleeping mask pulled up onto her forehead, "What in _bloody_ Remnant is goin' on out-" she noticed Roland and Arty on the floor in their pajamas, "Oh, why if it isn't Painta-Boy an' the _Faunus_ ," she huffed. She knelt down and, with the fakest sense of sincerity she could muster, said, "You see, you two, my team an' I would _really_ like ta get some sleep before we go out on our field missions tomorrow. It's been a _long_ week for the four of us, so, if you wouldn't mind… SHUT UP!"

"Ms. Crims?" A calm, hoarse voice rattled all three of them.

Alice looked dumbfounded as their headmaster stood before her. "P-P-Professor Alabasta!"

"Why are you screaming at Roland and Arty here at such an early hour?" Professor Alabaster asked whilst trying to hide his amusement.

"I… well, they w-woke up my whole t-team by slamming into our door, s-sir," Alice stammered.

Professor Alabaster looked down at the two boys sitting against the door. He tilted his head quizzically, "What _are_ you two doing out here anyways?"

Roland made an attempt at making the situation sound better, "It was our fault. Arty and I were going over our game plan, but it woke Sepia up. She threw us out, and I do mean that literally," he summed up, "Arty was nervous about the mission, and I just straight up couldn't sleep. We thought that it would be good to try and use the time that we found that we had," he finished his lie with an awkward shrug.

The two of them looked up to Alabaster, waiting for his response.

"I see…" Professor Alabaster nodded, "Well, you two need to get some sleep. And Ms. Crims, you are in an academy for Huntsmen and Huntresses, so you might want to consider some earplugs if you wish not to be disturbed. This occupation isn't known for restful sleep." He began to walk away, but stopped for a moment, "It is known, however, for late night preparation and anxiety. Goodnight you three." He quickly disappeared around the corner of the hall.

Arty and Roland finally pulled themselves to their feet.

Alice scowled at the two of them. "I'm still not happy about this," she spat.

"Hey… Arty," Roland looked over to is partner, "since we have Alice right here, can you run by the hardware store and pick me up a winch? I think we'll need it to finally pry that stick from out of her-"

"And with that," Arty grabbed Roland by the arms and began to guide him back to Team ARTS's room, "we'll be going back to bed, goodnight Alice."

She humphed and shut the door.

Arty turned to Roland and began quietly chastising him, "What in the world were you thinking?!"

"Arty."

"I mean, she already hates us enough, do you really want to start _another_ fight with her? I'm pretty sure Maple and McGouran hate us… well, besides Timbre, enough already."

"Arty," Roland repeated.

"I know, I know, Alice is _kind of_ a horrible person, but regardless,"

"Arty…"

"What, Roland?!" He snapped.

"She locked the door." Roland said, jiggling the doorknob.

Arty got really quiet before jiggling the doorknob for himself, as if making sure Roland wasn't lying, "Oh…" Arty then walked a few steps down the hall, pressed his back to the wall, and slid down until his butt hit the ground, "Awesome… So, we either wake up the whole floor more than it already is… or we sleep right here on the floor."

"I'm cool with it," Roland laid down against the wall, "I got grounded a lot by my stepmom," his tail flopped up behind him, and he laid his head against it, "The tail helps."

Arty sat in stunned silence. He decided to let it go and tried to get some sleep.

.

The morning sun was streaming through the curtains. Timbre felt the warm light hit her face and her eyes fluttered open. The loud beats of rock music were still flowing from her headphones. She pushed the sheet off of herself, sat up, and stretched.

Looking over the room, she saw that Sepia was still sound asleep under the poster of Timbre herself. Timbre shuddered a little bit. "I'm never going to get used to that…" she muttered under her breath. As she threw her legs over the side of her bed, she noticed that Arty and Roland's beds were empty. She couldn't help but chuckle, "Wow. I guess those two actually got up early today." She decided to head downstairs and get some breakfast before a shower. _That's odd… the door's locked_. Timbre flipped the lock. _We never lock the door…_ As soon as she turned the knob, the door was pushed open. Arty and Roland, still in their pajamas, fell into the room, their heads almost landing on Timbre's toes. They hit the carpet with an audible whump.

"Ow…" Arty moaned, keeping his eyes closed.

"Arty?! Roland?!" Timbre tip-toed around them. "What were you two doing out in the hallway?!"

"Sleeping," Roland stated simply with his eyes still closed.

She shook her head, "Why?!"

"Ask your partner," Arty said as he dragged himself to his feet. He rubbed his aching back and cracked his neck.

Sepia had already gotten up and tapped Timbre on the shoulder. She moved her hand so that it looked like a blabbing mouth

Upon closer observation, it was clear that Sepia was not a morning person. A massive tan t-shirt covered her from her shoulders to her calves. In addition, her hair was bunched up in a rat's nest comparable to an afro. Overnight, she had seemingly even developed dark circles under her eyes.

"Hello, Death," Roland looked up the the director from the floor, "you're looking lovely this morning. Is it the new haircut, or the seething hatred?"

Sepia flashed him an obscene gesture and rolled her eyes.

"Right…" Arty grumbled as he walked over to his part of the room, "I'm going to go take a shower, and then I'm going to ask Lurida to make me the strongest coffee she can..." he disappeared behind the door to the bathroom.

.

Meanwhile, Team GLXY were all mulling around in a sleepy haze. That is, except for Gavin, who seemed to be beaming. The chestplate, shoulder pads, and gauntlets of his armor sat on the table next to him.

Even in his casual black undershirt, it was apparent that he was still a massive man. He wasn't an Everest by any means, but he was certainly big.

"So, girls! Are you all ready to go on our super cool mission today?" Gavin grinned from ear-to-ear. For a guy whose color was black, he was certainly a ray of sunshine.

"Gavin…" Lurida looked up from the dorm kitchen's coffee machine. Her eye twitched ever so slightly, "I tell you this every morning. If you talk to me before I get my coffee, I am not responsible for what happens to you and that pretty face of yours." Her hands worked without her looking, and held an inverted energy drink can over the water reservoir in the coffee machine.

"Oooooooo, Lurida gon' see sounds today!" Yamuna cackled from the couch, "Do me a favor and throw a can in there for me too-"

"Yamuna, no. You remember what happened last time," Xannie glared at Yamuna over her glass of orange juice.

"I don't really care what happens…" Lurida tipped another can into her caffeinated timebomb, "She'll be like a nuke against those Grimm."

Their leader looked amused, but oddly proud. He took a bite out of a bagel and swallowed, "So do you girls remember the details on the mission? The Kokonatsu infestation over in Mikado Village?"

Xannie leaned against the counter, absentmindedly twisting her wrist back and forth. One set of her many neon yellow and silver bangles jingled together. "A few weeks ago, a few raiders attacked a supply caravan as it was leaving Mikado Village. The residents are now in fear of the raiders returning and they're pretty miffed at the fact they've lost an entire week's income. Mikado is known for being in an area with a high concentration of Kokonatsu. With the influx of negative emotions following the raid, more and more of the Grimm have been seen in and around villages, some even being so bold as to attack some of the residents," Xannie paused, "Gavin… are you sure first years can handle something like this?"

"Not in the slightest, but that's why we've got Professor Maple with us," Gavin explained, "Look, we can handle this, and them. We're respon… sible… Lurida, are you okay?" he asked, looking over at the disheveled girl in a purple and black skin suit.

Lurida leaned back against the counter, her eyes wide. She faintly trembled. Her fingers curled against the edge of the counter. A coffee cup sat empty next to her. She mumbled, "I… I just took my pulse. It's… a lot of beats per minute," she breathed deeply, "Oh man that wasn't a good idea…"

Xannie put a hand on her sister's shoulder, "Lurida, do we need to go to the infirmary?"

"They can't help me now," Lurida whispered, "No one can help me now."

"Xannie, you worry about this every morning. She'll be okay in a while," Yamuna waved off Xannie's concern, "Just, make sure she doesn't have a panic attack again."

"Right…" Gavin nodded slowly, "Anyway, Professor Maple should be bringing the first years around right about…"

"Now?" Professor Maple turned the corner into the dorm kitchen with her normal warm grin plastered across her face. Behind her was Team ARTS, walking single file like ducklings behind their mother.

Gavin stood to greet the instructor, "Professor Maple! How is life treating you?" he asked as he clasped his chestplate into place around his torso, "I'm sure that you've gotten Team ARTS pumped for their first mission, right?"

"You could say that…" Professor Maple looked back to Sepia, who was repeatedly signing the word ' _kill'_.

Timbre nudged Sepia, "Cool it with the enthusiasm, Sepia. It's making you look crazy."

"Yeah!" Arty replied to Gavin's question enthusiastically, "We had a bit of a rough morning… but we're ready to go now. So, what are we going to be doing today?" Arty rubbed his arm, "Something… relatively safe, I hope?"

"Well, there is a Kokonatsu infestation over in the Mikado Village," Gavin slid on a gauntlet, "but I think Xannie would be better at explaining this. She's got this whole deal memorized."

Xannie nodded, "Right. Well, you see, a few weeks ago-"

"Afewraidersattackedasupplycaravanasitasleavingmikadovillagetheresidentsarenowinfearoftheraidersreturningandtheyreprettymiffedatthefacttheyvelostanentireweeksincomemikadoisknownforbeinginanareawithahighconcentrationofkokonatsuwiththeinfluxofnegativeemotionsfollowingtheraidmoreandmoreofthegrimmhavebeenseeninandaroundvillagesevenbeingsoboldastoattacksomeoftheresidents." Lurida rambled, her eyes wide and glazed over.

Yamuna examined her teammate for a moment, "Are you gonna make it, Lurida…?"

"We need to go. We need to go now now now now now _now_ ," Lurida twitched as she tugged at the strap of the strange purple carrying tube on her back tightly, "If I stop, I die. If I stop, I die. If I stop," she gripped Professor Maple tightly by the shoulders and looked her in the eyes, "I die."

"Welcome to the world of Huntsmen and Huntresses… otherwise known as the land of no sleep and caffeine." Professor Maple muttered as she gently pushed Lurida away from her, "Gavin, are you absolutely sure that she is fit for a mission?"

"If we want to nuke them, of course. We'll give her another Blue Bull before we get to the village to, you know, keep her heart pumping." Gavin laughed nervously, "I'm kidding. She'll be fine once it all works out of her system."

"So, Arty, you ready to die?" Roland asked.

Arty watched as Team GLXY walked out of the door with Carmen. Xannie was rubbing Lurida's back as they walked. "At least I'm better off than Lurida," he shook his head, "Maybe I'll pass on the coffee this morning..."

Timbre followed their teacher and mentors, "Probably a good idea. I'd hate to see what trouble your trigger finger will get you into if you started twitching like that."

Arty imagined the scenario for a moment. "Yeah, nope, definitely doesn't need to happen."

Sepia ran over to the coffee pot and examined it for a moment. She poured a little into a styrofoam cup, then took a sip. Her eyes went wide as a shiver shot through her entire body. Her fingers tensed while she set it down and she went on following the group.

"How was it?" Timbre asked her while she caught up.

Sepia shook her head in disgust, ' _Like battery acid_.'

Arty looked to Roland and Timbre, "What'd she say?"

"Battery acid," they said in unison.

Arty nodded, "Like I said, I'm skipping on that."

* * *

"So, how far away is this village for us to have to take an airship?" Arty asked, holding onto his seat belt with white knuckles as the Kingdom of Vale passed below him out of the open door of the airship, "I'm uh, not exactly familiar with the geography of Vale."

"It's right over the mountains to the east, so it's not terribly far," Professor Maple pointed out the side of the airship. While the cliffs of Beacon could be seen becoming smaller and smaller, the tower remained prominent in the distance, "We take an airship because it's quicker," she explained.

Gavin smiled at the first year team opposite the cabin from him, "And we want to make sure you newbies get back in time for dinner! Can't fight the forces of darkness on an empty stomach."

"On a more serious note," Xannie cut in, "If you want to ensure the success of your first field mission, you're going to have to know how to fight a Kokonatsu."

Arty raised an eyebrow in confusion, "A coconut what now?"

"Ko-ko-nat-su," Xannie held out her hand with the palm up. A yellow holographic square appeared in the air before them. In the center was an outline of what looked like a fox with spines on its hind legs and shoulders. Firmly planted to its head was the tell-tale mask of a Grimm. "On their own, they're not a huge threat. It's when they're working together you should be worried."

"Why's that?" Timbre asked.

"If they're working together," Lurida added, now in an actually comprehensible speed now that the effects of the huge amount of caffeine had worn off, "it means that there's a much stronger and older Kokonatsu nearby." Lurida held her hand palm up below Xannie's hologram. Small purple lines began to form new tails in the yellow drawing of the Grimm. "As you may know, Grimm get more powerful and smarter the longer they're allowed to live. Kokonatsu show that progression through the addition of more tails, up to a maximum of nine. 1-3 tails aren't a big deal, 4-6 are troublesome, 7 and 8 are good-sized threats," she leaned back into her seat as their holograms faded.

Yamuna giggled, "You forgot nine."

Timbre looked towards the wolf Faunus carefully, "What about the ones with 9 tails?"

Lurida looked out of the open door. "I didn't forget, I just don't want to acknowledge that as a possibility."

"You're screwed if one with 9 tails shows up. They're like the mafia bosses as far at Kokonatsu go," Yamuna clasped her hands together and acted like she was wounded, "They got me, boss. That ol' Al Kokonatsu!" she joked as she fell over onto Gavin's leg. She went limp and stuck her tongue out to feign death.

Xannie shook her head, "With this much activity, we have to be open to the idea of a nine-tailed Kokunatsu," she looked up to Arty and his team, "If your team sees anything with six tails or more, you let Team GLXY and Professor Maple handle it, okay?"

Arty realized that her neon yellow eyes were on him as she asked that question. "Oh, uh, right. Six tails or more, got it," he fumbled.

' _He can, but I'm taking the thing on,'_ Sepia signed to Timbre.

Roland caught a few words and nodded, "If worse comes to worst, we might have to hold off something with more than six tails, won't we? I mean, the last thing that we want is for something like that to get away and cause trouble later."

Lurida glared at him, "Roland, there is not a chance that any of you guys will be left alone. We've talked about this extensively, and we have a plan. Each of you will be paired up with one of us, like a buddy system."

"That's right, thank you Lurida," Gavin began, "Arty, you'll be with me. Maybe you'll be able to pick up a few things from another leader," he pointed over at Xannie, "Rhea o' sunshine, you'll be taking Timbre," he pointed a little further around her, "Grav, you'll be taking Roland-"

"Gavin, don't you dare," Lurida's eyes narrowed, "I am not taking the one that wants to fight everything."

"If he gives you trouble, make him float for a bit," Gavin continued on, "And Yamuna is taking Sepia."

"Awe yeah. I get the fun one," Yamuna pumped a fist in the air.

Maple leaned into the cabin from the cockpit, "Two minutes to landing, guys. You got your game plan ready?"

Xannie smiled and nodded. "Yes ma'am."

"Our game plan is fantastic, Professor!" Gavin gave a thumbs up, "We worked hard to make sure that we're the best for Team ARTS."

"You mean _I_ worked hard. _I_ did all of the research, then Xannie was the one who typed up the briefing and turned it in this morning. _I_ did not sleep last night, _Gavin._ " Lurida's voice was laced with venom. Her eyes were filled to the brim with rage.

"But I did have you oversee the research. We worked as a team to get where we are today," Gavin chuckled, "We're all thankful that you read up on everything. That way you can tell us what's up!"

"I don't want your blood on my hands, Gavin," Lurida growled, "Just stay quiet and we won't have problems."

The whole vehicle shook as it touched down.

Maple roared in excitement, "ARTS! GLXY! Welcome to Mikado Village!"

.

"Wow, this place got beaten up pretty badly, huh?..." Arty asked solemnly as they walked down the main road of the village. The cobblestones clacked beneath their feet. On either side of them, the windows were boarded up. Very few people walked around. Arty noted a few men working on repairing the top floor of a building that looked as if it had been burnt out. "I wasn't expecting so much damage to the town itself…" he stopped and went quiet as he saw multiple overlapping rows of deep black claw marks on the door of a candy shop.

"We told you," Xannie muttered as she surveyed the damage, "this village very rarely has so much trouble with the Kokonatsu despite being in the middle of their territory. They're organizing attacks all of a sudden for some reason."

Sepia pulled out her scroll and sent a group text, ' _We should probably ask around. We might be able to learn what the largest number of tails the locals have seen on one Grimm. That way we can get an idea of what we're up against.'_

Gavin stopped and turned to face his group, "That's not a bad idea, Sequins," he looked off towards one of the town's gates, where the burnt remains of the caravan were scattered around, "but we should also look around the forest outside of the village to see if there are any Grimm lurking around waiting for some senior citizen or little kid to step one foot too close into their new hunting grounds."

"You suggesting that we split up, Gavin?" Arty asked, pulling Palette out of his bag.

"That's _exactly_ what I'm suggesting! Arty, Carmen, and I will go look around the outside of the village. The rest of you can decide amongst yourselves as to who joins us," Gavin put one arm on Arty's shoulder and the other on Professor Maple's.

"I need a breather after all that caffeine," Lurida told her leader, "I'm in no condition to fight just yet. Roland and I will stay here in the town and get information. I also suggest that Yamuna and Sepia go with you two. They're good fighters, and you might need them if you run into Grimm. Yamuna's senses might help too. If anything bad happens, then I'll be with Xannie. She and I work best together rather than apart."

Gavin nodded, "Right. Don't want to split up the Twinkle Twins Dream Duo."

"Gavin, if you call us that one more time, then I will have no option but to kill you," Lurida glared daggers at her leader.

Xannie laughed and nudged her sister playfully, "Ah, come on Lurida. You know Gavin has to have his nicknames for everybody. Besides, I actually kind of like 'Twinkle Twins'."

Despite the condition of their current location, Timbre, Arty and Yamuna couldn't help but laugh.

Roland crossed his arms, "Can we just get on with this? I'd like to get away from Gavin too."

"Agreed," Lurida nodded, "but, Gavin, please use the team attack names if you're going to use a nickname for us."

Gavin looked a bit let down, "Aw, okay then Meteor Shower!" he waved to his half of the group to follow him.

.

"Right," Lurida began, looking to Xannie, Timbre, and Roland, "Information… I'll search the Vale databases to see if they've published anything on what is going on. Timbre, run around and get people to come over to us so that we can question them on what they saw. Xannie, do the talking and keep them calm. Roland, take notes over what they say. Does all of that sound like a plan?" she asked while slowly sitting down on a nearby bench. She seemed beat from the caffeine crash.

The group split off as Lurida began tapping away at her scroll and holographic screen.

"Excuse me," Timbre said to an portly older man, "Hi, I'm with a group of Huntsmen in training from Beacon, and we're here to-"

"Wait a minute, aren't you Timbre Forté?!" The man shouted.

"Well, that's not-"

He turned and began shouting down the streets, "Hey! Everyone! Look, it's Timbre Forté!" he turned back to her, "I thought we'd never see you perform in person again."  
"Well, I'm not here to-"

"Wait!" he began shuffling through his pockets before pulling out a pen and a crumpled piece of paper. He held them out to her, "Can I have your autograph for my daughter? Please!"

Timbre began to stutter and panic as a crowd of villagers began to crowd around her. Even with their village suffering from Grimm attacks, they still had time to gawk at a celebrity. She felt the people pushing against her, asking for pictures, autographs, and songs. She wanted to scream.

Her saving grace came in the form of three words, "Hold on folks!"

Timbre looked up and found Xannie standing between her and the crowd with her arms outstretched.

"Ms. Forté would be happy to sign autographs and sit for photos, _if_ you will all kindly form a single-file line… and take a short survey of course." Xannie gestured for Roland to walk over.

"Xannie!" Timbre whispered harshly, "What are you doing?! We don't have time for trivial stuff like this!"

"I know we don't."

"Then _why_ exactly are you setting up an impromptu signing?"

"Because it's not trivial."

"What the heck is that supposed to mean?"

"A Huntress must know how to be resourceful." Xannie held out a hand to Roland, "pen please."

After Roland reluctantly gave up one of his emergency weapons, Xannie handed it to Timbre, "I'm just taking the opportunity to get the information we're here to get," she winked. "Now play along and just sign your name a few times. You've done it tons of times before, right?"  
"Well… yeah… but…"

Xannie clapped her hands together and smiled, "C'mon Timbre, I have a _very_ good feeling that this will work well in our favor."

"If you don't do this, then it'll take longer to help these people. I know you want to seem like just a Huntress rather than a celebrity, but this village needs you to be both right now," Roland told his teammate, "Do you want to help these people, or save face?"

Timbre looked down to the pen held in her shaking hand. She had sworn to give up the life of a celebrity, especially after her last night as one ended in almost getting kidnapped or even killed. _No_. She gripped the pen tightly to stop the shaking in her hands. She sat down on a nearby stone bench, took a deep breath, and forced a big smile, "Hey everyone!" As much as it pained her, she shook hands, took pictures, and signed autographs.

Down the bench, Xannie had set up her holographic image of the Kokonatsu, asking a few questions about them and the maximum number of tails seen. Roland was rapidly clacking away at his typewriter as people responded to the questions before they got to meet Timbre. Xannie leaned over to Timbre, "You're doing great! We're getting tons of feedback, and nobody's reported Kokonatsu with more than five tails," she shook her head in disbelief, "from Lurida's research, I was expecting at least _somebody_ to have seen one of the more dangerous ones."

Roland stopped typing for a moment, "Hold on…" he scanned over his notes for a few moments, "we've got good numbers on everything five and _under_ , but then nothing bigger than that," he looked up to Lurida and Xannie, "Isn't that a little strange? I mean, I'm not an expert, but… why not even _one_ six?" he scanned through his notes once again, "Not one… so that leads to another question. How smart exactly can these things get?"

Lurida was taken back, having not considered a few possibilities, "Hey, Xannie, can you give me a reading on the probability of a six tail or more giving orders to lower Kokonatsu?" she called to her sister, "Can you also give me the probability of each level, six tails through nine tails?"

Xannie held a her index fingers to her temples and closed her eyes. "Okay," she swiped a at the air and began typing out numbers and equations into her holographic screen. "Well, according to the stats we have… If every sighting on this chart was a different Grimm… then our percentages show that…" She swiped her hand horizontally, flipping the hologram around. On it was a pie chart. "43% have been 1 tail Kokonatsu, 28% have been 2-tails, 14% have been 3-tails, 10% 4, and 5% 5. The problem is, nobody here has seen one once it reaches pack-leader levels of awareness," she turned it back around and began adding more numbers, "with these numbers… if that many 4s and 5s are actively attacking villagers, something much more powerful has to be influencing them to do that," she tapped her head again, "There should be at least a few 7s or maybe even an 8 in order to keep all of these in check," she clapped her hands into the hologram and stood up, "If my math is right, that's the _least_ we're dealing with. They're just hiding from us and giving orders from the sidelines. 6's are smart, but they're not geniuses. They can't do anything from the shadows. If they're the ones in charge, they're on the front lines."

"So if that's the case..." Roland looked over to Xannie, "Could a 9-tails take charge of all of those?" he asked, "From what I gathered with Yamuna's… performance earlier, they're a force to be reckoned with. They're like a mafia boss, right?" he tore off the long strip of paper. It rolled up into a scroll as if it were magic. "I've got my notes memorized, and based on them and your logic, these aren't just being kept in check. The times, numbers, all of this… it's too organized for basic Grimm instincts."

"Like I said," Xannie began walking through the square, turning back to look to her group, "We have to be open to the ide-"

A flurry of blades and violet light shot past Xannie's head, nearly giving her a new haircut. Lurida shot up from her seat and zipped past her twin with her arms held out wide. Six violet metal orbs with ring-like blades forming their equators spun in a circle in front of her. In the center of her newly formed ring of death, Lurida had captured a black fox dotted with spikes of bone. A bone mask decorated with red crevices covered its face, and four black tails waved behind the beast's back.

"Timbre, Roland! Get the villagers inside! _Now!_ " Lurida shouted without so much as looking back. She made a box in front of her with her index fingers and thumbs, then expanded them to form a holographic screen with a cross in the center to serve as a reticle, "Aiming system activated! Charging, 97%! Target locked on. Xannie," her eyes narrowed on the Creature of Grimm, "cover me, there's three about to come down from the roofs," she ordered before three of her orbiters glowed with violet energy as they aimed where her eye was looking. She kept her focus and blasted the Kokonatsu. It tried to dodge, but was struck with a fourth laser when it leapt to get out of the way. A wide hole appeared in its side before it began to fade.

"Code Yellow, ambush by intelligent Grimm!" she barked to Roland and Timbre, who had managed to herd the villagers into the nearby inn. They both looked stunned by her display of power. Her eyes narrowed, "Don't just stand there! That means call Gavin and Professor Maple and get inside where it's safe!"

"Roland!" Timbre yelled to the Faunus, "I get that this is quite the show, but you need to get your tail inside _now_!" She watched as Lurida blasted a hole into the face of another Grimm, "They've got this, now we need to do our part!"

Xannie turned to the burned out building behind her. From the second floor, three pairs of burning eyes glared down at her, the forest of tails billowing behind them. She held her arms out to her sides with her palms facing out. The collection of neon yellow and silver rings around her wrists travelled off of her wrists and expanded, floating around her hands. She whistled a few times, "C'mon foxy, foxy, foxy. Come down and play!"

The three fox Grimm lunged down towards the girl with the floating rings.

A holographic panel appeared in front of her right hand. Her index finger began to rotate a small yellow circle. As she did so, the deployed circular blades began to spin faster and faster. She waved her right arm horizontally in front of her. The corresponding ring sliced through the three beasts without any resistance. The blade slowed and returned to her side, floating aimlessly around her, "How are you holding up, sis?"

"Been better!" Lurida blasted a one-tail and whipped around, "You ready for me to set up the field?"

"Well," Xannie sliced through another beast as many more took its place, "It'd be much more effective if Gavin and Yamuna were here… but," she spun her blades around to keep the dark creatures away from her. The rush of air from their claws and snapping jaws tussled her hair, "I guess now is a better time than ever!"

She looked to the row of shops where the villagers that once crowded the square now stood. In one window, she saw the anxious faces of Timbre and Roland, "I'm just worried about scaring the first years."

"Yeah, well I'm not," Lurida blasted one more Kokonatsu before shutting her eyes, "Xannie, cover me. I'll try to catch as many of these things as possible," she ordered, "Roland, Timbre! You guys and the villagers hold onto something!" she yelled. A few moments later, her feet slowly left the ground, along with Xannie's. The nearby Kokonatsu also began to levitate, sending them into a momentary panic.

"Xannie, Meteor Shower," she opened her eyes and smirked at her sister.

"On it!" She selected the four remaining rings around her wrists and the one around her neck, deploying them and slowly moving them off of her body. They arranged themselves in a larger ring around her and her sister.

Lurida, through a set of arm motions, placed one orbiter in the center of each of Xannie's rights, their blades interlocking. When Xannie began to spin the rings, Lurida charged her orbiter's beams. She aimed the reticle at the ground, then took a moment to look around. A glance to Xannie told her that she had the optimal angle of attack, and so she fired the orbiter and ring. It bounced off the ground once, through a Kokonatsu, off one of walls of a building, through another Kokonatsu, and finally came to a rest after striking a light pole.

There were still plenty of Grimm left struggling in their new zero-gravity environment, "Lurida, think we can corrale them and finish them all off at once?" Xannie grinned as she watched one of the Grimm, one with only two tails, squirming wildly in an attempt to wiggle itself closer to her. She put a boot against its face and kicked it away. In one quick motion, she guided one of their combined weapons into it, effectively quartering it.

"That'd probably be best," Lurida nodded. She held out her hands with her fingers spread out wide, "Line up the rings. I'll funnel them," she ordered. The zero-gravity field seemed to weaken around her and her sister, but all of the nearby Kokonatsu began drifting towards a center point ahead of them. Care was given to prevent any of them from getting too close to anything that they could jump off of.

"Lining up the rings. Charge up the laser, Lurida!" Xannie adjusted some sliders on her holographic hud panel while keeping a close eye on the steadily growing ball of writhing Grimm. The rings and orbiters separated with a clang, then began returning to their masters.

"Charging, 108% capacity. System overload imminent," Lurida rattled off while her orbiters grouped up together at the beginning of the tunnel of rings, "Commence alternating rotations… now!"

"Got it!" Xannie swiped the circles on both panels, making all of her cone of rings spin rapidly. Every other ring spun clockwise rather than counter-clockwise.

"Firing in 3…" Lurida's eyes narrowed, "2…" the orbiters glowed with burning violet energy, "1. Cover your eyes."

Xannie held a hand over her face as soon as the seven lasers fired. The rings focused the beams into a single, massive stream like the barrel of a cannon. It encompassed all of their ball of Grimm, and left nothing when the light faded. She dusted off her hands, guided her rings back into their respective places, and took a theatrical bow.

Lurida's orbiters were guided back into their carrying tube on Lurida's back, and the end of it snapped shut with an audible clap. She looked to the window of the inn to see a pair of stunned students and a crowd of amazed villagers. _Stop gawking…_ she thought as she rolled her eyes. When she composed herself, she waved over her protégées, "Tell the villagers to stay inside, but you two need to come over here and give me a report on Gavin and the others!"

Timbre rushed over with Roland trailing close behind, "That was _amazing_ you two! It never even occurred to me that we've never seen Team GLXY fight before! I never would've guessed you guys would have flying weapons and lasers and be able to turn off gravity an-"

Lurida put a finger over Timbre's mouth, "Timbre, please. Gavin's status."

"Well…" Roland shifted, "Gavin and his crew got ambushed too. Gavin's gone," he looked towards the forest, "Professor Maple is tending to Arty and Sepia, and Yamuna is trying to track where he went. One second he was there, the next he wasn't."

The twins were taken a bit back. Xannie was the first to express her shock, "Even in a fight, Gavin wouldn't be separated that easily."

Lurida looked back towards the forest, "And the timing of it all is too coincidental. They get attacked while we're too busy dealing with another group of Kokonatsu. They couldn't get backup even if they had called for it."

"And if Yamuna's having trouble tracking Gavin…" Xannie shook her head, "that's not good. No matter how far apart we are, she knows how to find us," she turned and began to run towards the forest, "We have to go help find him!"

"Not yet," Lurida shook her head, "Let them come to us. With this kind of organization and coordination… it's a 9-tailed calling the shots. It seems intelligent enough to separate the Huntsman that just showed up unannounced. It set up hunting grounds and attacked the village to divide whatever group came. If we leave the villagers unattended, then the Kokonatsu can get to them _much_ easier. They did something serious to the second strongest of our entire group, which is a serious blow to our strategy," she paced as she thought, "We stay here until the others return, with or without Gavin. Then we regroup and reassess. We have to believe that this is now a worst case scenario situation. The mission now is to find and exterminate what we now believe to be a 9-tailed Kokonatsu _after_ we regroup. Understood?" she looked around at the group.

"Got it," Roland nodded.

Timbre bit her lip. She thought Gavin could hold his own, but the concern showed by Xannie made her realize Gavin's disappearance was much more serious, "Right, I get that, but..."

Xannie kept looking between the forest and her group, "Lurida, we can't just sit here when nobody has any clue where Gavin is. It sounds like they're in some serious trouble," she put a hand to her head, nervously grabbing at her neon yellow hair, "I can't just sit here."

Timbre was stunned by how quickly the twins had gone from perfectly coordinated fighters to their current states, one trying to keep order, the other panicking. Timbre stomped her boot against the cobblestones, "Half of Team ARTS and Professor Maple are out there too. Xannie's right. We can't just stand by and let the Grimm divide them up even further. If the villagers stayed indoors until we kill your theoretical 9-tail, then we'll be done here and everyone gets out of this okay."

"We _can_ just sit here, and we _will_ just sit here," Lurida didn't so much as bat an eye at the arguments of Xannie and Timbre. They were bringing in emotions, but she knew Xannie could listen to reason. The popstar, she had no idea about, "We're people with strong auras, but those villagers are practically defenseless. If you two want to get them killed, then go help the others. If you don't trust that they can actually make it out of those woods alive, then, by all means, go after them."

"Our strong auras are the reason they're attacking!" Timbre yelled, "You saw how many Kokonatsu just attacked this square! According to the data _you_ told us to collect, nothing like this has happened since the caravan got ambushed! Nothing happened until _we_ got here, and now that we know that there's a bigger threat out _there,_ " she pointed to the forest, "then we know where we need to go and what we need to do!"

"You're really worried about them, huh?" Lurida rolled her eyes, "If you don't already know what the duty of a Huntress is, then you shouldn't be here in the first place. We are to lay down our lives for the people that we protect. Right now, we are protecting the people inside this village, and the other group is investigating the outside. These people's lives are in _our_ hands," she sat on the bench that she had gotten up from before the fight. It would have seemed that her suspicion of Timbre was accurate. She looked over to the celebrity, "We die for these people, not our teammates. Now sit down and get ready for another wave of those things."

Timbre could only stand there and glare at the girl, "You don't think I understand what being a Huntress means, huh?" she turned to face away from her, "You may be fine leaving Gavin and Yamuna out there, but I refuse to leave Arty, Sepia, and Carmen. They're in trouble," Timbre slowly turned her head towards the gate, "and right now, they need help."

The group were taken off guard as Timbre began making a mad dash for the gate leading to the forest. She shot a wire at the top of the large arch and swung over the burned remains of the caravan that brought them there in the first place.

Xannie took a few steps in the same direction, "Timbre! What are you _doing!?_ "

"Timbre!" Roland shouted and bolted off after his teammate, "Don't be stupid! Get back here and-" he was cut off as a large black fox jumped out from behind the wall. It flared out its tails, all six of them. Behind it, more dark figures began to creep out. The new wave had arrived, and Timbre was already long gone.

"Roland!" Lurida spring to her feet. He didn't have anything typed out. For him, he was practically defenseless, "Just hold-"

But she didn't have enough time before the new wave of Kokonatsu lunged.


	15. V1Ch11: Divided and Conquered

Professor Carmen Maple had never lost track of one of her students, that was until this mission. Gavin was gone without a trace. She, like the rest of them, was preoccupied with slicing through the myriad of 1-tailed Kokonatsu that had dropped from the tree branches above them. Each swipe of her scorching red laser-blade left a trail of dazzling crimson light in its wake. Despite her efforts to calm Arty and Sepia, they both still seemed unnerved. To make full use of the enhanced senses that many Faunus have, Yamuna was given the order to seek out any signs of her leader's whereabouts.

"Arty, Sepia," Carmen looked back at the pair from ARTS, "I know that this all seems way over your heads. It is, but we have to remain calm. I'm sure that Gavin is okay, and so are your friends," she tried to reassure them. Although not entirely certain, she had to believe that her students would be okay.

Arty wanted to run back to the village. He was torn between the weak sense of security that the village provided and the desire to help Gavin at the risk of his own safety out in the Grimm-infested forest. "Professor Maple, what are we going to do?"

"We're going to take out whatever we're facing, find Gavin, and get back to Beacon. We will be okay," Professor Maple reassured him, "I can promise you that much, at least. Even if this is the worst case scenario and it is a 9-tails, then it's not the most dangerous thing that I've had to face. If we isolate it, I'll take care of it. You kids focus on keeping yourselves safe, and I can take on the worst of whatever comes," she peered between the trees, "Can I trust you to keep Sepia safe?"

Sepia looked up, seemingly surprised that Professor Maple thought that she needed protecting. Then, she realized why she asked Arty that question. Her leader needed to look out for his teammates more than the teammates needed to look out for him.

Arty held up his paintball gun, the dark blue paintballs glistening as he waved it, "Any Grimm that gets near us is getting turned into a Grimm-cicle," he then patted Sepia's head playfully, "so don't worry, Sepia. I'll watch our backs."

 _Right…_ Sepia thought. She looked over to see Yamuna darting between trees. Then she suddenly stopped, the wolf ears on her head standing at attention.

"Scroll!" Yamuna shouted and bolted through the trees. She snatched up the open scroll to run it underneath her nose a few times. The scent was undeniable, like burnt steel, "It's Gavin's!"

Professor Maple was at Yamuna's side before the she could so much as move, and Arty and Sepia soon followed. The device was confiscated by her for further examination, "Well… it would seem that we'll have to find him via more traditional methods, won't we-"

The scroll began to ring. Displayed on the screen was the name 'Timbre Forté' with a few blue music notes next to the name and her photo right beneath it. Being an instructor, Professor Maple wasn't exactly allowed to access a student's scroll, but this was an emergency situation. She held it up to her ear, "Timbre! This is Carmen, what's going on?"

"Carmen?!" Timbre nearly shouted. In the background there were sounds of loud zaps, beast-like howls, and the whooshing of something cutting through the air, "Where's Gavin?! We have a situation here! You guys need to get back to the village _now_!"

"We have a bit of a situation here as well. We got ambushed by some Kokonatsu," Professor Maple stopped speaking to listen to the background for a moment, "and it sounds like you guys did as well. Gavin's gone missing. We just found his scroll before you called. Do Lurida and Xannie have the situation under control, or do they need backup?"

"Gavin's gone _what_?!" Timbre put her hand over her scroll and turned to Roland, "Roland… she says Gavin's gone missing… what do we do now?" She watched as Xannie sliced a Kokonatsu in two with one of her rings. With all the blades flying about, she was thankful that she was viewing it all from the safety of the shop they were hiding out in.

"Gavin is part of their group. We need to consult Xannie and Lurida before we do anything," Roland thought for a moment, "When we get this situation cleared up, we'll call them again."

Timbre nodded, "Okay. We'll tell them and try to hold down the fort here. Just find him and get back here as fast as you can."

"I was already planning on it. Stay safe," Professor Maple hung up. She stared at the scroll for a moment, praying that her student was okay. He probably would be. That was the good side of the culprit probably being a 9-tailed Kokonatsu. It would be smart enough to leave him alive as bait.

Yamuna clawed at her hair, "What are we going to do?"

"We look for Gavin. There is a cave in the hills nearby. In fact…" Professor Maple looked in the direction that the scroll was found, "It's roughly that way, but it'll be swarming with Kokonatsu if a pack leader is holed up there. It's probably our best bet. With all of those 1-tails that we just took out, their den must be close. We need to be ready, and you three need to run if things get too bad."

The three students nodded and followed their instructor. Arty lagged behind, hesitantly climbing the slope. No matter how hard he tried, he couldn't shake the feeling of beasts watching them from the shadows.

.

What began as a leisurely climb quickly became a hellish uphill battle. Each step was more grueling and steeper than the last. Even Professor Maple seemed weary when she stopped the group to shush them. In her attempt to tell them to be quiet, she couldn't help but look at Sepia and give an awkward thumbs up. She nodded towards where they had came from, down on the slopes that led up to pitted rock, "Did any of you hear that?"

Yamuna nodded, "Yes. It's Timbre. She's calling after us. She's coming this way."

"I'm so thankful for my Faunus students," Professor Maple looked to Arty, "Oh, and you're going to have to scold her for leaving the other three. Not that I don't trust you, but rather that I'm supposed to encourage you as a leader or something like that. I honestly didn't read the school handbook too closely."

Arty raised an eyebrow in confusion. "Uh, sure thing teach, but uh, aren't professors… y'know, supposed to know something like the school _handbook_ front and back?"

"We're also supposed to ensure your safety," Professor Maple said thoughtfully, "Or at least to prevent you from getting a lasting injury. That's all that I care about, and Professor Alabaster still keeps me around," she stared out to the horizon. Even with the fear of death looming over all of them, she had to keep things upbeat. The lower her students' moral, the higher the chance that they would come under harm, "No book can tell me how to do my job. Isn't that right, Yamuna?"

"Yup, screw books," Yamuna pumped her fist in a vain attempt to stay enthusiastic.

"I'm glad that we see eye-to-eye!" Professor Maple covered her own mouth to quiet herself down.

The leaves above them rustled. A few fluttered down as the group turned and watched Timbre rappel herself down. Wires snapped back into their gloves with a flick of her wrist. Arty and Sepia ran to reunite with their teammate.

Timbre immediately grabbed her teammates in a bear hug, "I was so worried about you guys!" before anyone could shush her, she dashed forward and hugged Carmen and even turned to give one to Yamuna, "When I called and you said Gavin had gone missing, I-I-I just had to find you! Lurida said not to, but how could I leave you guys out here with those monsters around?! I was scared that you guys were getting overrun an-" She was cut off when Yamuna slapped a hand over her mouth.

"And you brought your friends…" Yamuna nearly snarled as she spoke. Her golden eye gleamed with a predatory haze, "There are about seven Kokonatsu following you. Based on his shouting, Roland isn't in a good way either. You abandoned Lurida and Xannie," she listed off Timbre's offenses and glanced at Arty.

Arty stood for a second, considering what to say. "Uh… Timbre" he said with a forced tone of authority, "You should've listened to Lurida and stayed behind. Carmen here is perfectly capable of keeping us alive and…" he struggled with his words, "when we get back to Beacon, you're in very big trouble," he wagged his finger at her.

Timbre raised an eyebrow, "Really?"

Arty turned to Professor Maple and shrugged.

"I mean, you tried," Professor Maple sighed, "Timbre, you're getting detention for the next two weeks. One for each twin you left behind. Capiche?"

Timbre's shoulders sagged, "Aw… Carmen…"

"Don't you 'Aw… Carmen' me, young lady. I was going to hold you in class myself, but I'd be happy to send you up to Alabaster's office for detention instead," Professor Maple huffed, "He'll probably just talk really cryptically and offer you some of the cranberries he grew, but it'll still be more awkward than detention with me."

Timbre was about to reluctantly accept her punishment when she was interrupted by the Grimm foxes charging towards them. One blinding red flash later, and a few of the Grimm began backing off step by step.

Timbre stood dead still and wide-eyed as Carmen's burning hot blade rested less than an inch from her ear. She turned slowly to find it impaled in the head of one of the beasts that was only a second away from clawing into her back.

"Remember those Kokonatsu that Yamuna mentioned?" Professor Maple sliced through the left half of the Grimm's head. She nodded to the six others that had regained their composure. All of them were making a break for the group, "Arty, Sepia, come with me. Timbre, you stay here with Yamuna and take care of the Grimm. Let her kill the things that followed you here, and then group up with us at the mouth of the cave," she watched Yamuna hold her sickles at the ready, "Arty, I need you to call Xannie and get a status on your teammate. Sepia, you watch our six. Everyone clear?"

Sepia saluted and held her guns at the ready. _Glad I'm not the one getting punished this time around…_ she thought with a grin.

"Got it." Arty pulled up his scroll and trudged along ahead. Anxiety seeped out from every fiber of his being. The idea of losing a teammate worked its way into his mind, regardless of how much he tried to push it out. Surely he was safe. Surely Lurida and Xannie could handle the situation.

Yamuna went on and rushed ahead to follow through with her orders. As much as she liked to talk, she loved to fight far more. Somewhere between the desire to talk and desire to kill was the desire to protect her pack and the people of Mikado, but the coming bloodlust masked it all. This wasn't about desire or fun. This was about finding Gavin and killing the demons that thought that they could take him from her.

Timbre watched as Carmen and Arty disappeared into the trees. Arty, at the back of the line, turned and gave one last reassuring look to her before he rushed away. She was left alone with a wolf girl and a bunch of Grimm.

She held her wires at the ready as the pack of black foxes rushed her. Swiping in front of her, she launched the Grimm to the sides of the path. Fear and desperation filled her heart bit by bit. Each swing of her wires brought images of her teammates coming under harm. Roland was hurt. Arty and Sepia could be next. Gavin was gone. What if Yamuna got hurt in the current battle? It wasn't like she could take on so many Kokonatsu at once.

Something crunched behind her and she turned to swing, but found herself tackled to the ground by one of the creatures. It had her pinned, snarling and snapping at her face. Though she struggled to keep it at bay with her hands, it still tried to dig its teeth through aura, " _ **HELP! YAMUNA! HELP ME!"**_

It's teeth drew closer and closer to her face. Right when it would have closed its jaws around her head, it was launched sideways. A black projectile that glowed with cosmic orange light shot through it, dragging it along into a tree. It was quickly absorbed into the black sphere before the entire black mass disappeared completely.

Timbre sat on the ground panting. She pushed her back against a nearby tree. Her arms wrapped around her knees, panic settling in, but not from the Grimm. The Kokonatsu were gone, but there was a new threat looming above her now. The familiar shadow of someone in a helmet blocked the dots of afternoon sunlight that came down from the tree canopy. The person that attacked her at Korus Stadium a few months prior towered above her. At the time, the event hadn't bothered her as much, but as time went on, she began to think about what could have happened if they had actually carried through with their plan and kidnapped her during her show. There were casualties, after all. The uncertainty terrified her, and the possibility of them returning made her even more so.

"Please… no. Just leave me alone!" she covered her face, fearing the butt of a rifle being brought down on her.

"Woah," Gavin reached up and tapped the side of his helmet. The yellow visor slid backwards, releasing his spiky dark grey hair. The sides retracted back and flattened down against his back, "it's just me, Timbre."

She looked up to see the leader of Team GLXY looking down at her with shock and confusion. They hadn't come back for her.

"G-Gavin…?"

"Gavin!" Yamuna held the butt of one of her sickles against the head of the last Kokonatsu. A click of the trigger sent a small blast into its skull. It fell to the ground and began to fade away.

She ran up and jumped onto Gavin, latching her arms around his shoulders. "I thought I heard you clunking around!" she gave him a look over, "Are you okay? I don't smell any blood on you."

Gavin hugged her back and laughed, "I'm fine, really. Those damn foxes dragged me off. I gave them a good fight, but they got me halfway into their den in the cave up there before I could actually make a break for it. Thank the gods that my armor puts a little oomph behind my punches!" he set her down and kneeled to help Timbre, "Are you alright, Timbre?"

"I… I'm fine, really," Timbre got up on her own, "wait… you said the den was in the cave?"

"Yeah, we need to group up and focus our efforts there," Gavin nodded. Understanding hit him when he turned his gaze up to the cave, where Arty, Sepia, and Professor Maple were making their way towards, "We need to get up there with them. Now."

"I'll run ahead and tell them to hold up," Yamuna sprinted towards the cave, "Glad you're safe, Gav! Oh! And Professor Maple has your scroll, in case you were wondering!" she shouted back.

"Thanks!" Gavin motioned Timbre along, "By the way, weren't you supposed to be with Xannie?"

Timbre looked at the ground, "Right… I am, but…" she held out her hands as she stood up, "Carmen already gave me the speech and detention, okay?..."

"Do you know if they're okay?" Gavin asked calmly, "I don't blame you for abandoning post. Yamuna and Xannie used to do it all the time, and it's understandable that you did, too."

"Right, but Roland's probably injured and Lurida and Xannie are shorthanded…" Timbre looked down and followed Gavin.

"Roland will be fine. He's too pissed off to get hurt too bad, don't you think?" he nudged her arm, "And don't worry about the twins. They're the powerhouses on our team as long as they're together. They'll be fine."

Timbre ran along with Gavin to catch up to Yamuna and the others. Timbre was scared that as soon as they got to them, they'd be ambushed. She had her wires ready to fight.

When they got to them, nothing came.

A cold draft came from deep within the cave, chilling the spines of the young trainees, but their instructor wasn't taken back. She had seen this hundreds, if not thousands of times before. This was a Grimm's lair. She was beginning to grow suspicious, however. In total, the combined efforts of herself, Team ARTS, and Team GLXY must have taken out at least four dozen Kokonatsu. Even if it were a 9-tailed, its mass of minions had to have been running thin.

Professor Maple turned to Arty, who was still on the line with Xannie. She pointed to his scroll, "Give me an update on Roland, and also a status on their current situation. Have the Kokonatsu left them alone for the most part, or are the Rheas still on the heavy offensive?"

Arty shook his head nervously, "She couldn't talk long, but apparently they're holding out for the time being, but Roland's not looking good," he looked over to Timbre, "His aura was depleted shortly after you ran off and now Lurida's trying her best to evacuate the village…" he looked to their professor and the second year leader, "if we're going to do anything, we need to do it now."

"If we take out the boss, then they'll become disorganized and be much easier to clear out," Professor Maple paced in front of the mouth of the cave. She couldn't risk any more of her students getting hurt, "Gavin, Yamuna, stay with me. I'll take on the 9-tailed-"

Yamuna cut in, "Ma'am, we don't know if-"

"It's obvious at this point. This kind of organization isn't possible otherwise. The lower Kokonatsu are putting a harsher attack on the village. Something wants us away from here," Professor Maple stared into the cave. It was pitch black inside. There was no telling how many Grimm were in there, "As I was saying, Gavin, Yamuna, and I will go in and take out the 9-tailed and whatever else is in there, and Arty, Timbre, and Sepia will stay out here and guard the front. We don't want them to get any backup to take us on from the rear."

' _She's pissed, huh?'_ Sepia signed to Timbre, ' _I'm worried about the other group, though. I'm sure that we'll be fine with Professor Maple, but what about the others back at the village?'_ She asked, hoping that her leader could also catch a few of her words.

Timbre looked over to her and held her hand out to say 'calm down, it'll be fine. Just do as she says.'

Arty nodded, "Right," he held his gun up, "shall we get started and hope to get this done quickly and painlessly, then?"

Timbre was surprised by Arty's sudden seriousness in the situation. She'd never really seen him act… 'leaderly'. She nodded in agreement and prepared to hold off whatever came their way, "I'm sorry about earlier, Carmen…"

"Don't tell me that. Tell that to Lurida, Xannie, and Roland," Professor Maple held two of her laser pointers out to her sides. Upon activation, two blindingly hot beams of burning light solidified into a pair of blades, one crimson and the other sky blue. Her shoulders hunched in growing anger, "Gavin, Yamuna, come on," she ordered and began making her way into the cave. Her blades made a travelling island of light around her.

"Yes ma'am!" Gavin reactivated his helmet and jogged inside.

Yamuna bowed to the members of ARTS left to defend the entrance, "Be careful out here," she followed closely behind Gavin. In a few moments, all three of them disappeared. Even the light had faded into the blackness.

.

As the world grew quiet around them, Timbre allowed herself to let out a dejected sigh, "This is all my fault…" she wrapped her arms around herself, "I'm sorry, you guys…"

' _It isn't your fault. You did what you thought was good. Just learn! We're still in training, so make mistakes here. That way you don't make mistakes on set!'_ Sepia hugged her partner tightly. She understood what putting so much pressure on one's self felt like, and that made failure hurt even more. That wasn't what she wanted for her friend.

She felt a hand on her shoulder.

"Hey," Arty began, "Maple said no apologizing until you get back to the village," he laughed, "just don't think Roland won't try to kill you when he sees you."

Timbre couldn't help but lighten up a little, "I know. To be honest, I wouldn't blame him," she put a hand to her cheek, "you think I should let him get a few jabs in first?"

The three of them laughed at the thought. Once they came back to their senses, they found themselves surrounded by Kokonatsu. Pairs of molten eyes gazed into their fear-stricken souls. Those stealthy little demons loved to take advantage of any chance they could get.

Arty looked around as the two girls drew their weapons, ready to attack the creatures circling them, "Guys…" Arty leveled his gun at them, alternating between the eight or so before them, "is it just me, or are there nothing but 6-tails and 7-tails in front of us?"

 _I've got this!_ Sepia thought as she charged in with her guns blazing. If she could form sounds, her battle cry would have somewhere between a banshee's scream and a berserker's roar.

"Sepia!" Arty called after her, "This isn't what Professor Maple meant!"

Timbre charged after Sepia as the Grimm began to close in. She heard some of Arty's fire paintballs blow a few of the enemies to pieces. Her wires were slammed against the bodies of any Kokonatsu that got too close.

Sepia shoved the barrel of one of her guns into one of the gaping mouths of the Kokonatsu and fired a string of bullets through its head. The fact that it took much longer to kill than the ones she fought earlier surprised her. It had enough kick left in it to nearly chomp down on her arms. Shortly thereafter, the other Kokonatsu saw that she was a threat and promptly dove on top of her. They ripped into her like a chew toy.

"Sepia!" Timbre yelled upon seeing her teammate disappear under a pile of black fur and white bone. She slammed her hands down against the Grimm on either side of her. The force crushed their bone masks to pieces and slammed them into the ground, effectively killing both before she dashed off to help Sepia.

"Timbre! Duck!" Arty yelled as he kicked a 6-tail away from him and aimed his gun at the Grimm attacking Sepia. Shortly after pulling the trigger a couple of times, the top halves of all the Kokonatsu were encased in ice, freezing them together, "Get her out of there!"

Timbre charged up, slicing her wires together into the blocks of ice. Everything in the path of the thick cords shattered like glass. All the Grimm crumpled to the dirt, some missing parts of their bodies or even cleanly cut in half. After they all faded, Sepia was left lying among the broken bits of ice.

"Sepia!" Arty yelled as he ran up to her and Timbre, who was holding her partner up in her arms, "Is she okay?!"

Timbre looked down at Sepia. She had a small cut on her shoulder, which still had a trickle of fresh blood coming from it. Her aura was gone. Her choker was sliced off, but she seemed fine for the most part. Still, she was out cold and without the protection of her aura. This was Timbre's fault. If only she hadn't left the group. Maybe these Kokonatsu wouldn't have followed.

Upon reaching them, Arty looked down at his injured teammate. The choker around her neck was gone, exposing the scar tissue around her throat. In that moment, he realized this was the first time he'd seen her without it. She even wore her choker to bed, "Oh god, what did they do to her?!"

"She's okay, I promise. We'll explain later. Just go after Carmen!" Timbre snatched up the choker and Sepia and ran for the cave.

Blue splashes either incapacitated or kept the Grimm at bay while they all ran into the cave. After making sure Timbre had gotten Sepia safely inside, Arty twisted the top of the paintball hopper. The loud crunch signified that the Ice Dust paintballs had been ground up, freeing the paint inside. _Now just to make sure we don't have any surprises._ He began to fire a stream of paint at the cave's opening. He dragged it in a line across the opening, painting a bright blue line across the ground.

As the Kokonatsu drew close, Arty stomped his boot against the paint to activate it. Clear crystals shot upwards, creating a thick wall of ice. The Grimm slammed against the new structure, except one whose head was caught firmly in the ice. The light seeping in through the ice wall cast an eerie glow on its head, and its burning eyes telling the group that it would rip them apart once it gout out.

Arty stepped his right foot back before swinging his leg, slamming his boot into the side of the Grimm's head and sending it flying into the side of the cave wall. It began to fade as he ran after the girls.

Professor Maple stood still for a moment. Her students were approaching from the rear. Arty and Timbre's panicked auras were like freshly lit torches in the darkness to her, "Arty and Timbre are on the way, but Sepia might not be with them," she told Gavin and Yamuna. Regardless of her concern, she kept her swords at the ready. If there was any hesitation, then more of her students might have fallen into harm's way. She was not having that.

"I hear them. I can hear the Kokonatsu at the opening too, but they're not coming any closer. I can't tell what, but Arty and Timbre did something to block off the cave. They're making a mad dash for us now." Yamuna looked around, "Still no sound of anything in here, though. I don't like this…"

"Carmen!" Timbre whispered loudly. She was out of breath from running so far with Sepia. Arty was close behind her.

"Timbre! I told you and your team to stay out front!" Professor Maple snapped back.

"I-I… we…" Timbre stuttered as she rest Sepia against the wall of the cave next to them.

"We were ambushed, Professor Maple," Arty began to explain, "Sepia got hurt pretty bad. We didn't have anywhere else to run from all the Kokonatsu outside. I did my best to wall them up." He looked over to Timbre as she tended to Sepia's wounds, "The only thing we can do now is kill this thing before my wall breaks."

Professor Maple was stunned by Arty's sense of leadership. Though his team was disorganized under pressure, he still had a good head on his shoulders.

"That's what I call thinkin' on your feet, Umber!" Gavin's voice was muffled behind his helmet's visor as he gave Arty a thumbs up, "Keep that up, and we might all just get out of here alive!"

"Thanks for the vote of confidence, Gavin…" Arty was a bit off put by his overly-positive attitude. Maybe Roland had a point about this guy...

"Hold up," Yamuna held out her arms to get everyone to stay quiet. Her multicolored eyes were wide with fear, "One _very_ big Kokonatsu, and six slightly smaller ones. My guess is the 9-tailed and six 8-taileds," she sniffed the dank cave air and took a few steps forwards into the large cavern, "They know what we're up to. Now that we're grouped up and have their buddies blocked off… well, I'd say that they're not too happy that their plan didn't work as intended."

"Kids, let me take care of the big one. Gavin, Yamuna, take care of the 8-tailed ones. Arty, Timbre, you two assist them. Just stay out of their way." Professor Maple reached into the pockets of her cargo shorts and produced six more laser pointers. She flipped the switches on their sides, causing spikes to spring out of the butts of the laser pointers. When all eight of the weapons were lit, they dazzled the students in red, orange, yellow, green, blue, violet, and white light. The eighth blade burned with a white core, but radiated a black aura that seemed to absorb bits of the light from the other blades.

As soon as she heard the beating of paws against dirt, she tossed all of her blades up into the air. With a ceiling that seemed to be about ten meters high, she was certain that she had enough room to put on her performance. Laser-blades spun round and round in the air, bringing color into the cavern.

Professor Maple held onto the black blade, then threw it like a dart into the ceiling of the cave above her. The black blade anchored itself into the ceiling by its spike. The only thing that was left visible was the sliver of white light that escaped from the core of the blade.

"Brace yourselves," Carmen kept her eyes on the darkness ahead. She juggled seven blades, no single blade staying in hand for more than a moment.

Yamuna held out her sickles backwards, revealing the barrels of twin pistols, "I'm ready." She gave a devious grin to the darkness before them.

"Ditto that," Gavin held out a blindingly white bow with an arc of black electricity serving as the string. An arrow of condensed darkness glowed with the fiery cosmic energy around the perfectly spherical ball of blackness that served as the arrowhead, "Arty, you lend Yamuna a hand. Timbre, you stay on me. Both pairs need to take out three of the Kokonatsu, and Maple will handle the biggin'. Got it?"

Timbre held up her wires with shaking hands. "I…" she took a slow breath, just like the ones that she would take before a show. This was the time that she needed to be brave. This was the time that she needed to be a Huntress, "I'm ready."

The leader of ARTS was filled with relief with his teammate's willingness to fight. Only one more concern lingered in his mind. "Sorry, Sepia. It's gonna get a little cold." Luckily, he still had a little of his ice paint left, and so he made a wall of ice to lock Sepia into the nook that Timbre placed her in.

"Teammate secured, Timbre at the ready, our teacher is a laser sword juggler, and the upperclassmen are all prepared to kill. I'd say that we're in the best of a bad situation."

"Say that after we take care of the Kokonatsu," Carmen tossed two blades into the walls to her left and right. Green and violet blade glowed like lanterns affixed to the walls by their spikes. In her hands were her blue and red blades, and the yellow, white, and orange blades made fans of light as they spun through the air. When they would come down, she began using the blades in her hands to tap them back up into the air.

Her burnt orange eyes narrowed as she heard the Grimm nearing. The trained focus that only a Huntress could have honed shone bright in her eyes, "Get ready… and… now!" she shouted.

The three blades that she juggled shot into the darkness like missiles. Two of the blades made their mark, having been thrust into masks of two 8-tailed Kokonatsu. The two Grimm dissolved, letting the yellow and orange blades clatter to the ground. The white blade, however, missed. A Kokonatsu covered head to toe in bone spikes twisted around the projectile with ease. As it approached, she counted the tails. Nine in total.

"Damnit!" she shouted when two of the 8-tails dashed in front of her target as if a sort of vanguard. The other pair ran past her for her students. On the bright side, she wouldn't have to worry about her students taking on six 8-tailed Kokonatsu. Just two… hopefully, "Alright, let's get this over with, uglies."

The 8-tailed vanguard didn't expect the instructor to be stupid enough to run between them. They were wrong. What came as the largest surprise, as well as the one that ended both of their lives, was that this ginger woman had the gall to shove them both into the walls.

The results of this shove wasn't fully understood by the Grimm, but Professor Maple saw very clearly that they were thrusted into the green and violet blades that she threw into the walls. The beams of light protruding from their eye sockets confirmed her kill.

"That went better than expected…" she mumbled to herself. As a Huntress, very little went as planned for her. As expected, this luck was short lived.

She narrowly ducked under the claw of the 9-tailed Kokonatsu. Her following attempts to slash at the beast were only met with the giant bushes of shadows that acted as its tails. The red and blue blades only cut through its coarse black hair. There wasn't a clear shot, and something this intelligent needed to be taken out with one blow. A second one wouldn't be guaranteed.

Then it dawned on her. She glanced up to confirm her suspicions, and then threw down the blades into the heels of the target. The monster was pinned to the ground, struggling to get free. No Grimm had the capacity to predict that a warrior might want to play mama-bear.

Gavin, Yamuna, Arty, and Timbre seemed to be struggling with the last two of the dancing Kokonatsu. None of them seemed to be getting in any damage. The Kokonatsu were much too fast for the students.

Carmen's fingers dug into the napes of the Kokonatsu's necks. They were hoisted up into the air like a couple of puppies that piddled on the carpet. "Gavin, Arty, take care of this," she ordered while they barked and snapped at her.

Arty stood dumbfounded, surprised that the fighting had suddenly paused. "Is she?..."

Gavin shrugged, "Holding two 8-tailed Kokonatsu like pets?" he pulled a black hole arrow back, aiming it towards one of the Grimm in Carmen's hands, "Yep, totally normal for her. I take her right, you take her left."

Arty shook away the shock and aimed Palette towards the other squirming creature.

"Think you can make that shot?" Gavin smirked.

Arty steadied his aim, "You bet I can."

Together, they fired their weapons. The black arrow and the red paintball whizzed through the dark cave towards Carmen. Gavin's arrow pierced the head of the Kokonatsu in her right hand. Arty's paintball created an explosion that blew the head off of the one in her left hand. Professor Maple dropped the Grimms' bodies to the ground and let them fade away.

"Thank you," Professor Maple walked away from the fading bodies. She faced the 9-tailed and ducked as it swiped at her once more, "You know, you've given me a lot of trouble."

The Kokonatsu reeled back in confusion. It seemed taken back by Professor Maple's scolding. It was a Grimm, not a child.

"You've hurt this village," she ducked under another claw, "You've hurt my students," she dodged once more, "and you've all around made my day _really_ annoying. Do you have any idea as to how much paperwork that I'm going to have because of you?!" Finally, she took a few steps back, "Look, I get it. You're a monster that wants nothing more than to kill us all. I just really wanted to let you know how much of a pain you've been before you die."

The 9-tailed Kokonatsu stopped and looked at her with confusion in its eyes. It didn't have much more time to process the statement before the blade dropped down through its skull.

"Well, I'm thankful that I timed all of that right this time around… It usually it doesn't go that well for me," Professor Maple began walking around and gathering up her blades. She glanced up at her students, "You guys okay? Everything good?"

Arty sat down on the ground, thankful that the fighting was over, "That… was… incredibly stressful," he held a thumbs up, "but we're all alive."

Only one more thing was left to check on, "Oh crap! Sepia!" Are you alive in there!?" He began shooting a few orange magma Dust paintballs to help speed up the melting process. "I really hope I didn't freeze her to death…"

Sepia sat huddled up in the back of her nook. She used her favorite finger to express her frustration and slowly stood up.

"I think she's fine," Timbre said before turning to Carmen and raising her arms in celebration and smiling, "Carmen! That was amazing!" she ran up and hugged her teacher, "Mom and Dad always told me about your fighting! It didn't even occur to me that I haven't seen you do anything like that yet! And all _8_ swords at once! Holy cow! I-I-"

Gavin put a hand on Timbre's shoulder, "Calm down there, Hyper Hugger," he looked to his instructor, "You okay, Maple? You have to be tired after all of that."

"I'm fine," she began to lead the way towards the cave entrance, "I can rest when we clear out the last of the Kokonatsu outside, make sure the village is secure, and see that Roland, Xannie, and Lurida are okay."

' _Now that I have a little aura built back up, I'm good to lend a hand,'_ Sepia signed. She faltered in her step. Though she didn't fall over, she still winced. The pain in her head was awful. It wasn't until this moment that she noticed that her choker was gone. Her hands wrapped around her own neck as if to strangle herself. She had shown Timbre, but that was because she was her partner. There weren't any plans to show anyone else anytime soon.

Yamuna put a hand over Sepia's, "What's wrong?"

Sepia nudged Timbre's shoulder and looked down towards her hands. When Timbre produced the accessory, Sepia nearly cried. The tear was fixable, but she didn't want to go without her choker until they got to Beacon.

"It's okay, Sepia," Professor Maple placed a hand against Sepia's back. All of them had their own scars, both Huntsmen and trainees. She pulled up the edge of her shirt just enough to expose her midriff.

A twisted burn scar sprawled across her stomach, creating a patch of tight, leathery skin that stretched from one side of her stomach to the other. Though she felt like shoving her shirt back down, she let her students examine the scar, "Our scars represent the things that have changed us and have made us grow. They aren't perfect, nor are they pretty. They are certainly real, though. Our scars are part of us and are nothing to be ashamed of."

Fingers clutched Sepia's neck like a vice. Her fingers slowly began to loosen, revealing the ring of smooth scar tissue around her neck. For the first time since the incident, the scar didn't feel too terrible. Sure, she felt everyone's eyes on her, but she just shrugged it off. As she normally did, she held up her guns. She was ready to fight, scars showing or no.

"Good, now that all of that is out of the way," Professor Maple smoothed her shirt back out. Her scatterbrained smile returned, and readied two of her blades, "let's finish the rest off then, shall we?"

Gavin held his bow at the ready, a dark black arrow drawn back, "Ready if you are, ma'am."

Carmen nodded, "First years, stick close. Gavin, you and Yamuna stay by my side. There's no telling what's going to meet us when we get out."  
As they reached the opening of the cave, they found that Arty's ice wall had melted, leaving the ground soaking wet and muddy. The only sound that could be heard was the black and neon purple boot crushing the head of the last Kokonatsu.

Lurida looked furious with her tired eyes and disheveled purple hair. She glared through the whole group to Timbre, "Don't worry, I don't think they'll be much more of a problem, Professor," her eyes held an unending well of fury within them, "Let me just go on and give my report. That alright?"

Professor Maple stared at her student without so much as a hint of surprise, "Lurida, we can talk about this when you've-"

"Cooled down? Oh, I'm cool. I'm chill. I. Am. Frosty." Lurida locked eyes with her instructor, "When Timbre left, Roland went after her. He got mobbed by a 6-tailed and its buddies. He got his butt handed to him before _I_ could get to him and fend off the Grimm. Xannie dragged him away while _I_ killed the Kokonatsu. _All_ of the Kokonatsu. Every. Single. One."

Without warning, Lurida shoved Timbre down to the ground. Her gaze on the first-year student was bone chilling. "You know, I would have loved to have a little back up. It would have been marvelous, but no. You nearly got Roland killed. You made me fight without Xannie. You did nothing but screw around and get other people hurt. How dare you put your own teammate in danger. How dare you put those innocent people in danger. How _dare_ you let your emotions get the better of you. Your actions were not that of a Huntress. They were the actions of a child. You do not belong in this school."

Timbre pushed herself up onto her elbows and looked up to the purple Rhea sister. She wanted to feel mad. She wanted to defend herself. But as she sat there lying in the mud, she realized that Lurida was right. She shook her head to try to hide the tears welling up in her eyes, "I-I…" she clenched her fists, "I messed up… I was just so worried about Carmen, and Arty, and Sepia," she looked up to Lurida, "and not to mention Yamuna and your leader."

"That is _not_ an excuse!" Lurida shouted, "If fear can push you like that, then you shouldn't be a Huntress!"

Timbre was about to start bawling as she felt heat rise to her face. Her saving grace came in the form of Arty's towering shadow. He stood between her and Lurida with his arms out.

"Back off Lurida." Arty's face was serious. His usually laid-back manner was gone, "Timbre said she was sorry, alright? Yeah, she screwed up, but this whole thing was _way_ more serious than your mission report said it would be. She's not the only one who made mistakes here, but we're all alive and that's all that matters."

Lurida's mouth contorted into a scowl. Her hair began to float upwards as the gravity weakened around her body.

"Lurida," Gavin put a hand on her shoulder, "stand down. I already told Timbre that I don't blame her for what she did. Emotions can get to the best of us sometimes," his positive tone faded as it did during the tour of Beacon, "Need I remind you of our first mission? How you turned tail and ran from that Wendigo?"

Her hair fell and her scowl disappeared as he said this, but she was still seething inside.

"Carmen's already given her detention. Believe me, I'd rather her make a mistake now with a Huntress nearby than later when it's just her and her teammates," he gave her a pat on the back and walked back in the direction of the village, not saying a word to Xannie as he walked past her.

"So…" Xannie clasped her hands together, but frowned as Lurida walked by. She could sense her sister's frustration. Sure, it was justified, but Lurida had a way of taking her anger too far, "Right, so, Arty! Would you like your teammate back?"

Looking down the hillside a bit, Roland could be seen bound up in Xannie's rings and suspended in midair. "I made him a stretcher with my rings," she explained, "Not really their… intended use, but, hey, you've gotta improvise sometimes."

"I told her that I could walk, but she wasn't having that…" Roland groaned. He was torn up with scratches and bruises from head to toe. Had someone read out his aura level, then he would still have been at a zero, but he was fine for the most part, "I could go for a burger or something, though. I'll take the stretcher as long as we can get some grub soon…"

Arty's smile returned while helping Timbre up, "Well, I don't know about finding a place to eat in the village, but I think I remember hearing that the cafeteria would be open later tonight to accommodate those of us who would be out past closing."

"Please." Roland leaned up and looked at his team. His eyes instantly fell on Sepia's neck, "No freaking way! That's awesome! Nice scar!"

Sepia grinned, happy that the results of her incident served to bring a smile to someone. At least her team knew about it, rather than hiding it for all of eternity. ' _Cool it, cowboy,'_ she signed, ' _Let's get going. I'll tell all about my scar back in the dorm.'_

 _._

The villagers were ecstatic to hear that the nearby Kokonatsu infestation had been taken care of. When they asked what they could do to repay them, Carmen stepped up to say that it was all "just a learning experience for the students" and that no thanks was necessary.

The airship ride back was pleasant enough. The leaders of Team ARTS and Team GLXY recounted the day not as a stressful struggle, but more of a funny story now that it was all over. Roland and Sepia chatted a bit, or at least as much as they could chat given Sepia's condition. There was a sense of awkwardness in the cabin, though. Timbre kept catching Lurida's angry stares every now and again. When she turned to see those bright purple eyes staring at her, she'd quickly turn herself to look out of the open side of the ship to the landscape below them, which was now being bathed in a dark orange hue from the setting sun. Had they really been gone that long?

.

As if the mission were just a simple field trip, Professor Maple parted with Teams GLXY and ARTS with a simple wave and 'goodbye'. Lurida stomped off in her frustration, Xannie followed, and Gavin went along to begin trying to work out Lurida's coming tantrum. Yamuna and Team ARTS, her and the first-years all being famished, quickly made their way to the cafeteria and grabbed a quick dinner.

After Professor Maple so graciously repaired her choker on the way back, Sepia was back to her normal and energetic self around the other teams at Beacon. Given that this was the case, she felt an itch to cause a little more chaos.

' _What do you guys think Team ANTE is up to?'_ Sepia asked after setting down her tray, but her pondering was quickly ended when she saw Team ANTE further down with their faces pressed against the dining table. All of them were dead asleep, and this gave her an idea. She looked hopefully at Arty.

"Can we mess with them?" Roland also looked to his leader, picking up on Sepia's idea.

"Only if 'we' refers to you two and not Team ARTS as a whole. I don't think I could handle another full-team referral," Arty looked over the sleeping team. Alice looked less than flattering with her drool all over the table, "but please, yes, go for it. Just don't say I told you to."

"Got it," Roland ran over to the table with Sepia at his side, "On three. Ready?"

Sepia nodded enthusiastically. She raised her hands high in the air.

Roland raised his tail. He began to mouth out a countdown, "Okay, one… two… three!" He brought down his tail while Sepia brought down her hands. The force of the blow caused the table to bounce and slam up into the cheeks and jaws of Team ANTE, waking all of them up instantly. All of them except for Turf, who remained fast asleep as though nothing happened.

' _How…?'_ Sepia mouthed.

Alice woke up screaming, causing all the other students in the room to look over to them with looks of shock and confusion. "What the _bloody hell_ was that?!" she yelled, before her eyes narrowed on the otter Faunus standing on the other side of the table from her, his back turned and his tail resting on the table. The tail was only an inch or two away from knocking over her now cold cup of tea.

" _Roland_!" she screamed, "my team, is _very_ tired afta what we 'ad ta deal with today. I would be _very_ grateful if you would _stop with all the botherin'_!"

From down the table, Arty raised a finger, "you have a dorm room. Y'know, with beds and pillows and sheets and-"

"Don't you start with me, Painta-Boy!" she pointed a painted red fingernail at him. "Afta dealing with Team Asses all day, I _really_ don't want ta deal with Team FARTS."

"Flattering," Timbre said quietly as she took a bite out of an apple.

"What was up with Team Ashes? Surely you're exaggerating," Roland rolled his eyes and slid his tail off of the table.

Ebon leaned back on his seat, "They're cool guys, they just like to play… jokes."

Alice looked angrily at Ebon, " _They brought us out there ta clean graffiti and they kept making_ more _of it!_ "

Team ARTS had to stifle their laughs as Alice continued her rant.

"I mean, we get ta downtown Vale ta clean up graffiti, Professor McGouran disappears ta go get coffee since there isn't a 'huge threat' when dealing with graffiti, which, honestly, is why I think Team Ashes _chose_ that mission for us!" Alice began slamming her fist against the table, "We _scrubbed_ and we _scrubbed_ the entire time. Anubis was the only one that helped, because do you know what the other three _idiots_ were doing?" she waited for a moment as Team ARTS just looked at her, " _They were making more graffiti for us to scrub_ ," she sat back and crossed her arms. She looked up at Roland across from her and sneered, "Leave it ta a few _Faunus_ ta make a job harda."

Arty grabbed Roland's arm to prevent him from flying across the table, "I thought you learned your lesson in pride and prejudice there, Alice?" Arty said sternly, "What Roland and Sepia did was a _joke_. What Team Ashes did was a _joke_."

"They did stuff like that when I was just a little cub, you know," Yamuna spoke up, "They only keep on if you get mad. If you ignore them, then they drop what they're doing and find a new way to make you mad, but at least it isn't the much worse original way," she grinned, "but when you laugh with them, then they get down to business. That's why everyone calls them Team Asses half the time, as you seem to have figured out."

Alice looked over the small wolf-Faunus for a moment, judgingly. "I'm sorry," she shook her head, "who are you again?"

Navy sat by quietly and let his leader continue while Ebon, sitting across from Alice, looked like he wanted to say 'stop' but was too scared to say it while Alice was on a roll.

"I'm Yamuna Luna of Team GLXY? I was your tour guide during orientation, Alice Crims," Yamuna forced her involuntary snarl to form into a pained smile. Disdain built and built inside of her, ready to explode at any moment, "I'm one of your upperclassmen, and the little sister of 'those idiots' from Team Ashes."

"Right, because a year of experience makes a ton of difference. Team Ashes is just a bunch of stupid buggas anyway, an' what else would you expect from a team made up of nothin' but _Fau-_ "

Alice's teacup shattered when Yamuna brought her fist down on it. Her blue eye shined with a familiar golden gleam for a split second. Her grey ears stood at attention. "Alice, I suggest you don't finish that sentence," she growled, apparently in a new show of dominance, despite her being almost a full foot and a half shorter than the redhead.

Alice gasped when she felt tea splash into her lap. She looked down and tried to scrub away the dark liquid with a napkin, "I _just_ got this dress cleaned, too!" she scowled and stood up, "Just like your brothas. Can't do nothin' but make a mess!" She turned and stomped off, snapping her fingers to call her team. Navy obediently went to follow her, giving one last cold look to Roland and the rest of his group. Ebon reluctantly held his hands up in defense and nudged Turf.

"Woah… what's going on-" He grumbled groggily.

"Just come on, Turf. We're going back to the room." Ebon said quickly. He kept his eyes on Yamuna, who was clearly seething.

Turf turned and saw the fury in Yamuna's eyes. He could've sworn he saw tears welling up. He wanted to say something, but his sleepy brain wouldn't let him process anything fast enough.

In a matter of seconds, the room had fallen into its regularly talkative setting, with Team ARTS and Yamuna dead quiet. The girl with wolf ears hadn't moved from her stance, her fist still held on top of the shattered remains of the teacup.

Timbre reached out to put a hand on Yamuna's arm, "Yamuna are you-"

Yamuna yanked her arm up, "Don't touch me!" she snarled, "Just leave me alone for a while. I'll be fine…" her voice trailed off as she began walking away. Her shoulders slumped and her ears flattened out, "I've got a headache, that's all," she reassured Team ARTS before she disappeared through the cafeteria doors into the darkening courtyard outside.

Timbre stood up and began to follow Yamuna, but stopped when she heard Roland pipe up.

"Just let her go."

Timbre turned to him, "Roland, she's upse-"

"She'll deal with it," he turned to leave as well, "every Faunus deals with the world in their own way. Some just take it a little closer to heart than others." He stopped before he reached the cafeteria door, "C'mon. We've had a long day. We should get some sleep."

Arty looked over the other members of his team before agreeing. "Yeah. Let's go," he muttered solemnly. After the day that they had, going to bed seemed like a worthy reward.

* * *

The draft coming from inside the cave caught the edge of a black cloak. Red fissures climbed up from the hem. The molten eyes on their mask glowed like fresh embers.

Oro held up a black pyramid in one hand, a red light flashing on the top of the device, "Echo, darling, you've really outdone yourself this time! Busting up that caravan to attract some Kokonatsu? Nicely done!"

Echo didn't laugh or react to Oro's mock praise, "Whatever. Shaka and I just did our part. Any issues this time around? I couldn't exactly keep track of everything considering."

"Right…" Oro examined the device. The light began alternating between a red and a blue light, then settled on the blue light, "It worked well! Turns out that her tech works both ways. Looks like we _can_ repel those monsters just as well as we can attract them. That hag knew what she was doing with the design. No wonder she was so scared about giving it up!"

"Just get back to base and report back to Hulud."

"Sure thing! I really can't wait to see the looks on those ARTS kids' faces when we get to Phase 3 of testing!" Oro darted off away from the cave, "Our little baby is going to be _so_ excited to see them!" they put a finger against the side of their mask, "Oh, and Echo?"

"What is it?"

"Have fun over at the CCT! Keep me posted on the results."


	16. V1Ch12: In the Doghouse

Team ANTE was dead asleep in their beds, all except Turf. He was already up, showered, and ready to go for the day. As prepared as he looked, his internal screaming prevented him from hearing his own panicked thoughts.

He was sitting against the wall outside of ANTE's room in full Beacon uniform. Most of the students had forgotten about Family Day, but he hadn't. Since the day before was field mission day, the others focused on preparing for that instead. Although he too had worried about the mission, the panic over Family Day far exceeded any worries that the mission brought.

"What's going on, Turf?" Timbre asked from behind the cracked door of the Team ARTS dorm.

He jumped to his feet and attempted to straighten the beanie on his head that had nearly fallen off. If only it hadn't been dark green. It clashed with the Beacon uniform, but it was the only hat that he had. "Just worried. My brothers are going to make today… interesting."

Timbre walked out of Team ARTS' room. She was in her own Beacon uniform, her hair tied back in a ponytail rather than her usual style. A few red strands hung down in front of her face. She sat next to him and smiled, "Good."

Turf shifted, "What do you mean 'good'? You want me to be nervous?"

"No, Turf. I mean 'good' as in 'glad I'm not the only one that's actually nervous about Family Day.'"

He stared at the international celebrity for a moment, trying to process how she even had the capacity to be nervous, "What's got you so uneasy about it?"

"My dad."

"Oh, nice," Turf looked down to the carpet.

"He's a great dad! He's just… overbearing," Timbre managed to laugh.

Turf chuckled from her nervousness, "I've got your back on this if you've got mine."

Timbre held up her fist, "You got it."

"Thanks," Turf tapped his fist against hers. He glanced at the the doors of their dorms, and then down the hall, "Do you wanna go get some breakfast before the crap hits the fan? Grab your team if you want. Mine's asleep, and I'd rather have some time away from Alice."

"I don't blame you. After yesterday-" she caught herself. The middle of the hallway was not the place to talk about what happened in Mikado. That, and she just wanted to catch up with her dad and forget about the mistakes she had made fighting the Kokonatsu, "C'mon, let's go." As they walked down the hall, Timbre turned to Turf, "Wait, I didn't know you had brothers."

"Yeah..." Turf bit his lip, "I'm already dreading Alice meeting them. They're about as annoying and rambunctious as Team Ashes… The best case scenario is that she doesn't see them at all, but I have no idea if I can keep them away for that long…"

Considering how the relationship between Turf and his partner had been since the Emerald Forest, she wasn't surprised he'd want to avoid having his family meet her out of… courtesy? She decided not to ask any further as they went to get breakfast.

* * *

Arty was in a deep sleep when Timbre walked out of the room. Shortly after the door closed, he was woken up by a stabbing pain in his chest. A pained gasp squeezed out of him, "Wha-what the heck?!" he sat up, looking around through the glaring sunlight coming through the window. Sepia was standing next to his bed. She looked just as she did the night before when she had thrown him and Roland out of the dorm, furious.

"Sepia, why did you punch me awake?..." he began the groggy process of exiting the sanctuary of his bed. The stench of dead Kokonatsu still clung to him, or at least he felt like it did. Granted, he did usually smell like a mixture of paint, pencil graphite, and stress.

Roland, who was already dressed and ready to go, burst out laughing from across the room. He had the privilege of watching the whole event unfold, "She said that you were snoring all night. Oh, and that she wanted to punch all of the air out of you so that you would never snore again," he explained while straightening his neckerchief in the reflection in the window. He brushed it flat as well as the rest of his Beacon uniform, "Sepia, thank you for more and more reasons to enjoy my time with you and this team."

Sepia gave a thumbs up, but her hand got caught in the massive rat's nest atop her head. Tugging with all her might, she couldn't yank out her hand. It was just like a script that she had made a year previous, where a girl's bedhead had become sentient. The whole thing was based on the true story of her morning routine.

Arty rubbed his sore chest as he looked at Roland incredulously, "And you didn't _stop_ her?!"

"Arty, would you have stopped her if you were me?" Roland asked, " _Could_ you stop her if you were me?"

Arty turned and looked to Sepia, who was still struggling with the wad of chocolate hair that had an iron grip on her hand, "Good point," he pushed himself off of his bed to get dressed, "better get dressed for class, then."

"Arty, we don't have class today. They only reason we're getting gussied up is because it's Family Day," Roland told him flatly, "Sepia and I talked it over a bit. Neither of us have any family coming, so we're gonna go hang out in Vale for a while if that's cool by you. It's cool by you, right?" he said the last bit almost frantically.

"Um…" Arty pulled on his uniform jacket, "Yeah, I don't care… I remember Timbre saying her dad was coming in, so I might go say hi and I might go out and try to find an art store or something."

"You don't have anyone coming either?" Roland asked.

Arty pushed a comb through his spiky hair to try to tame it a little bit, "Uh, no. I'm from Atlas, remember? Kinda hard to get in and out of that massive freezer whenever you want, especially for just a day."

Sepia silently giggled and tossed Arty his scroll. How she got his password was her little secret. ' _Look at that.'_ She signed.

Arty's eyes scanned over his scroll before widening. "No!" He began frantically running around, putting on the rest of his uniform and sloppily tying his tie to complete the outfit, "no no no no no no no!" Before leaving, he pointed at Sepia, "I don't know how you got into my scroll, but…" he groaned and ran down the hall, not even bothering to close the door.

"What'd it say?" Roland asked.

' _His mom is here,'_ Sepia signed, ' _You're really getting the hang of sign language.'_

' _I'm getting there,'_ he clumsily signed back.

* * *

"Dad!" Timbre yelled cheerfully as she ran up and hugged her father.

Amadeus Forté clutched his daughter as if it had been years since he saw her last. His black hair was pushed back against his head, grey streaks running through it here and there. The dark blue jacket over a black t-shirt, faded blue jeans, and black dress shoes that he wore all served to make him seem like a much more relaxed man than he actually was.

After being tackled by Timbre, he had to readjust his glasses. "Timbre! How is Beacon treating you?"

"It's going great, Dad," Timbre stood back and smiled, "better than I could have imagined."

"Well, I'm sure you want to tell me all about how your semester is going so far. I know that I want you to, at least."

Timbre shifted her feet a little bit, diverting her gaze, "Actually dad, can we not yet? I'd much rather hear about what you've been doing."

He gave her a quizzical look, "Is everything okay, Timbre?"

"Yeah, everything's fine! Just, just had a rough day yesterday is all. The farther I can get from Huntsman training today the better."

"Amadeus! Oh my word, you actually came!" Professor Maple jogged over to them from inside the crowd, "It's so good to see you! I have to say, your daughter has been marvelous! She's getting along so well with her team, and she even assisted in her first mission yesterday!" she put an arm around Timbre's shoulders.

"Carmen, stop. You don't need to talk of me so highly…" Timbre said blushing, hoping her tone of voice would get the message across.

Amadeus laughed, "Why's that, Timbre? Isn't it a good thing that your teacher's complimenting your work?"

"Well, yeah, but…" Timbre's voice trailed off.

"You should tell me about this 'mission' over lunch. How about we go to our favorite cafe downtown?" he turned to the old family friend, "I'd be more than happy if you could join us, Carmen."

"I'm sorry, but I do have a little bit of work to do. Alabaster's always got me busy, as you know, but I'll see what strings I can pull," Professor Maple waved and began walking back the direction that she came from, "It was very nice to see you again, Amadeus! Oh, and make sure that Timbre tells you all about the 9-tailed Kokonatsu that we took down yesterday! Have fun!" she snickered. Detention certainly wasn't going to be Timbre's entire punishment. Having Timbre explain what happened to her father's face would be much more effective in the long run.

Amadeus's smile faded as the color drained from his face. "A 9-tailed Kokonatsu…? Timbre, you…"

"Dad!" Timbre held her arms out, "It's not that… Carmen was the one to kill it. I would never go up against something like that this early in my training!"

Amadeus closed his eyes and put his hand to his forehead. After a long sigh, he grabbed his daughter's shoulders, "I just want you to stay safe, Timbre," he hugged her tightly, "I just don't want anything happening to you. I trust you not to do anything rash."

Timbre felt panic welling up inside her.

.

"Oh god oh god…" Arty muttered to himself as he tapped his foot against the tile floor of Beacon's main hall as he waited, "Oh god oh god oh god…" He felt a hand on his shoulder and nearly jumped out of his skin.

"Boo!" His mother grinned from ear-to-ear at him, proud to see him in Beacon's uniform.

Arty clutched at his chest, "Holy crap… Mom! You nearly gave me a heart attack!" he hugged her tightly before looking behind her carefully, "Is dad here with you?..."

Daphne Umber rolled her eyes and smiled, "Hello to you too, son, and no, your father didn't come along. General León has him trying to break up this crazy… Grimm-worshipping cult or whatever back home. Bunch of lunatics, I tell you," she looked over her son, "You clean up well, Arty. You should learn to dress like that more often, and fix your tie," she began tugging at the striped tie of his uniform. "To be honest, I think the Beacon uniform looks much better on you than the Atlas one. Just don't tell your father I said so."

"Mom, stop…" he looked around the room and saw Frost and Rime sniggering before the latter gave him a thumbs up, "Wait, what about Merigold? If dad's on military business and you're here-"

Daphne shook her head, "Don't worry about your sister," she turned to look across the room towards the snack table, "I'm sure she's scarfing down all the sweets the school set out as we speak."

Arty's eyes widened, "You… you brought Meri with you?!"

Daphne giggled, "You don't think I'd leave her back in Atlas did you? All the family friends are Huntsmen and soldiers. I wouldn't _dare_ leave her in their care with all the ammo, guns, blunt objects, explosives and… whatever else that they use just lying around. So yes, I brought her with me."

"Arty!" Merigold sprinted away from the snack table and tackle hugged Arty's leg, "You're here! Did you blow something up again? Does Beacon have a hole now too?!"

"Merigold! We don't talk about that here. That stays in the family, okay?" Daphne knelt down to talk to her daughter, "Now, go on, give Arty his gift."

"Gift?" Arty didn't even expect them to be there, much less was he expecting presents.

"Yes ma'am!" Merigold held out a bright orange pocket sketchbook up to her brother. She grinned, exposing the gap in her own teeth. Her gap, however, was caused by the loss of her two front baby teeth, "Mommy said that you could have fun with it, but that it could also help you out in a fight!"

Arty held the book in his hands. The orange leather matched his own favorite shade of orange. He unclasped the strap holding it closed and began flipping through the paper, "Ah… that's some fine Bristol paper…" he said, running the book along his cheek. He was a sucker for high-quality art supplies.

His mom chuckled when he knelt down to hug his sister.

"Thank you so much, Merigold. I love it."

Merigold hugged her brother tightly. She was happy to please. "Where is your team? You know, Team ARTY!"

"Team ARTS, dear," Daphne corrected.

"Um…" Arty looked around the room, "Roland and Sepia said they were going to go hang out in town since they didn't have anyone coming, but Timbre should be around here somewhere with her dad." Arty spotted the dark black hair with red streaks through the crowd. Timbre was being hugged tightly by a man in a dark blue jacket. He pointed towards them, "Oh, there she is!" he began waving and leading his mom and sister across the room, "Hey! Timbre!"

.

Timbre turned to see her team's leader dragging a woman with the same blonde and orange hair by the arm. Trailing behind her was a little girl. She quickly wiped the tears away before they came up, "Arty!"

"Mom, this is, uh…" He gestured to his teammate. "Well… I'm pretty sure you know he-"

"Timbre Forté!" she lightly punched her son in the arm, "You didn't tell me the T, Timbre in ARTS was Timbre _Forté_!" she grabbed Timbre's hands and held them in hers, "It's a pleasure to meet you. I'm Daphne Umber," she stifled a girlish shriek, "I'm _such_ a big fan of yours."

"Mom, you can stop," Arty rubbed his temples as Merigold jumped around giddily. He pointed to her without looking, "and that little ball of sugar-fueled energy is my little sister, Merigold."

"Haha, it's so nice to meet you two. And it's not a problem Arty. Nobody's really… recognized me in a couple of months," she cleared her throat and gestured to her dad, "This is my dad-"

"Amadeus?!" Daphne let go of Timbre and looked to her father, "No way! It has been so long!" she hugged the man tightly, "I'm so happy to see you! I had no idea that you had a daughter! I never even thought about Timbre _Forté_ being _yours_! That's great! She's gorgeous!"

Arty and Timbre stood flabbergasted.

"Wait…" Arty pointed between the two adults.

"You two…" Timbre looked just as shocked.

"Know each other?" Amadeus said, still smiling at his childhood friend, "Yeah. We do."

Daphne couldn't help but laugh, "Looks like you two were destined to be friends just like we were! What an incredible coincidence. Even oceans and kingdom borders couldn't keep our kids from meeting, eh Amadeus?"

"I suppose not." Amadeus spoke softly. For a moment, he seemed uncomfortable, but this quickly passed, "You know, a good friend of mine and I talked about running down to that old cafe. She can't come, but, since we ran into you, you're all welcome to come along."

"Oh that sounds great. We'd love to!" Daphne clasped her hands together. She looked down to her son, "Are we, you know, stuck here for a speech or something before we're allowed to go out on the town?"

Arty shrugged, "Eh. I don't know. Honestly, I forgot all about Family Day after the day we had yesterday."

Timbre began moving her hand horizontally across her throat, telling Arty to shut up.

"Right," Amadeus said, "Carmen was saying that these two and their team fought a 9-tailed Kokonatsu yesterday on their mission."

"A 9-tailed Kokonatsu, you say?!" Daphne pat Arty on the back, "That is amazing! I've heard that those things mean business. You know, I've heard that even the General has struggled against one of those before. It takes a Huntsman that's pretty quick on their feet, right?" she questioned while walking her son and daughter out.

Despite his protests that Professor Maple had been the one to kill the dangerous Grimm, Daphne kept rattling on.

Amadeus watched as the three Umbers walked off. Having still gotten no where closer to finding out what exactly happened with the Kokonatsu, he gave up for the time being, "So… to lunch then…?" he held his arm out to let Timbre lead the way after them.

"Yeah… right."

As they were leaving, Timbre's attention was drawn to the corner of the room, where she saw Yamuna surrounded by a group of other wolf Faunus in the same silky formal attire that she normally wore. A large man with long grey hair and a tall slender woman with the same wolf ears as Yamuna stood in front of her. Yamuna's head was hung down, but the two adults didn't seem to be scolding her, but trying to comfort her. Off to the side, Timbre noticed another wolf Faunus leaning against the wall as he watched the family. He was closer to her age, being the oldest member of Team ARTS, but was obviously a few years older. He was dressed in all black, which contrasted greatly to Yamuna and her parents' brightly-colored kimonos.

After the confrontation between her and Alice the night before, Timbre really wanted to talk to her to make sure she was okay. But she felt that having her family there was help enough. She just wondered where Anubis and Hati were.

* * *

After their short ride in a transit airship, it wasn't long before the group got to the cafe. They walked down the streets of Vale, taking in the cityscape. It was far different from what the three citizens of Atlas were used to. Still, Daphne led the way to the cafe as if she had never left Vale. The cafe that meant so much to her and Amadeus just so happened to be the same cafe that Timbre had brought Team ARTS to on the night of the team formation ceremony.

"This is just like I remember it…" Daphne gazed around the cafe lovingly, "They haven't changed this place in years. Same rustic look, wooden furniture, just… everything. It's amazing," she tried to hide her face while she wiped a tear away. "You, me, and Naga used to come here all of the time. I've truly missed it…" she kept on looking around while Arty got his, her, and Merigold's orders.

Amadeus looked around the interior of the cafe with a sad look on his face, "Yeah, we did."

Timbre made the order for her and her father, and thanked the cashier for the food. She passed her father's food to him and took a sip of her own tea, "C'mon you two, enough sentimental reminiscing."

The two adults chuckled as Arty began patting Timbre's arm.

"Ow, Arty! What is it?" she questioned him, but he wasn't looking at her. He was looking past her.

She turned and had to cover her mouth to keep herself from laughing. A familiar pair of students sat at a table on the other side of the cafe, one laughing hysterically and the other signing with trembling hands through a fit of silent laughter. She called out, "Roland!? Sepia!?"

Roland looked over in horror, and Sepia jumped out of her chair and darted for the door. He began to follow her, but sat back down, "Woah there, Sepia, chill," he walked over to where Arty and Timbre were sitting down with their families.

' _This isn't what it looks like,'_ Sepia signed, her face red with embarrassment, ' _Roland just wanted coffee, and I sort of did too, and we were just about to go do a little shopping because he needed some supplies and so did I, and I thought we could go check out the docks and he said okay, and-'_ her hands flew about lightning fast, but she quickly tired herself out and slouched in defeat.

"We were getting to know each other a little better, since we seem to fight well together," Roland finally said, though this was in answer to a question that he hadn't even been asked. He just wanted to cover his bases. "That's all."

Daphne leaned over to Arty, "So did they start seeing each other before you guys became a team, or…"

"Mom…" Arty held in his laughter, "they're from complete opposite sides of Remnant… They didn't know that the other existed until after we were launched into the Emerald Forest."

Amadeus looked scared at his daughter's teammate, "What into the where now?"

"We aren't seeing each other…" Roland grumbled and pulled up a chair, "Anyway, yeah, Emerald Forest. We got launched super far into a Grimm infested forest. It was… interesting. We all fought a Minotaurus with four of the other students. That was, what, ten weeks ago now?"

Sepia nodded and pulled up a chair opposite of Roland, ' _Yeah! That was so cool! We kicked some serious butt back there!'_

"Arty," Daphne looked a little disturbed, "who is this and what is she saying…?"

"Mom," Arty gestured to the pair, "this is Sepia Hughes and my partner Roland Wells." He hid his face behind his coffee mug, "Together, uh, the four of us are Team ARTS."

"Howdy," Roland tipped his hat.

Sepia just sat and waved dumbly.

Amadeus held his hand out to the two of them, "Well, it's a pleasure to meet my daughter's team."

Daphne did the same, "Likewise."

"Mommy, why does that boy have a tail?" Merigold asked.

"I'm a Faunus." Roland said flatly, "Is Atlas that devoid of Faunus…?" he asked Arty quietly.

Arty kicked his partner's shin below the table. "Not now Roland…" he said through gritted teeth.

"So, now that we have all of Team ARTS here, why not tell Daphne and I about yesterday?" Amadeus suggested to his daughter. He certainly didn't look happy, nor did he sound happy.

Timbre knew she couldn't delay the inevitable anymore. "Well… second-year teams were assigned to research a scenario somewhere near the school that could be seen as low-danger level missions if they were put up on Huntsman mission boards. We were teamed up with Carmen and another team and were sent to Mikado Village," she looked to her dad, who nodded in recognition to the name, "and they had a caravan get attacked by raiders. A flood of Kokonatsu started to take hold of the surrounding forest because of the villager's negative emotions. We went in to help defend the town and take care of the strongest Grimm in the area since older Kokonatsu can control weaker ones," she shook her head. "We had no idea going in that there was a 9-tails. We honestly thought it'd be a 6 or a 7 at most."

Amadeus stared at her, "So once you saw the 9-tails, you were the one that went after it?"

"No! Dad, I didn't, Carmen was-" Timbre tried to protest.

"Not exactly," Roland began, "See, Timbre and I were split off with the Rhea twins, two of the members of Team GLXY, and probably the most talented students that I've seen so far."

Arty leaned over to his mom, "One of their Semblances can turn off _gravity_ apparently… I'm jealous I didn't get to see it in action..."

"We held off the Kokonatsu from the village, and it finally seemed that we had them cleared out. We found out that Gavin, Team GLXY's leader, went missing. The other team got attacked, then Timbre ran off to go help. I ran after her to bring her back to the group, but the Kokonatsu saw that as an opportunity to separate another from the group. I didn't have time to type out a weapon, so I got my butt handed to me by a 6-tailed and his buddies. Xannie was forced to take care of me while Lurida held off the Kokonatsu by herself," Roland crossed his arms and looked down at the table. "Of course, I don't know much of that first hand. My aura dropped fast, and I blacked out a few seconds after I got jumped by those Grimm. I'm lucky that the Rhea twins saved me."

Amadeus looked at his daughter for an explanation.

Before he could say anything, Arty spoke up, "But when she caught up to us, she found Gavin and helped hold off some of the stronger Grimm," he looked to his mute teammate, "Sepia got hurt fighting some, so we had to go into the Grimms' lair. Timbre was the one that carried her."

"The Grimms' lair?!" Amadeus almost spilled his coffee, "What were you thinking going into a dangerous place like that, Timbre?!"

Arty went on, "But when the 8-and-9-tailed ones showed up, she helped hold off the 8's while Professor Maple killed them all off. Honestly, I only took out one of the seven Grimm in that cave and that was with her help."

"It would've been a disaster had it not been for Professor Maple, or so I've heard. I wouldn't be here if not for Lurida and Xannie, and Sepia might not have been here if not for Timbre," Roland further explained.

They sat in silence for a moment before Daphne spoke, "Well, it's amazing what you all went through. I'm just grateful Carmen and Team GLXY were there to help you." She looked to Arty, "You'll have to introduce me so I can thank them all later."

Amadeus just shook his head, "Daphne. How can you say that? They almost… they almost _died_ out there!"

Daphne looked offended, "It's dangerous work, Amadeus. I know there are risks, but I'm sure Arty can handle them. His team too. Just from what I've heard, yes, mistakes were made, but they're in good hands. They're getting some of the best training in all of Remnant."

"At what cost, Daphne?!" Amadeus stood up, "Timbre ran off and two of her teammates almost died."

"But we're alive, dad! We did what we had to. We didn't know the extent of what was going on when we went in."

Amadeus pushed in his chair, "Well, to me, it sounds like this Team GLXY messed up and didn't do all of their research."  
Arty looked between Timbre and her father, "Sir, they couldn't have kno-"

Amadeus ignored him, "It sounds like had it not been for Carmen, you two would have gotten more than hurt," he pointed to Roland and Sepia, "and others could have gotten injured or killed as well."

"No offense," Roland thought about his words for a moment, "Actually, offense totally meant. You're being way too critical of your own daughter. Give her a break. She's good in a fight, and one of the few of us who managed to not get hurt. Sepia and I learned our lessons and are working to better ourselves, and I guarantee you that Timbre is too," he glared at the man. He couldn't help but think of his step-mother, "She made mistakes, we all made mistakes, but we pulled through. Timbre knew what she was getting into when she signed up, so maybe you should've done more research if you thought that this wouldn't be dangerous."

"Roland!" Timbre yelled.

"No, Timbre, maybe he's right," Amadeus grabbed his daughter's wrist, "I should have done more research into the profession that took your mother away from us."

Timbre yanked herself free, "You don't think she knew what she was getting herself into either?" Timbre gave out a dejected sigh, "This is _exactly_ why I don't call to talk about Beacon…"

Amadeus stopped in his tracks. The half-empty cafe was all staring at them.

Timbre just shook her head, "Why do you think I'm even _doing_ this, dad? I don't want to make the same mistakes she did. That's why I'd rather make them early when someone's there to help me rather than when I'm out there on my own… if I was ever out there on my own..." she turned away from him, "She would have understood…"

"Right, but it's that kind of understanding that got her killed. She got too close to those… monsters. I shouldn't have let you do the same. I can't believe that I was such a foo-"

"Oh come on, is this guy always this melodramatic?" Roland rolled his eyes, standing between Amadeus and Timbre, "She's part of our team and not to mention an adult. She's not going anywhere unless she wants to."

"How dare you…" Amadeus glowered at Roland.

Sepia stepped between Timbre and her dad, holding her arms outstretched and defiantly shaking her head while frowning at the man. Timbre was her partner, and she wasn't going to let anyone take Timbre away. Not even Timbre's father would get away with that.

Arty wanted to say something, but he knew if he acted this way towards his dad he'd be in huge trouble. That's when he felt a small nudge at his leg. He looked over to his mom, who crossed her arms and tilted her head towards the rest of his team, telling him to get up and speak his mind. He nodded and stood with Sepia and Roland.

"Sir, we may have just met and all, but honestly, from how I've heard her talk about things, the whole 'superstar' thing didn't cut it for her. This is what she wants to do and she had to go through that to understand that. Saying that she can't because of the mistakes of others is just… _stupid_!" he looked back to her, "she's not her mom, she's not Carmen, she's not me, she's not Roland, she's not Sepia. She's Timbre Forté, and her mistakes are her own to make. If she screws up, then we'll be there to bail her out of it. If we can't, then we go down together. Simple as that."

Amadeus pushed past the kids to get to his daughter, "Timbre, you're coming home with me." Under his breath, he muttered, "I don't know what I'd do if I ended up alone…"

"Dad!" Timbre struggled against his grip, "Stop it!"

"Amadeus, enough." Professor Maple leaned on the counter where a cashier watched in confused horror, "I didn't lie to Alabaster about finishing my paperwork to come and see you get all huffy about your daughter wanting to be a Huntress."

The students watched in disbelief as she strode over and stood between him and Timbre. Once again, Professor Maple went out of her way to take care of her students, "This is her choice, not yours. She learned her lesson about letting her emotions get the best of her yesterday, but it looks like you still haven't in the years that I've known you."

Amadeus didn't know how to respond to his old friend. "Carmen… I…"

"Aria wouldn't have wanted you hindering Timbre," Professor Maple said quietly. "Trust me, I fought with her. She didn't change her mind easily."

Amadeus went from angry to nearly sobbing in seconds. He covered his eyes with his sleeves. "Carmen…" he lowered his voice, "I just don't want her getting hurt, too."

Carmen let a slight smile curve the corner of her mouth, She lowered her voice so the others couldn't hear, "Well, I can't say that she won't, but I can say that you can trust her team. Look, Arty's starting to get the hang of being a leader. Roland put his neck on the line just to try and keep her safe. Sepia was willing to bite off more than she could chew to make sure your daughter could handle the fight. She's safe. They won't let anything happen to her, and she won't let anything happen to them. They're a good team together already. Don't ruin that." She put a hand on his shoulder, "And as long as I'm alive, I will give everything to make sure nothing happens to her."

Amadeus went silent. "Fine…" he suddenly hugged her tightly, "just watch after her for me, Carmen." He grabbed his coat and began making his way out. Shoulders hunched and trembling, he stepped outside.

Timbre stood up to go after him, "Dad!"

"Let him go, Timbre." Carmen hugged her student, "He's been through a lot. Give him some time, and he'll come around."

Timbre felt warm tears streaming down her face, "Right…"

After some awkward silence, Daphne sipped her tea, "Well, that was very interesting. He hasn't changed a bit after all these years."

As Timbre let go of Carmen, she gasped, "Oh god! I completely forgot! I was going to help Turf with his brothers!"

Arty tilted his head, "Turf has brothers?"

Timbre quickly drank the last of her tea and crammed her scone into her mouth, "I'm sorry, but I have to go! It was so nice to meet you Mrs. Umber, and you too Merigold!" She dashed out of the cafe and back towards the airship station down the street.

Daphne waved after her as Merigold wholeheartedly flapped her arms to say goodbye.

* * *

"Whelp, this is going way better than expected," Turf thought out loud as he waited in the empty main hall of Beacon. Alice, Navy, and Ebon were all off with their own families, but Turf was left to wait on his brothers, who didn't seem to be coming, "Looks like I'm in the clear. Right on," he turned on his heels to leave, but then he heard the cluncking of boots.

"Turf!" Timbre yelled as she ran into the room, "I'm so sorry I'm late, I had a little… whatever. Did I miss your brothers?" She looked around quickly, "Is Alice around?"

"No, and no. I don't think they're coming, which I'm at least a little thankful for. Alice is with her father or whatever. I'm just glad she's not around." Turf looked down the hall, "How did things with your dad go?"

"They went… well…" She smiled awkwardly, "Okay, things went terrible. He almost dragged me away from Beacon, but don't worry! I'm here to stay… for the time being."

"I'm glad." Turf smiled through his apparent disappointment, "Anyway, might as well… oh no."

Alice was just walking through the door, waving and smiling back to someone beyond it, "Okay! Bye Papa!" When she turned back and saw Turf and Timbre alone in the room together, "Aw, did the family not show up?" The animosity in her voice was obviously left over from the night previous.

Timbre stood up with Turf, "I had lunch with my dad, thank you."

"I wasn't talking ta _you_ , Timbre," she said with mock cheerfulness, "I was talking ta the Ace of Spades over 'ere."

"I suppose no-"

" _ **HEY, TURD!"**_ A voice rang out in the main hall.

"Oh no…" Turf shrunk up, "No no no no no…"

Two young men walked up behind Turf, slapping him on the back. They shared the same tanned complexion and shaggy brown hair. They were dressed similarly in jeans and hoodies, one brown and one grey.

Timbre stood there in surprise on the one defining difference between Turf and his older brothers, the fact they didn't wear a beanie similar to his, which she realized she'd never seen Turf without. In any other circumstances, the lack of headwear wouldn't be so surprising. In this case it was, due to the fact that the two men teasing and laughing at a mortified Turf had folded over dog ears sticking out through locks of brown hair.

"Turf…" Timbre pointed back and forth between the two, "are these your… brothers?"

"Clay," the one in the grey hoodie said giving a short wave,

"And Loam," the other said, "at your service."

This was the worst possible case scenario for Turf, and he couldn't stop glancing over at Alice. Her mouth was agape, which, judging from past experience, meant that she was about thirty seconds away from a screaming fit.

"Look, I can explain." he told her quickly.

"Explain what? What you really should be explaining is why you're still wearing that hat." Loam put his arm around Turf's neck and pulled him close, "It makes it harder to give you a noogie!"

Clay burst out laughing, "Hold on! I've got it!" he yanked off Turf's beanie, exposing a pair of identical dog ears.

"Guys! What is wrong with you?!" Turf reached for his hat, but his brothers began playing a game of keep-away. His face went pale as he sensed Alice's rage building. He looked to his leader slowly, "Look, Alice, I don't have any control over what I am… I just… I was going to say something, then I saw how you acted around Yamuna and Roland, and again in McGouran's class…"

Alice just gaped with wide eyes at her partner.

Timbre covered her mouth with her hands, realizing the gravity of the situation.

"What's with the redhead?" Clay questioned.

"She an ex-girlfriend of yours or something, Fido?" Loam laughed, nudging his younger brother.

Alice began shaking her head back in forth in denial, "no… no no no no no. _Please_ , tell me this is a joke. You… we've bunked in tha same room for ' _alf a semester_ an'… no. You _can't_ be a _Faunus_ , Turf." She ran up and began tugging on his ears, "You _can't_ be a _Faunus_!"

"Woah!" Loam pushed Alice's arms away from Turf, "I don't know who you are to my little bro, but the only people who get to tease him about his ears are us!"

Turf looked solemnly to the ground, "She's… she's the leader of Team ANTE… My team..." he couldn't keep his feet from fidgeting, "and also my combat partner."

Clay looked down to his brother, "Dude... you've been hiding your ears from everybody ever since you got here, because of _her_ …?" He looked around awkwardly for a moment, "Like, even to sleep?"  
"Don't forget the shower," Loam said smiling.

"Guys, knock it off!" Turf shouted. They didn't understand what was going on, but it didn't matter in that moment. He shoved his brothers away, "Do you even have any idea what's going on?!"

Clay and Loam looked at each other for a moment before Clay responded, "Why'd you think we showed up so late?"

Loam shook his head, "We thought these two girls were the ones you're always talking so highly of. We didn't know that she was the one who's been making your life miserable."

Clay pointed to his eyes, "Kinda hard to tell tan and red apart when you don't know what tan and red _are_."

"Guys, just… just back off. Please," Turf caught Alice's gaze again and shuddered.

Alice turned and took out her scroll, "I 'ave ta tell Navy and Ebon. They are _not_ going ta believe that you're a bloody _Faunus_!"

"I don't think Ebon's really going to care much and of course Navy won't believe it because he's just as prejudiced as you, Alice."

Alice stopped in her tracks and turned to Timbre. " _Excuse_ me?!"

"You know, Alice. I've been all over the world. I've met many different people, some good, some bad, some human, some Faunus, and you know what?" She narrowed her gaze, "I don't think I've met anyone that made me so angry before in my life. If you want to present to Beacon that Turf is a Faunus and treat it like it's a horrible crime against Remnant, and reveal that _you_ were the reason that he hid that part of his identity for the past couple of months, go ahead. That'll just prove to the world who you really are. If you want to tear apart the team Alabaster trusted you to keep together, then so be it."

Alice couldn't get any words out for a minute, "T-Timbre? How could you say somethin' like that ta me?" she gestured to the three dog Faunus brothers, "I mean… _look_ at them! Someone like you _has_ ta understand why I feel this way."

"Honestly, Alice, I don't. I really, really don't."

While Alice and Timbre had their spat, Clay and Loam leaned closer to Turf.

"I like her," Clay whispered.

"Please tell me she's the _current_ girlfriend," Loam added.

"She's not my girlfriend, guys…" Turf murmured as he covered his Faunus traits with his hands, "Now I can't even show my face around my own team… Thanks, guys…"

"Hey, Faunus are Faunus. You can't change that," Loam clasped Turf's shoulder, "it was bound to happen sooner or later. You didn't think you could hide under that beanie for four years, did you?"

"I mean, you couldn't even talk to your own _cousin_ because of this girl." Clay grimaced as if he smelled something bad, "I mean, Alice must be _some sort_ of awful if she made you cut ties with Yamuna while you were here."

Timbre and Alice were torn away at Clay's comment.

"Yamuna's your cousin?" Timbre said surprised before turning back to Alice, "Do you see what you've been doing to him? He was afraid to tell people who he really was because of you! I just don't get it, Alice. Do you feel _any_ shame?..."

Alice looked ready to scream, cry, and punch Timbre, "Why should I?! I'm really the only one I can trust in this world and the less people I 'ave ta rely on the betta! And the few people I'll _eva_ allow myself to trust with anythin' will _not_ be _Faunus_."

"What's wrong with you…?" Turf finally asked to his leader, "What did Faunus do to deserve this treatment? What did me, my brothers, Yamuna, or Roland ever do to you? _Any_ Faunus for that matter?"

"It doesn't matter what you lot ever did, it's what those that I've heard of growing up did," she retorted quickly, "Savage. Vile. Scum." She turned on her heels and stomped out of the room, slamming the large heavy door behind her and sending a loud crash through the hall. After it dissipated, the room fell silent.

Clay lifted a finger, "Phew! She is some sort of loco, ain't she? Who'd you piss off to get paired up with _her_?"

"Just go home, guys…" Turf mumbled, "I'll call later," he simply walked away from his brothers.

Loam bit his tongue. He wanted to tell Turf that he couldn't just waste their time like that. He couldn't just let one or two jerks in the world get him down, but he still understood what Turf was feeling. It was something that all Faunus felt at one time or another. Turf felt alone in a crowd of hundreds. He had people around him, but the poor guy was too afraid to ask for help. Finally, he spoke up before Turf could leave through the same doors as Alice, "Hey, you know, Yamuna could really use someone right now. You should talk to her when she's feeling better, for you and her."

Turf didn't say anything else. He just pulled his beanie back over his ears and left.

"Turf!" Timbre yelled after him. She turned back to Turf's brothers, "It was really nice to meet you two, sorry for all of the… drama." She ran out of the room to catch Turf.

"Whelp…" Clay looked down at his boots, "That… went really…"

"Awful, yeah. I know," Loam slapped his brother on the shoulder. He held up a few plastic cards, "I saw a nice-ass food cart over in downtown Vale. You game?"

"Duh," Clay began heading towards the exit. The dog ears on his head were at attention, as if listening for the next source of food, "I'm ready to head out."

Loam looked back at where Turf left, "Right, let's go."

* * *

Arty flopped backwards onto his bed. "What a day…" he sighed as he undid his tie. It was dark outside, and the fluorescent lights in the dorm sent sharp light across the faces of Arty and Timbre. Roland and Sepia had split off after the cafe incident to 'go grab some supplies'.

Timbre sat across from him at her desk, absent-mindedly flipping through one of their textbooks, "Yeah…"

Arty glanced over to her. He couldn't see her face, but he could see her slumped shoulders and heard the glum tone to her voice. After the events at the cafe, he didn't blame her, "You gonna be okay?"

Timbre wasn't expecting the question. At first she wanted to just scream "No!" over and over. Thinking it over, she appreciated the concern from her team's leader. "I appreciate the concern, Arty, but… today's been pretty rough for me."

Arty nodded, "Yeah. I can see. But you know what?"

She turned to look to him.

"At the end of the day, you're still here."

Timbre rolled her eyes, "I'm not upset about that, Arty."

He raised an eyebrow, "What do you mean?" he paused, "Did things not go so well with Turf's brothers?"

"Not… exactly. Alice is just…" Timbre let out a frustrated sigh. "Listen, Arty. Turf wants this to stay a secret, but knowing how Teams ARTS and ANTE interact already…" she turned her chair, "Arty, you know how Alice _really_ hates Faunus for whatever reason?"

"Yeah?" A look of realization came across his face. "No way…"

Timbre gave a sad nod.

"Turf's… a Faunus?" he sat back and stared at the ceiling, "Everything makes so much sense now… that whole deal in Forever Fall... I always just thought he was a big Faunus rights activist…"

"Nope…" she began to pace around the room, "he's been hiding it ever since he got here. He wanted to test the waters in a sense to see how people would react to Faunus. Everyone's fine except Alice, and when he got teamed up with her, that only pushed him to hide it until now. He hasn't even been able to talk to his own family here at Beacon because of her!"

"Family?"

"Yamuna's Turf's cousin, Arty… He was in her tour group… and they had to act like complete strangers… When his brothers came in and Alice saw them, and they took off Turf's beanie… she went on a tirade. I just… I don't get it, Arty."

"It's the usual deal, then," Roland entered the room with Sepia close at his heels, "I overheard you a little ways down the hall. Your voice carries, Timbre," he sat on the edge of his bed, but didn't seem too riled up about Alice's treatment towards Turf.

Timbre looked at Roland in shock. She was dumbfounded, "H-how can the Faunus of our team be so okay with this?!" she nearly shouted.

Roland held up a hand as if to tell her to quiet down. This wasn't anything new, "I won't lie, I was already pretty sure that Turf was a Faunus. He wears that beanie all the time, eats a heck of a lot more meat than normal, and hears a lot better than most. That, and you can just kind of tell when you're one of us. Something about how we carry ourselves," he nodded for Sepia to sit beside him without thinking, "Anyway, it's a problem that Turf has to work on himself. He's a Faunus, and needs to learn how to accept that. He needs to be okay with the person that he is, but that's going to take a lot of time and pain. There's nothing to be angry about on your end, Timbre. This is solely his issue, not yours."

After a few moments of silence, Sepia sat next to Roland with a pained expression. Turf was her friend too, after all. She couldn't fathom how much it hurt being in Turf's position.

Timbre looked offended, "You know, I may not _be_ a Faunus, but Turf is my friend. Are you saying I can't feel bad for him?" she shook her head, "Do you even know what empathy is, Roland?"

"Yeah, but I also know when something is out of my hands," Roland glanced to a binder placed right underneath the foot of his bed, and then back to Timbre, "I know full well what empathy is, Timbre, but us being upset over it won't help Turf. When he's ready, he'll ask for it, and we can help him in whatever way that he needs. Until then, speculating on how he must be feeling doesn't help anyone."

Timbre was about to retort when there was a light knocking at the door.

' _Sooner rather than later, huh?'_ Sepia mouthed.

"The leader might want to handle this," Roland glanced over to Arty.

Arty held up his hand in defeat, "Okay," he got up and looked through the peephole, confirming Sepia and Roland's suspicions. He looked back to Timbre before opening the door. There in the doorway, dressed in his pajama pants and a white t-shirt, was Turf.

"Hey guys…" he scratched the back of one of his exposed dog ears, not daring to look anyone in the eyes, "Do you… do you think I could crash in here for tonight…?"


	17. V1Ch13: Urban Legend

The cafeteria shook with the voices of hundreds of students, each shouting to be heard over the last. Something had them all captivated, and it certainly wasn't the visit from their families the day before. Words floated around from student to student. Words such as 'Beowolf', 'monster', and 'howling' rang out frequently, but no one truly understood what they were talking about as none of the stories matched up.

Team ARTS, with the addition of Turf, sat at the end of one of the long tables towards one corner of the cafeteria by themselves. No one really knew what to say with Turf being shunned by half of his own team and all, until Sepia, as usual, decided to break the silence.

' _So you like sausage, huh?'_ Sepia texted while staring at the positively massive stack of sausages on Turf's tray.

"A little. I've been trying to cut back," Turf's ears perked up, "and I've been only eating the cooked stuff for a long time now. After that bad case with heartworms…" he trailed off.

"I feel ya, man. I've gotten sick from raw oysters countless times. That's why I only get the farm raised ones nowadays," Roland laughed. It was nice to see that other Faunus had the same types of quirks, or it was for him at least.

Arty held his fork out and gestured to the rest of the group, "Okay, eating habits aside, anyone else hearing about the talk of Beowolves on campus?" He looked around at the people surrounding him as they talked about it.

Before anyone else could answer, a chipper voice rang out behind him, "I couldn't help but overhear. You guys seriously haven't heard yet?!"

The five students turned to find Rime standing there with a big grin on her face.

"Oh you guys have _missed out_!" She grabbed a seat between Arty and Turf. She stopped and looked at the group with bewilderment, "Did you guys seriously not hear anything last night?"

Timbre shrugged, "We have no idea what you're talking about."

Arty cut in, "We were pretty exhausted after yesterday… and the day before."

Rime crouched to hold on to the corner of their end of the table, "Oh boy. I don't know how you didn't hear. So, around midnight last night, one of our favorite people went out for a walk for who knows what reason. Nobody saw it happen, but she says that, out there in the dark, a huge beast attacked her. She couldn't tell what exactly it was, but she says it could only have been a huge Beowolf."

"Who was it?" Turf asked.

Rime raised an eyebrow at him, "You should know, Turf. She's your partner."

Turf's eyes widened. "Alice?!"

Roland grunted, "Serves her right."

Timbre glared at him, "She might be a… disagreeable person, but she doesn't deserve to get mauled by a Grimm, Roland."

"Says you," he grumbled back.

Arty ignored them, "What's a Beowolf doing on Beacon's campus? Why hasn't anyone killed it yet?" he asked Rime, "I mean, this is a _Huntsman_ Academy…"

She shrugged, "Alice said that Team GLXY showed up while it was attacking her and chased it into the forest nearby. Gavin carried her back to the school," she looked around, "and speaking of which... You guys are pretty buddy-buddy with them right? I was wondering if you know where they are. Frost and I wanted to ask them about what happened, but nobody I've talked to has seen them all morning."

"We haven't had any contact with them since we got back from our mission, actually," Timbre set a fork with a bit of skewered scrambled eggs on her tray and looked around the room. She didn't see the familiar faces that she was looking for. No shining armor, wolf ears or, thankfully, purple ponytails were in the room as far as she could tell, "They might just be doing their own thing for breakfast. After our mission, I wouldn't be surprised if they needed some time away from all these people… and us for that matter."

"Got that right," Arty agreed, "That Kokonatsu ordeal wasn't fun by anyone's standards."

"No kidding…" Roland muttered underneath his breath, "Anyway, is Alice stable, or…?"

Rime nodded, though a bit taken back by his apparent concern. She wasn't convinced it was real. Roland probably just wanted a chance to punch her out before she died, "Yeah, but they're keeping her in the infirmary until her aura's back up to snuff."

' _So, the Beowolf,'_ Sepia texted out, ' _I think I've heard about that before. On nights when the moon looks whole, a silver Beowolf attacks students and faculty that go outside. I heard it in passing, but I also heard that the occurrences stopped at the beginning of last semester,'_ she pondered the significance of what was going on. Was it really a special type of Grimm on Beacon grounds? Her thoughts on this were kept to herself, but her mind still raced with the dozens of possibilities.

The air around them chilled. Zero stood behind Rime, but none of the students even noticed him walk up. His voice was quiet enough already, but it was nearly impossible to hear him with the scarf over his mouth.

"The scarf, Z," Rime covered her mouth with her hand and lowered it, demonstrating for Zero a way to actually be heard.

Zero pulled his scarf down below his chin, exposing his mouth. Apparently, he kept the piece of fabric over his mouth so often that the flesh below the bridge of his nose was notably lighter despite him already having an incredibly pale complexion. He spoke with a soft, unassuming voice that certainly didn't seem to belong to the urban ninja of Team FREZ, "I saw a bit of what happened, but it moved faster than I could react to."

"He speaks!" Roland shouted and threw up his arms.

"No way…" Arty looked up at Zero as he remembered how fast Zero had moved during the fight between him and Ebon at the beginning of the semester. He'd seen Zero in action a couple of times since. The guy's reflexes were insane, and that was an understatement. "It was _faster_ than you?"

"I was surprised, too," Zero looked down. He seemed almost embarrassed that he couldn't keep up with the monster that attacked Alice, "Contrary to the rumors, I don't think that it was a Beowolf. It was much larger. It seemed more like a huge timber wolf, not a Grimm."

"That'd make more sense than a Beowolf wandering into Beacon, but your run of the mill wolves and coyotes are pretty skittish," Roland pointed out, "I took a wilderness survival class back at Sanctum, just in case I didn't have an inn or anything to stay in when I got out into the world. I remember the instructor telling us that most animals, including wolves, can be scared off if you make yourself look big and intimidating, and that bigger animals, such as wolves or bears, don't come around populated areas for any reason other than to scavenge for food."

"I know," Zero began to pull his scarf up again, "It's really strange."

"Ooooo," Rime grinned widely clapped her hands together, "Isn't it exciting?! Our very own urban legend! We had some weird stuff happen back home in Hilfjall-Yama, but nothing like this," she looked around the table, "Hey, whaddya guys say we work together and figure out what's going on? Solve a mystery or two?"

Arty raised an eyebrow, "You want _us_ to help you find a giant wolf that almost killed Alice?" he looked to his team, "You think putting ourselves in a dangerous situation would get us in more trouble with Alabaster?"

"Probably," Roland muttered.

"Most definitely," Timbre said quickly, "But… it sounds like it could be fun, and it would help prevent anyone else from getting hurt!" she looked over to Turf, who was looking nervously off into space, his dog ears drooping.

"You okay, Turf?" she put a hand on his shoulder.

He jumped and almost fell out of his chair, "Oh… yeah. I'm fine. It's just… I can't help but feel like this might be better left to the upperclassmen and the teachers."

"C'moooooon Turf!" Rime whined. Her eyes suddenly drifted to the top of Turf's head, "Wait… Turf…? Are you…?"

"A Faunus? Yeah," he poked the remaining sausages on his plate around with his fork, "don't remind me…"

"Awwwwww!" Rime squealed, "Your ears are so cute! Why'd you hide them for so long?"

Before the conversation could get any more awkward, another Faunus boy with pointed dog ears in a red leather jacket planted an arm around Turf's shoulder, "Cuz the Queen of Mean is super prejudiced towards Faunus like us, eh cuz?"

Arty hadn't seen much of Team Ashes during the semester since he met Anubis and Hati their first week of class, especially since it seemed that their team was stuck in detention every other day or off on some mission. He guessed that it was most likely to keep the troublemakers away for a while. The funny thing was, Arty and most of the other first-years had never seen all four at one time. He'd only met Yamuna's brothers, Anubis and Hati, once, and he hadn't talked to them much since, "Oh, hey, Anubis. Nice jacket. Is it new?"

The boy inclined his head back and looked over Arty with his golden eyes, "Uh, sorry bud. But uh, one, we've never met before and two," he laughed, "I'm _not_ Anubis."

It was Turf's turn to laugh, "Hey, Set. Leave him alone. You can't blame him for getting confused with how little you guys are around to help the first years."

"Wait what?" Timbre expressed her confusion.

"Yeah," a calmer voice said, "He likes to trick people into thinking he's me and I'm him sometimes…" What seemed to be a double of the Faunus boy wearing black rather than red stood next to him.

Rime looked like she had seen a ghost, "Why are there… _two_ of you?"

"Haha!" Set laughed, "I did better than I thought! I didn't even need to _try_ this time!"

"Set, shut up," Anubis glared at him, "Unfortunately, we're twin brothers, but I think that's pretty obvious."

Roland looked amazed, "That's crazy. I've known plenty of other Faunus in my life, but I've never met any that were twins. Makes sense, though."

"Well, we're not the only ones in our family," Anubis responded curtly, "Hati's twin Sköll is in Team ASHS, too."

"So that means Yamuna has _more brothers_?!" Timbre exclaimed.

Anubis rolled his eyes at her, "Yamuna's the youngest of seven kids. Set, here, and Sköll are the biggest troublemakers in all of Beacon. It's probably why you've only seen Hati and I, as they virtually live in Professor Alabaster's office."

"Awwww! Thanks bro. I'm glad you think that of me," Set said with a fake tone of gratitude, which prompted Anubis to pinch the bridge of his nose.

"Back to the issue at hand," Anubis suddenly slammed his hands on the table, "We happened to hear all of you talking about investigating rumors," he pointed one at a time to everyone at the table, " _Don't_ even _think_ about getting involved. The girl that got attacked could've easily died had Team GLXY not shown up."

"What if she wasn't prepared for a fight?" Rime retorted, "Maybe that's why she got hurt so bad?"

"That doesn't matter." The leader of Team ASHS stood back, "Just. Ignore. It. The second and third years are working with Alabaster and the other professors to find a solution."

"Why don't you start a hunt for this thing?" Zero asked, which caused the others to look to him. Hearing him speak so readily was still just as shocking, "I mean, if it's this dangerous, why not have everyone in the schoo-"

Anubis slammed his hand on the table again, a slight snarl curling his upper lip, forcing Zero to revert back to his usual quiet self. "I. Said. Ignore. It."

Zero's expression didn't change, but Rime watched as his fists curled up. She knew a fight was about to break out. She stood up in front of Zero and pushed him back. His hoodie was cold to the touch, "Zero, don't-"

There was a crackling as the loudspeaker buzzed to life. The voice of Professor Alabaster began to come through the speakers, "Will the members of Team GLXY and Team ASHS please meet me in my office? Team GLXY and Team ASHS, please come to my office."

Anubis turned on his heel and began marching out of the hall, "Come on, Set."

Set began walking backwards, pointing at the table, "Oooooo. You guys _really_ pissed him off!" He gave them two thumbs up and winked before spinning on his heels and following after his twin brother.

"Why would Alabaster want to talk to Team ASHS?" Timbre asked absentmindedly, "I mean, Anubis seems responsible enough… but the rest of his team?..."

"Okay," Roland stood, "that settles it. We're going to solve this thing first."

Arty shook his head, "Roland. You heard Anubis and Alabaster. Besides, if the headmaster is involved, then this is way more serious than it seems."

"All the more reason, then," Rime said slyly, "The seven of us don't have a code to stick to, which means work can get done faster. If the school doesn't know what we're up to, then we'll be fine."

"Since when were you such a rebel?" Roland jeered.

"Eh," She rested her head on her hand, "Things have been kinda boring for us. Frost is a great leader and all, but she runs a tight ship and is the _Queen_ of No-Nonsense."

"We're already done with our essays for McGouran's class… weeks ahead of schedule…" Zero added.

"Yeah, so we need something new to do other than study and… meditate," Rime stood up to leave. She put her fist with her thumb and pinky out next to her ear like a scroll, "give us a shout if you're up for putting an end to an urban legend." Shortly after, the two members of Team FREZ were gone.

"So…" Arty began, "do you guys _really_ want to do this? After all the trouble we've already gotten in this semester?"

Roland and Sepia just looked at him.

Arty gestured for them to answer.

"Oh," Roland acted surprised, "you actually wanted us to answer that question with the blatantly obvious response?"

Arty let out an exasperated sigh, "Why can't I be an effective leader like Frost and Anubis…?" he mumbled to himself, "Well, I'm obviously outnumbered. Looks like we're probably going out tonight..."

* * *

There was no discussion on the matter on the part of Rime and Zero, however. Rime looked forward to the adventure and thrill of settling this campus mystery, especially if it meant getting away from Frost for a while. Zero felt more confused than anything. Not many things were faster than him, especially not some wolf.

Zero flattened his scarf against his mouth to tidy it up a little, then ran his fingers through his bangs. For the first time in a while, he felt anxious. His eyes flicked over at Rime, "If the faculty is concerned, then this is serious. I'll watch your back closely, so you do the same for me."

"Right," Rime looked over to the hooded boy. When they were first teamed up together, she thought he was weird. She still thought that he was, but they'd grown to know each other much better. Even Everest had grown to like him, which said a lot to Rime. Now that they were friends, they didn't mind getting into trouble together, "So, what're you thinking we should do now? I mean, nobody's gonna stop us from sneaking out of the dorm tonight, but we might as well be informed, right?"

"Well, let's go to the CCT tower. I'll sneak into the meeting that ASHS and GLXY are having with Professor Alabaster and record what I can." Zero looked ahead as they walked out of the dining hall towards the central courtyard, "They're in his office. I can't take the elevator, but… It sounds cliche, but I should be able to sneak up through the vents."

"You know, if anyone else said that to me, I'd say 'you shouldn't do that', but since it's you," She looked over to him and playfully punched him on the shoulder, "you should totally do that."

They walked up the flight of stairs to the massive tower as other students milled around them. As they entered the door, he grabbed Rime's arm and pulled her ear close to his mouth.

"Just pretend you're lost," Zero said quietly, "ask the receptionist some questions and keep her distracted while I get into that side hall over there," he gestured to a small seating area, empty except for some seats and tables.

Rime chuckled, "I feel like I'm in a spy movie or something!"

She made her way to the desk where the blue hologram of a smiling woman sat at the terminal typing away. Rime leaned against the counter, "Hi, um… This is really embarrassing, but… um," she put on the ditsiest voice she could, "I'm taking an extra credit lesson in the weapons workshop, but, I don't know where that is… could you point me in the right direction please?"

She glanced over to Zero, who gave her a thumbs up, before launching himself off of one of the tables towards the vent. Within seconds, it was open and shut without any sign that he was ever there. Rime turned back to the receptionist, who was pointing on a holographic map where the building was. Rime felt bad for tricking her, but she could never tell if the CCT holograms were actually projections of people from somewhere else or just computer programs…

* * *

It was easy for Zero to find the way up to Alabaster's office, as finding a vent that went straight up for about one-hundred-and-thirty stories was enough to give him an idea as to where it would let out. _This is great…_ he thought. He began his climb upwards using the sides of the vent. Only a dozen feet up, he decided that taking the vents might not have been the best way to do things. Assuming that the vent ran parallel to the elevator shaft, he listened for the running of cables. After deducing where the elevator was, he took the nearest vent.

 _So much for not taking the elevator…_ He gazed down at the ascending elevator, and jumped on top of it at the last moment. Had it been anyone else jumping onto the car, those inside would have heard them land on the roof of the elevator on its way up to the office, but Zero knew full well how to take a fall.

The elevator stopped just a few feet shy of the top of the elevator shaft, and the fear of it not stopping was enough for Zero to quickly say his prayers. He might have let out some sign of relief, but he had to stay focused. He had a job to do. After slipping into the air vent that ran around the circumference of the office, he held his scroll up to the opening to catch whatever he could from the meeting.

He couldn't be bothered to actually listen to the conversation at hand. He just recorded it for Rime and Team ARTS's plan to get to the bottom of the legend spreading around campus. Thinking back to the excitement in Rime's eyes when the whole ordeal started, he couldn't help but smile underneath his scarf. It felt good to help a friend like this.

While Zero was distracted by his thoughts of making his teammate happy, he was quickly broken away from his daydreaming when he heard a feminine voice pose a question to the occupants of the office.

"Why is it so cold in here…? Is the stupid AC screwing up again?" she asked the group.

 _Damnit!_ Zero thought. He immediately made his way back out of the vent. Another vent adjacent to the one that he entered from. Sadly, it was the vent that he originally considered going up. He looked down it, groaned, then decided to bite the bullet and began his shimmy down.

* * *

Rime was reading a magazine full of images of weapons. If she wasn't purely a Dust-user, she might've considered making one like some of them. She was torn away from a fascinating picture of a pair of clawed gauntlets when she heard a series of rhythmic metallic thuds coming from above her. As she looked up towards the air vent, flecks of dust and debris fell into her eyes.

"Oh crap…" she muttered to herself as the sounds drew closer. She stood up and pointed towards the back of the room, behind the receptionist desk, and shrieked as loud as she could, "Rat! Rat! There's a rat behind you!" She jumped up on the chair and pretended to be scared.

As soon as the receptionist hologram turned around, the vent exploded open and Zero fell down into the chair, covered in dust. Before he could speak, Rime grabbed him by the collar of his hoodie and dragged him away from the small crowd of people looking for her imaginary rodent, "Couldn't you have, you know, _not_ fallen through the ceiling?"

"Right, because I chose to fall down the ventilation shaft…" Zero groaned and held up his scroll, "but I did get about five minutes of the meeting… just audio, though," he looked eye to eye with his teammate and forced himself to stand up straight. Though he was embarrassed from the fall, it was pretty nice to know that he could sneak into the CCT tower without anyone noticing. It was an ego-boost for a guy like him, "So, are you going to keep complaining, or are we good…?"

She chuckled, "Depends what info you recorded all the way up there."

Zero hit play on the recording, and Rime's eyes lit up.

 **.**

In the Beacon library, Team ARTS was seated around a circular table. Each had a book in front of them, but not all of them were studying.

Roland was leaning back in his chair, hat over his face and arms folded behind his head. He used his tail to keep himself stable. The giant stack of books in front of him were closed, each had been read down to the last word between then and breakfast.

Arty was absentmindedly sketching in the orange pocket sketchbook his sister had given him during her and her mom's visit.

Timbre dropped her book down, "Guys… I'm bored. We've been studying for _hours_ …"

Arty glanced up with glazy eyes, "One can only study the weak points of the various creatures of Grimm for so long… I've drawn… easily… twenty different monsters in my notes…"

"You guys need a fresh set of notes to look over?" Roland asked from underneath his hat. He wagged a finger at the spiral notebook next to the books, "My handwriting is worse than Writer's Block's typeface, but it should at least be legible."

After the notebook flipped open, Arty and Timbre looked at the writing in amazement.

"Roland…" Timbre said, not looking up from the book, "this… is _handwriting_?!"

"Yeah, it's not my best…" Roland shrugged, "I was trying out writing in Comic Sans, but it just pissed me off more. If it seems rushed, that's why. It's also hard to italicize things when writing in Comic Sans."

The two of them looked at him in shock.

"This looks like you typed it…." Arty said stunned before looking to Sepia. "You're not surprised by this?"

Sepia looked up from her book, looked at Roland's notes, shrugged, and returned to her reading.

"What's the big deal?" Roland looked up from under his hat, "Isn't this the same guy who can draw photo-realistic pictures like nobody's business?"

Arty looked down at his book and then back to Roland, "you got me there, dude."

Team ARTS was thrown into a mess of books and paper as a flurry of white and grey flew onto their table.

Timbre covered her head as Roland's stack of books fell on her. "Ugh, Rime!"

Timbre was shut up by a loud echoing shushing from the others in the room.

"Sorry…" Timbre said meekly before returning to the small girl lying on her stomach on the table, "Rime, what in the world are you doing?!"

"Guys! Guys!" She whispered loudly, "you need to hear what Zero's got here. It's gonna make it a _lot_ more enticing to go out hunting tonight!" She threw her arm behind her and pointed to the boy in the black hoodie as he rounded the corner holding his scroll up.

"Let me clean up first…" Roland waved a hand, and all of the books and notes that were previously on the table returned to their spots, though some had to move to make space for Rime. He looked around at his team and Rime, "There. Now don't go damaging these books, or there will be consequences."

Arty scoffed, "C'mon, Roland. I get that books are important, but there's no way you could know that every single one in here is worth keeping around. There are plenty in here you either hate or haven't read yet."

"Plenty that I hate, but none that I haven't read." Roland pointed at one of the bookshelves, "There is a book titled _Nights of Our Days_. It's on the third row, fourth section, fourteenth book on that row of that section. Starting on page 345 and going all of the way to page 378 is a relatively explicit scene involving a Huntress and the man that she just saved. It starts with the words 'we could hear the howls of the Beowolves in the night, calling for our flesh while we too longed for the flesh of one another' and then the whole scene ends with the words 'when all was said and done, we laid beneath the glittering blanket of stars and watched as the shattered moon traversed the sky'," he looked over to Timbre, "Would you be so kind as to go grab that book for Arty to inspect?"

Rime groaned as she slammed her forehead against the table, "you guys need to _hear this_ …."

Ignoring her, Timbre hesitantly got out of her chair and walked away. She came back holding a black book with red stitching and handed it to Arty.

Arty opened the book and flipped to the page Roland had quoted. With wide eyes he read, "we could hear the howls of the Beowolves in the night, calling for our flesh and oh my god Roland you actually know _every_ book in this library..."

"The word 'the' has been doubled in the paragraph beneath the one that you just began to read out. It's line 34 where this happens, five words in. I don't want to recite them, but word six is 'the' and word seven is also 'the'. That means that this is the first edition of this book, and the third printing. You can see if that's true on the back of the front cover." Roland put all four legs of his chair back onto the ground and grinned. This brought him back to the days where his father's friends would bet on the bits of literature that he knew from memory. His father won a lot of money that way.

The group just looked at him in shock besides Sepia, who fully understood and accepted his memory and Semblance.

"Okay, okay, we get it," Rime tried to speed things up, "that's _awesome_. Roland has every edition of some really weird erotica we have hidden away in the depths of our library. _Cool_ ," she added sarcastically, "Will you _please_ listen to the meeting while we have _time_ before the sun sets and we're put under _curfew_ which we will all end up sneaking out of later to find that _wolf_?"

"Oh my, Tyrius! It's too much! I have not been with a man in years! The Grimm have been my only companions for far too long!" Roland recited, "Page 356, beginning on line 16, ending on line 18 on the third word." This trick also served as a great tool to annoy people.

"Stooooooooop," Rime whined.

Before Roland could continue, Sepia reached over, gently lifted Roland's hat off of his head, grabbed him by the back of his head, and slammed it onto the table. She carefully placed the hat back onto his head while he gripped his nose in pain.

Arty, Timbre, and Rime tried their hardest not to laugh. Zero and Sepia's faces were expressionless.

Sepia rolled her hand in circles while looking at Zero, telling him to play the recording.

 **.**

"Professor Alabaster, sir," Gavin's voice was the first to come from the scroll.

"It's fine, Mr. Quasar, do not fuss over formalities," Professor Alabaster's voice seemed full of concern and dread, "Do we have any leads as to Ms. Luna's location? I don't like having a missing student to worry about."

"Well…" Gavin continued, "no, we don't, but we're working on it."

"Every second that we don't know that she's safe, it brings down the probability of us finding her…" Xannie's voice was not full of optimism and excitement as it usually was.

"Don't you _dare_ act like our teammate is unable to be saved, sis. We'll get Yamuna back in the same condition that we last saw her. We'll fix this. It will be okay," Lurida's voice seemed stressed, and even fearful.

"She shouldn't be the only one we worry about you two," Gavin continued, "Alice Crims could have died last night. Who knows who could be next?"

"If they follow the temporary curfew, they'll be fine," Alabaster said calmly. The sounds of clacking loafers suggested he was pacing.

"Yeah, but that'll be an issue knowing the first years. They seem to have problems when it comes to following orders," Gavin growled.

"Still ticked over what Timbre did?" Lurida scoffed, "Dude, I got over it yesterday. You were the one who stopped me from beating the snot out of her and teaching her a lesson, but you put on a happy face and told her that everything was okay."

"Well he didn't want to scare her off, or the rest of ARTS for that matter!" Xannie stomped her boot, "But that doesn't matter right now! We have to find Yamuna, and if any more of the first years get hurt, then so be it. Yamuna takes priority here."

"You're right…" Lurida murmured, "Has Team ASHS found anything? Anything at all? Any updates via text?"

"No, they haven't as far as I know," the sounds of Gavin tapping and opening his scroll could be heard, "They were supposed to get here about twenty minutes ago. Figures."

Xannie could be heard making nervous whines, "If her own brothers can't even find her… Is it possible she's not even on the campus anymore?"

"She won't…" Lurida began, but stopped, "Why is it so cold in here…? Is the stupid AC screwing up again?" she asked the group.

Zero's hands could be heard shuffling around. Then the recording ended.

 **.**

The group looked at Zero's scroll in stunned silence.

Rime looked around to gauge the response, "Well?"

Arty ran a hand through his hair, "That thing… that thing took Yamuna?"

Timbre held her hands over her mouth. She looked somewhat scared before a look of annoyance flashed across her face, "They told me that other people were priority over your teammates… how can they be so hypocritical…?"

"Regardless of what Alabaster and Team GLXY have to say," Rime stood up, "We're going to help find Yamuna and take this thing down," she looked to the leader of Team ARTS, "with or without you. We're not just looking into some rumor anymore. So, you in?"

Arty's eyes flicked around as he processed what he had heard. "What else can we do, Rime? Of course we're going to help her," he looked to his teammates, "Right guys?"

"Got that right," Roland agreed, "If she needs rescuing, then the more hands on deck the better. In the case that we get hurt… well…" he still rubbed the bridge of his nose from Sepia's suggestion to quiet down, "if the Kokonatsu couldn't kill us, then neither can this thing."

Sepia nodded quickly in agreement. If looks could kill, she would have glared the monster to death already.

Rime smiled, "So it's settled then." She looked to Timbre. "Any word from Turf yet?"

Timbre looked down to her scroll, "He messaged earlier asking where we were. I told him we were in the library. I'd imagine he's on his way. Now that we know that it has Yamuna, he's got to be on board with this. She's his cousin, after all."

"Well," Rime tapped her foot, "now that we know he's a Faunus with, I'm assuming here, excellent hearing, he'll be perfect to help us find Yamuna. Like you just said, he's even related to our missing person. He'd be an essential asset in finding Yamuna and the monster tonight."

' _I'll send out some video orbs when it comes to it. That will give us some eyes in the sky, as well as everywhere else.'_ Sepia texted out, ' _I just need someone to stay with me. I am blind as far as my real eyes go when I send those things out. Same goes for my hearing,'_ seeing as Timbre was her partner, she figured that the one guarding her would be her.

"How about we just use the buddy system across the board?" Roland piped up, "That would be safer with something that we know can take us on. Sepia and Timbre, Arty and I, Rime and Zero, and Turf can go with Timbre and Sepia since Sepia'll be blind as an Echo out there," he suggested to the group.

" _If_ Turf wants to go," Timbre added quickly.

"I want to go."

The group turned to find the boy they were just talking about standing towards the center aisle of the library. He was leaning against the bookshelf, out of breath, his eyes wide in anxiety.

"About time you showed up!" Rime said happily.

"Turf!" Timbre got up and walked over to him, "Are you okay? What's wrong?"

"This whole mess is just weird, and it keeps getting weirder…" Turf groaned, "Look, I wanted to catch up with you guys as quickly as possible to tell you all that we need to _capture_ the monster, not kill it," he straightened himself up and took a seat with Team ARTS.

Arty looked to him, "Turf… I don't know where this is coming from, but, I don't know if you've heard, but…" he looked to his teammates, "this thing has Yamuna…"

"Yeah, that's why we can't kill it," Turf retorted, "Listen, this thing is not safe for us to be around. This is a bad idea in the first place, but someone has to do something. I need you all to promise me that you won't kill it, otherwise we won't be able to get Yamuna back."

Rime and Zero seemed like they were about to question him further, but Timbre stepped up. She didn't really understand why Turf was so adamant, but she could understand his concern, "He's right. We can't kill it. Team ASHS is having enough trouble finding her. Wouldn't it make sense that we could use the thing to lead us back to wherever it has her?"

"If she's still alive," Zero said harshly.

Rime looked at him with an expression of insult, "Zero! How could you say that?!"

"You have to keep it as a possibility. You heard about what happened to Alice."

"She's not dead!" Turf nearly yelled, "She's alive and we need this thing to lead us to… wherever it has her, got it?!" he shook with anger, "I'm only going to help you guys if you promise not to kill it."

Rime leaned over to whisper to Zero, "He would be really helpful, Z."

"Fine, then we don't kill it, but we do whatever is necessary to capture it," Zero crossed his arms. At this point, he just wanted to prove himself against the beast. He didn't like being outdone when it came to speed and agility, whether it be human, Faunus, Grimm, or animal.

Rime nodded, "After the sun goes down, curfew starts. We'll have to sneak out and grab our weapons. Think you all can do that without getting caught?"

Everyone nodded back.

"Good, then we'll all meet back up here. Sound like a plan?" Arty told the group, "And we can't get caught, so let's all stay on our toes."

The group then dispersed and left the library.

* * *

That night, Team ARTS, along with Turf, snuck out of the dorm. Being on the fourth floor, getting out was a challenge as the halls were being monitored by some of the staff who came by pretty regularly on their patrols. The halls weren't a viable route of escape. Timbre's wires would have been perfect had her gloves not been in her locker.

"I've got this." Roland pulled a dictionary from underneath his bed and lobbed it out of the window. A second later, a pop came from outside, and two tendrils of ink and paper latched onto the windowsill, "I made a ladder, but we need to be quick. I can't hold this up for too long, and we'll have to jump from about ten feet up. Come on," Roland bounded through the window and began descending the ladder with the rest of Team ARTS and Turf close behind.

They hit the ground and, after a minute to catch their breaths, ran to meet up with the other three.

"About time you guys got here!" Rime whispered harshly from the side of the door to the locker room. She pushed the door open slowly, having already picked it open before they got there.

"Hey," Arty said, "not our fault it took us a while to figure out how to get out."

Rime tilted her head as she let them inside, "Well… I guess it does help that Zero already sleeps in the tree outside Team FREZ's window."

This prompted an odd look from Timbre, who turned to Zero, "you sleep in a tree?"

"What?" he mumbled from behind his scarf, "I have a hammock…"

It was eerie being in the main building when it was dark and abandoned. There wasn't any patrol since nobody expected any students to actually be able to get out of the dorms.

Arty and Roland went to their lockers to retrieve their weapons and gear up, but an odd air hung around the room. Something didn't quite feel right for either of them.

"I don't like this," Roland tightened the straps on his weapon. A chill shot down his spine when Turf arrived, and now that feeling of dread stuck around, "It's all a little strange, isn't it? It's even surreal, but not in a good way."

Arty grabbed a few tubes of paintballs and clipped them to his belt, "Yeah, I think I get what you mean. Earlier this morning this was just some… strange rumor. Now look at us. We're going out and hunting the equivalent of a fairytale."

"That's not what I mean," Roland shot back, seemingly agitated, "I'm talking about the nature of this thing. It left Alice, albeit with GLXY chasing it off. So why did it take Yamuna? If GLXY saved Alice, then they would have certainly saved Yamuna."

Arty could only shake his head, "I don't know, man. You heard Zero, this thing's fast. Maybe when GLXY chased it off, it circled around and separated Yamuna from the group."

"Right, because Yamuna gets separated so easily. She sticks as close to Gavin as possible," Roland shot back and began typing. Sadly, the only thing that he could think to type was the smut that he recited earlier. Had he not made the performance earlier, then maybe he could have thought of something else. He had played himself in the end.

"Well, Gavin was busy carrying Alice to the infirmary, wasn't he? Maybe that's why she got separated from her partner." Arty was about to close his locker when he stopped himself. Deciding it best that he be armed to the teeth against such a mysterious beast, he grabbed a few spare tubes of paintballs. There were too many questions and not near enough answers. "What are we doing?..." he muttered as he shut his locker and went to meet up with everyone else.

"Figuring this out," Roland formed his trail of paper into a bladed hook, similar to what he used back in the Emerald Forest against the first pack of Beowolves, "Being a Huntsman isn't just about fighting, right? It's about a whole lot of things." He thought back to Professor Alabaster's speech during the team-naming ceremony. He had mentioned something about Team ARTS being grouped up due to their shared sense of situational awareness… or something like that, "One of those things is being able to think through situations. We can logic this out, but we'll have to investigate more to do that."

Arty went to load Palette's hopper with red paintballs, but remembered what Turf said about capturing the monster. He returned to tube to his belt and quickly filled the gun with dark blue paint instead.

"Well, shall we be going?" he asked Roland as they went to meet with the others outside. He could already tell they had a long night ahead of them.


	18. V1Ch14: The Alpha and the Betas

"Alright, so everyone has their assignments? Sepia stays near the library with Timbre and Turf on guard, Rime and Zero check out the dorms and the cafeteria, and me and Roland will check out the lecture halls and the courtyards, right?" Arty surveyed the group. Finally, he was beginning to feel at least somewhat competent as a leader. In this scenario, being the only team leader out of the seven students, he didn't really have a choice. The nods of approval from the group told him that the plan wasn't completely terrible.

"Here," Roland passed out three black beads to each member of the group, "Using our scrolls might draw attention to us, so Arty and I will be on the ready to come to whatever position that we need to. Throw an ink bead down, and I'll know where you are. If we need help, one of us will call you guys. That will hopefully keep us incognito," he held up his bladed hook. A quick examination told him that it was ready to go.

The beads left little black marks across the palm of Turf's hand as he rolled them around, "And we don't kill the target, no matter what," he added, "or else we can't get Yamuna back."

"We'll do what we have to do." Zero glared at him, "If it's us or it, then we take priority."

"You heard what Gavin said, Zero." Rime wagged her finger at Zero, " _Yamuna_ takes priority," she looked to Turf, "and you seem pretty convinced that keeping it alive to lead us to Yamuna is the only way to save her. So capture it, okay?"

"Fine, we capture it." Zero tightened the strap that held his sword against his back.

' _I'll still be able to hear you with my recon orbs, so let me know if I need to reposition,"_ Sepia signed to her partner, ' _I'll tell you where it is if I see it, then you text it out.''_

Timbre nodded and translated, tacking on of her own words, "and the same goes for everyone else. The quicker everyone can get to the wolf once it's found, the easier it'll be to catch it. We just need to make sure that we don't wound it too much. A bruise or a cut isn't terrible, but breaking its legs means that it won't be able to lead us to Yamuna."

Rime waved her fingers around, conjuring a hazy ball of cold air, "It's a good thing that ice is an excellent way to keep your enemies in one place."

Arty waved his paintball gun, "You said it. So, if nothing shows up before dawn, we meet back here, okay?"

"I don't mean to be a Debbie Downer, but I just noticed a major flaw in this plan…" Roland pointed out, "We haven't a single clue as to what we're going to do when we catch it. If faculty finds out before we get Yamuna back… we're totally screwed."

Everyone thought for a second.

"Well…" Timbre began, "if we were able to tie it up or contain it well enough, we can leave it be for the faculty to find. We could even send in an anonymous tip."

"The thing is," Arty continued, "I'm pretty sure a frozen wolf-pop, a rock pillar fence, or wires hog-tying this thing will give away pretty quickly who did it…" He looked around the group, "we might just need to fess up to the fact that we broke the rules."

Rime clapped her hands, "Well, we'll burn that bridge down when we're being chased across it. Right now, let's just keep doing what we're doing and find this thing."

"I just finished serving detention for punching out Navy, though…" Roland groaned, but then shook off the excuse, "but we need to help our friend. I guess I can take more detention for that."

' _Alright, all of you get going!'_ Sepia texted out, ' _Mission start!'_ she grabbed Timbre and Turf's arms and dragged them towards the library.

"Okay then," Rime said as she lead Zero in the opposite direction.

Arty and Roland were left in the middle of the empty walkway.

"Well," Arty held his gun at the ready, "shall we be off ta find this _foul_ beast?" he said, mocking Alice's accent.

"Stop that. Alice's stupid voice is probably what attracted that thing in the first place," Roland grumbled. His eyes kept darting around the area, searching for signs of danger, "I really hate this feeling. I'll be honest with you, man. If I didn't have someone here, then I'd be scared out of my mind. It's so quiet and dead at night…"

"I've always liked the night, but in this scenario," a bird flying out of a tree caused Arty to spin around and aim his gun at it. He lowered it in embarrassment, "I completely agree with you…"

Even though Arty was freaked out because of some puny bird, Roland understood, "I hate birds too. Gross little… ugh… terrible things," he lowered his weapon in hopes that Arty might also relax a bit, "and don't get me started on Nevermores. Those are the worst. Giant, pissed off, demon birds. It's just wrong."

"Aren't most Grimm just giant pissed off versions of regular animals for the most part?"

"I'm not going to even dignify that with a response…" Roland rolled his eyes.

"Just saying."

Arty and Roland continued to walk for the next hour without any sign of the wolf. There weren't even any guards patrolling the grounds. At some points, they could've sworn that Team GLXY or Team ASHS had been nearby, driving them to dive behind some bushes or hide behind a pillar, but the upperclassmen never appeared in the end.

Arty groaned, "God! I wish something would just _happen_ already! The anticipation is killing me…" He opened his scroll. The aura monitors of the other five students were fully green and his message box didn't show any notifications. "No word from the others either-"

"Rime!" Roland whipped out his scroll and selected Rime's contact. After a few moments, the line connected, "Status report. What's going on?"

"Roland!" Rime yelled over the scroll, "Calm down, now, don't get mad, but… um…"

"She was playing with one of your ink pellets and dropped it…" Zero cut her off to explain.

"Sorry!..." Rime whined, "But it's your fault that you didn't explain how fragile they were… or how bad they splattered… you owe me some new socks, by the by."

Arty almost busted out laughing when he saw the look on Roland's face. His brow nearly caved in and his mouth was downturned in a scowl. It was nice seeing him mad at someone else over something trivial for once rather than something serious.

"I'll remove the ink when I see you…" Roland grumbled, "Just make sure you don't bust another one," he hung up and put his scroll back into his pocket.

Arty and Roland arrived at their destination shortly thereafter, one of the entrances to the teaching complex. There were eight separate lecture halls within the building, all connected by a series of hallways. Searching through the whole place was going to be a nightmare.

"I'll pick the lock," Roland told his partner. "Cover me." He threw an ink bead against the lock and began working the tumblers inside.

Arty scanned the area, "So… why exactly are we looking _inside_ the buildings? Wouldn't it make more sense that a giant wolf is _outside_?"

"It's stuck around campus, and no one can find it. I'm wondering if it's the fact that people are only looking _outside_ the buildings. The thing sounds pretty smart, so maybe it realized that it's on the ropes and is hiding out. If it were acting as aggressively as last night, then we probably would have been attacked already," Roland pulled his ink away and opened the door, "So we might have a larger chance of an encounter in a dark and quiet place. A den, if you will."

Arty followed his partner into the building as the door clicked open, "I guess that makes sense. If we weren't so high on Alice's 'list of mortal enemies', then I would have suggested we asked her some questions about the attack…" As they moved through the silent halls, they kept their weapons at the ready. "So, how does this thing hide so well during the day? If you're right, which I _really_ hope you're not, how does nobody notice it if its 'den' is in one of the school buildings?"

"It appeared again last night, so it might have just now made a den. It's just speculation, but it's worth looking into," Roland squinted and looked around the hall. This was one of the high points of being a Faunus. Like many Faunus, he too could see in the dark with relative ease. There wasn't anything of interest in the hall, though, "We're clear here, so let's move on to the rooms," he took a step forwards, but then stopped. They would probably be at this for a while, so they might as well pass the time, "Tell me about Atlas while we scope this place out."

In the time they'd been on a team together, Arty and Roland hadn't exactly talked about their pasts too much. Arty knew full well by now that Roland had some demons he didn't want to share. Whenever Roland wasn't talking about writing or being an insufferable jerk, it caught the rest of the team off-guard.

"Umm…" Arty thought about how to describe Atlas, "well, I won't bore you with the history, as I don't know it fully well myself, and I'm sure you already know them from books, right?"

Roland showed no sign that he didn't.

"Right…" Arty continued, "well, Atlas is known for being cold, but you don't have any idea how cold it actually is unless you've been there," Arty began to remember his combat training at the academy and laughed, "Atlas Academy runs fire Dust in the heating system 24/7, so at least it was nice and toasty enough for us to wear our own more comfortable clothes to train and learn, so at least we had that."

"I see," Roland thought about how such a cold place must have felt to live in. It sounded… awful, "Mistral's the opposite, for the most part. It's so humid that it feels like you can chew the air, even in winter. It's always hot, being near the equator and all, or at least on the grounds of my family home. We live a little ways out of the main kingdom of Mistral, but not too far. It's maybe halfway between Windpath and the capital."

Arty chuckled, "My geography isn't that great, so excuse me when I say I have _no_ clue what that's supposed to mean."

"What about your family?" Roland moved on with the conversation, avoiding what could have been a dead end.

Arty's cheerfulness seemed to dampen a bit. "Well, you met my sister, Merigold, and my mom. My mom's a florist and my dad…" he opened one of the lecture halls and looked it over, finding nothing, "I don't like to tell a lot of people around here, but he's in the Atlas military."

"Big shoes to fill. I know the feeling."

"Eh, yeah, I guess you can say that," Arty put his back to the wall and looked around the corner, "Doesn't help when you don't exactly want to wear the shoes, if you catch my drift."

"Yeah," Roland laughed under his breath, "If you were in the Atlas military, then I don't think Atlas would have a military left after the first week."

Arty glared at him, "Ha. Ha…" he mock laughed.

"My father is the CEO of Mistral Trading Company. Gave a lot of jobs to those formerly involved with the black market. He's… well, distant. Last time we really talked was the night of…" the sentence was cut short when Roland bit his tongue. He checked an empty lecture hall to buy a little time to collect his thoughts. He shut the door behind him, "Excuse me, the last time we really talked was the night before I left for Vale. I wasn't cut out to be a businessman. I'd probably punch too many clients in the face."

"Sounds like both of us weren't really cut out to be like our dads, huh? My mom always said that it was always the last people you'd expect that became Huntsmen and Huntresses. The occupation isn't always a family deal. One of my mom's childhood friends grew up learning blacksmithing from her parents. One day, she seemed to magically decided to leave home to study at one of the academies in another kingdom."

"Your mother is a wise woman," Roland glanced around the hall. Nothing seemed to be nearby, but they couldn't be certain until they checked every lecture hall, "My mother used to be a Huntress, and a great one at that. I learned about everything that I know from her. I hope that I can live up to the standard that she set when she still lived in Vacuo," he checked another lecture hall only to find nothing, "She's who I got my tail from, and who taught me how to live with it. I'm thankful that she wa-" he caught himself, "that she is in my life."

Arty couldn't help but raise an eyebrow, "So, she was from Va-"

"Five beads. Rime and Zero broke all of theirs," Roland pulled out his scroll and called Rime, "You found it?!"

There was nothing but shouting and crying for a few seconds with loud huffs and snarls in the background, "ROLAND!" more crying, "It's after uuuuuuus!"

"Rime!" Arty shouted into Roland's scroll, "Where are you?! We'll come and help!"

"Tell them to duck," Zero said calmly.

"What?" Roland asked.

"Duck!" Zero shouted.

The window on the opposite side of the lecture hall exploded inwards. Rime and Zero flew towards the two boys. Zero landed facing the window with his blade at the ready while Rime fell to the ground, sliding across the tile. Her scroll slid into Arty's boot.

"Rime! Are you okay?" Arty bent down to help her up and handed her back her scroll. "Where's the monster?"

Rime looked panicked. Her hair was a mess and sweat streamed down her face. "It's… it's…" she stammered as she pointed towards the window, where the cool night breeze began flooding into the lecture hall.

A silver streak of fur and claws lunged through the window. Zero held up his sword to strike, but the blade was batted away. The beast slammed him to the ground, holding Zero's arms underneath its paws. Saliva dripped onto his face. Silver fur rippled in the wind coming from outside, and gleaming white teeth shined with the rabid foam of a wild animal. The eyes on the beast burned yellow. As Zero had said, this was no Beowolf.

It raised its claw to strike its captured prey. Thankfully for him, Roland hooked the neck of the beast with his weapon and reared back to pull the animal away, "Rime, Zero, Arty! Get out of here!" he shouted through gritting teeth, "Go get help!"

"No way!" Arty yelled. He kept his eyes fixed on the wolf and the cowboy riding it like a bucking bronco, "Zero! You and Rime get out of here for a minute! We're gonna try to distract it for a while. While it's busy with us, go get to the others!"

Zero was about to protest as Arty ran off and began circling the wolf, firing blue paintballs at the giant wolf's feet. Ice crystals began to form against the fur. Rime grabbed Zero's katana and gripped Zero's sleeve, dragging him out of the door, "Come on, Zero!"

"Damnit, Arty! I can handle this! Just. Go!" Roland dug his boot into the dip of the wolf's back and yanked hard. He managed to get a yelp out of the thing, but something wasn't right. His boot felt like it was pressed against a solid sheet of metal, "It has an activated aura?!"

"It has _what_?!" Arty gawked at the wolf. He ran to get some distance and aimed his gun, "Now I'm definitely not leaving you!" he went to pull the trigger, but froze up when he heard the thump of Roland hitting the wall.

Roland crumpled against the wall, his hand pressed over his ribs. He pushed himself back up only to come face to face with the golden eyes of the wolf. His weapon was gone, ripped cleanly off of his typewriter. He didn't have enough time to grab a grenade from his belt.

The jaws of the wolf parted to reveal teeth that rivaled that of a grizzly bear. It was just about to bite Roland's head clean off. Out of options, he latched onto the wolf's lower jaw with one hand, and the upper jaw with his other hand. He knew Arty had Ice Dust loaded, but couldn't hold the monster off for long.

"Arty! Please just-" three explosions of ice filled the wolf's mouth, saving Roland from being the first of the seven-course Beacon student special, "There we go!"

Sometimes, Roland thought, Arty's paintball gun was pretty useful. While the wolf was distracted, he made a mad dash for his partner and yanked a bottle shaped grenade off of his belt. He pulled the pin and lobbed it towards the wolf. "Run to the library. It'll follow us," he told Arty.

"We have to find Timbre's group!" Arty yelled, firing paintballs in an attempt to recreate his ice wall technique from the Mikado Village fiasco, but he didn't have enough time. He ran after Roland as the ink bomb exploded. "This thing is way more powerful than we thought it'd be!"

Roland huffed as he tried to type and run for his life at the same time, "You know, I'm almost ready to side with Zero and try to kill it rather than pen it up!"

"Catch! Don't kill!" Arty yelled above the pounding of heavy paws on the tile floors.

Rime and Zero stood at the open door where they had come in. As Arty and Roland dashed outside, they slammed the doors shut. The four of them were halfway across the courtyard when the doors exploded.

The wolf stopped and howled to the shattered moon above.

* * *

Timbre sat on the sloped roof of the Beacon library. Sepia was standing on tip-toe on the very edge of the roof, focusing on her orbs that she had scattered around the area. For the couple of hours they'd been there, they hadn't seen anything of real interest.

Timbre sighed, "So, Sepia. Rime made it seem like hunting an urban legend would be _way_ more exciting and eventful than it actually is." She clacked away at her scroll in a message to Turf.

.

About forty feet below on ground level, Turf was leaning against the wall of the library between two of the exterior pillars, the stained-glass window towered behind him. There came a vibration in his pocket. He read the message from Timbre:

 **Timbre Forte: Hey, anything going on down there on Remnant?**

He quickly typed a response:

 **Turf Fescue: Tons. And by tons, I mean absolutely nothing.**

.

Timbre huffed. "Great, and no word from the others."

Sepia guided her orbs around the campus, but something caught her eye while she had her orbs on patrol. Rime, Zero, Arty, and Roland were all running from a massive grey wolf. It seemed to her that they were heading for the library, and fast.

She tugged on Timbre's sleeve and pointed towards the lecture halls. The group turned the corner and ran straight for the library, the wolf right at their heels. All of her orbs collapsed, and she was given back her sight in time to see her friends closing in on the building.

"What is it Sepia?" Timbre asked. She noticed that the golden flickering in Sepia's eyes was gone. That's when she heard the howl. The two watched as the wolf chased after the group. Arty and Zero were firing their guns backwards at the beast. It didn't even flinch. "What in the world…? It's not even getting grazed by their gun blasts…?"

She felt Sepia tap her shoulder. When she looked over to the smaller girl, Sepia made a quick motion with her hand: the motion for the word ' _aura'_. Timbre's eyes widened. "We need to get Turf and get the library doors open. Now!" She ran and jumped off of the roof.

.

Shaking in his boots, Turf stood at the doors of the library. He heard the howl, and knew exactly what was going to happen next. He was at least somewhat familiar with what was going on. Before he could recover, Timbre dropped down from the roof without so much as a warning, followed shortly after by Sepia. He whimpered and stepped back, "Give some warning next time, jeez…"

Timbre ignored his complaint and began pushing him towards the entrance to the library, "Turf! No time! _Go_! We need to get the doors open!"

"But-" he began to retort, but he knew how this would end up, "Fine!" he turned the knobs to the double doors and pushed them wide open. "Go! Go! Go!" He yelled, waving his arm to tell everyone to hurry inside.

Arty, Roland, Rime, and Zero all dashed inside, followed by Sepia and Timbre. Roland joined him to help close the doors, but the heavy wood and metal closed much slower than they opened. The wolf took its chance. Roland and Turf were slammed backwards as the wolf's head pushed between the doors. It's glowing yellow eyes burned as it stared down and snarled at the terrified students.

"I… can't… hold it!" Roland grunted as he tried to fight back against the wolf's thrashing.

Arty turned his gun in his hand, holding it by the barrel. With a flick of his wrist, the weapon began to fold, the pieces rearranging and shifting until it became one straight weapon, the metal baseball bat form he had used in the fight against Everest their first day of class. In the center of the blunt end, in a small opening, a blue paintball glowed with pent up energy. Arty ran straight at the doors, leading to some shouts of protest from the girls. He raised the bat and slammed it against the wolf's head, right between the eyes. The wolf howled in pain and backed off, allowing Turf and Roland to get the doors shut and latched.

Roland slid down the door and panted along with Turf. He looked up at Sepia, "You good, Moviemaker?"

Sepia flashed a thumbs up. Her smile was quick and faint, but she knew that he saw it.

"Right, so…" Turf looked between Roland and Sepia, and then to Timbre. He forced himself to stand, "So, I think I should probably be honest about this now that we're getting attacked. The wolf… it's…"

"About to break another window…" Zero grumbled.

"Wait, what?" Turf hardly had time to finish his question before the shattering of glass filled the room. Within seconds, the wolf had him pinned.

"Turf!" Timbre yelled as she watched her friend get crushed by the mass of silver fur.

Timbre's outburst caught the beast's attention as it snapped its head up to look at her. It stepped off of Turf and began to pace towards the girl in green. Timbre backed up a little bit, but found a bookshelf blocking her path of retreat. She began to panic. She kept eye contact with the monster and pleaded, "Please… don't hurt me."

The wolf snarled, giving pause as it prepared to lunge for Timbre's throat.

Timbre closed her eyes and screamed.

Right as the wolf's paws left the ground, Arty lunged upward and brought his foot down. The ice encrusted boot packed a harder punch that sent the wolf sprawling in a shower of ice shards.

Timbre felt hot tears running down her face and the blood draining from her cheeks.

Arty shook her, "Timbre! Go help Turf and get him to the other end of the library before that thing gets up!" He turned to everyone else, "Everyone else, go! Get away from it!" He watched as the wolf began to stir, shaking its head, sending bits of sparkling crystal off of its body. "I have an idea."

"I've got your back…" Roland pushed himself up using his knee, "How can I help?"

The two of them stood side by side, backing down the middle aisle of the library as the wolf stood up and plodded towards them.

"Roland," Arty said, holding his bat to the side, "earlier today, you said you knew _all_ of the books in this library."

"You assumed that. I didn't say it," Roland looked around the library and came to a quick conclusion, "but yeah, your assumption was correct. But," The wolf snapped its head forward, pushing them back faster, "what does my knowledge of literature and reading habits have to do with the giant monster that's about to, you know, _bite our faces off_?"

"You think you could use Inkheart on all of the books to make them float in mid-air and flip through the pages as fast as possible?"

"You're taking me to downtown Vale to that diner that's open all hours if I do it, but I can. I'll just need to chow down afterwards, and you'll be the one buying," Roland shut his eyes to concentrate.

"Fine, diner, got it. Oh, and Roland?"

"We don't have time for your crap. Spit it out, man," Roland glared over at his partner.

"Only the books with pictures."

Roland broke his concentration to question the request, "Wait, why?"

"Just trust me. _Only_ the ones with pictures."

"Still gonna need the diner," Roland held his hands in front of him. Hundreds of books flew out from every set of bookshelves in the entire library. They all converged on Roland and then formed rings around he and Arty, all of them spinning and flipping their pages. For a moment, his knees wobbled. It was hard to process so many words at once, but he was used to pushing himself. His eyes flashed open when the books all finally fell into stable orbits around them, "Okay! Just get this over with!" he shouted with beads of sweat streaming down his face.

"Just keep the pages turning!" Arty held his free arm out, his fingers splayed out. A dimly glowing white sheen surrounded Arty before expanding outwards, forming a large semi-visible bubble encasing him, Roland, and the floating books. On the surface, the bubble forcefield was made up of splotches of color that shifted and swirled like oil on water.

The sounds of the pages fluttering were joined by virtually any sound imaginable. Animal calls, battle cries, vehicles, burning fires, gale force winds, and many more echoed throughout the library as a storm of objects, creatures, and small people launched from within the pages of the books, all flying at Arty's target.

The wolf was battered and barraged by Arty's creations. The miniature creatures and warriors crawled throughout its fur, causing it to squirm and thrash in an attempt to get them off.

"Roland," Arty said calmly, "It's distracted, launch the books!"

"Oh yes…" Roland threw his hands down, sending hundreds of books piling on top of the wolf. When the dust and paper settled, he quietly huffed out a few words of wisdom, "That's… that's how my mom does it… motherf… fu…" he collapsed and instantly began to snore.

Arty lowered his arms, making the bubble disappear. He picked up his weapon and slowly walked up to the beast, the bat ready to strike if needed.

"Arty…" Timbre said bewildered, "how did you?..."

Arty remembered that he had never explained his Semblance to his team. It hadn't been important until then, "Oh… uh… yeah. It's… my... Semblance." He grinned sheepishly, "Have I really never told you guys?"

Sepia ran up and hugged Arty excitedly, obviously impressed by his show of power. Immediately after, she punched him hard on the shoulder for not telling them sooner.

"Did…" Rime stepped up carefully, "did you… kill it?"

"No," Arty continued his trek towards the incapacitated monster, "it's just… knocked out."

A grey shimmer passed across the patches of fur still visible under the mountain of books.

"Well, looks like the aura won't be a problem anymore," Turf said weakly as Timbre helped him up.

Arty turned to look to the others. He smiled triumphantly, "Well, it only took a few counts of destruction of property, but I think we actually solved this mystery! Now, all we need to do is let it lead us to-"  
"Arty!" Rime yelled, pointing behind him. The pile of books was shifting. Massive claws and a snarling head emerged from the paper and leather.

The wolf glared down at the blond kid. Before he could say anything, it batted him to the side with its massive paw.

Arty flew into a bookshelf and fell to the ground.

"No!" Timbre yelled. She felt Turf push away from her. "Turf! What are you doing?!"

"Yamuna! Enough!" Turf shouted at the wolf, "What has gotten into you?! Why are you letting your emotions get the better of you again?!" he stared up at the gigantic wolf, "If I can walk around here with my stupid ears out, then you can chill out and tell me what's going on!"

The wolf just stared down at him in stunned silence.

The others were just as stunned. Timbre took the opportunity to look over the beast in more detail than before now that it wasn't actively attacking them. The wolf's eyes were the same bright gold as Yamuna's right eye and those of Team ASHS, the silver fur was the same shade of grey as Yamuna's hair. Timbre then noticed the wolf's right ear. She gasped and covered her mouth. "The earring… that… that _is_ Yamuna…"

"No way," Rime said shaking her head in disbelief.

The wolf blinked a few times, and then its left eye shifted to a deep, sapphire blue. It began to shrink. The hair began to recede, the snout shortened, and more and more human features began to make themselves known.

"Zero, look away," Rime ordered. She ran over to the puny Faunus standing in the middle of a pile of books and threw her jacket over her. Apparently, Yamuna lost her clothes somewhere along the way.

Yamuna pulled the jacket tight around herself and yanked herself away from Rime. Tears streamed from her eyes, "Don't touch me…" she growled.

"Yamuna…" Timbre said, reaching her hand out to her, "You… you were…"

"I was what?" Yamuna glared at Timbre, both eyes glowing bright yellow, "A monster? A monster, right?!" she barked and stepped toward Timbre, "Are you just happy that some stupid human like you doesn't become that?!"

Timbre was shocked by the newfound fury in the small girl. It surprised her and honestly frightened her. "Yamuna, no, that's not what I meant…"

"That's not what anyone meant, but then I hear about them talking about me behind my back! You got a problem with me?! My heritage?!" she shouted.

Turf put an arm between Yamuna and Timbre, "You looked her in the eyes, Timbre…" he whispered, "Yamuna, you need to calm down. Your Semblance is getting out of hand again. I'm here to talk, it's okay. You aren't alone."

"Oh, right, the little pup thinks that he understands me," Yamuna clenched her fists, "Some dog thinks he know how a pack works, huh? You hid what you are! You ignored me! You're not like us! You're not a Luna! You're a coward! You abandoned me after all those years we spent together! All for that… Alice!"

"I'm sorry! I didn't know what to do! I just… I didn't have a choice." Turf looked down, "I ignored my pack for my team. I… I'm sorry, Yamuna. My team can accept me for what I am, just like I have to accept what I am. You need to do the same. You need to accept all of you. You're a Luna..."

Yamuna's eyes slowly returned to their normal states. Feral rage finally unclenched her heart. She let out a sob with her head down. She fell to her knees and allowed herself to let out everything that was pent up, "I… I'm so sorry… I'm so sorry that I hurt people again… I just… I couldn't handle it. Alice drove me up the wall… I couldn't be useful to my team… I'm so dependent on Gavin… I… I'm a disgrace… I can't even control my Lunacy… I'm not a Luna, Turf…"

"Yamuna…" Turf walked over and sat in front of his cousin. He hugged her tight and let her rest her head against his shoulder, "It's okay. You don't have to be silent. You have friends who can understand this now. Humans, Faunus, everyone," he managed a smile, "You know just as much as I do that humans aren't all that bad. Look at your team, or all of these people who put their necks on the line to protect you. You're basically the role model for the Faunus first-years, too! I wish I could live up to the standard that you set!"

Yamuna pulled herself up to look at Turf, "I get it… enough with the sentiment. I'm not alone…" she took a deep breath and slowly smiled for herself, "Thanks, cousin Turf, and the rest of you."

Another howl rang out through the library.

"Oh god, not _more_ …" Zero groaned.

Through the busted window, two more wolves, much smaller than Beast-Yamuna, jumped into the library. One was gold and had small flames bursting from its fur while the other was silver and emanated a cold haze. Turf backed off as they charged in and tackled Yamuna.

They pinned her down and snarled. The gold wolf stopped and gave out a noise of confusion, tilting its head to the side. It yipped happily before backing off of her, followed by the silver one. In a whir of motion, the wolves disappeared, and in their place stood Hati and who the others knew had to be Sköll. He looked just like Hati, only if Hati had dull silver hair, a grey shirt, and a black leather bracer on his right shoulder.

"Yamuna!" Sköll yelled out as he ran in to hug her. He moved away and blushed when he noticed that she was only wearing a grey hoodie jacket. "Oh… sorry, sis."

"Oh shut up... You cleaned up my wounds all the time when I was a kid," Yamuna pushed her arms through the sleeves and zipped up the jacket, "Come here, you big lugs," she latched onto Sköll and motioned for Hati to come over, "Where are Anubis and Set?"

"Thanks for locking the door, guys," Anubis was climbing over the ledge of the broken window before dropping to the ground. He dusted off his jacket and kilt-like wrap.

"It was nice of you to open a window though," Set jumped in behind him, a devilish grin splattered across his face.

"Hey… Anubis, Set…" Roland groaned. He managed to get himself up into a sitting position, "I dig the jackets, but I've never noticed the skirts. What's up with that…?"

"Uh oh," Set laughed, "don't go saying that now, otter-boy!"

Anubis drew one his weapons from his sides and pointed the end at Roland. The curved khopesh contained a single gun chamber at the end and right then, it was aimed at Roland's face. The blade folded in on itself, forming a pistol with the handle as the grip, "It's called, a _shendyt_."

"It's like a kilt, right? That's a dude skirt," Roland verbally shot back.

Sköll looked between Anubis and Roland, "He… he, uh… kinda has a point."

Anubis glared at Sköll and snarled, "That's not what's important right now, Sköll. What _is_ important is the fact we have seven first-years who blatantly ignored curfew to get into a dangerous situation that they had no real clue what they were doing," he looked over Turf, Arty, and Roland, "and by the looks of it, some of them went off with a death wish that, thankfully, Yamuna's Lunacy form didn't grant."

Anubis pulled out his scroll and held it out, "Gavin. We found Yamuna, along with some other… surprises in the library. Things have calmed down, so no need to come in guns blazing."

"I know I keep cutting in where I'm not welcome, but can Team ARTS get off the hook at least for tonight? I'm starving…" Roland looked up at the leader of ASHS pleadingly.

Before Anubis could begin berating him, Yamuna spoke up, "This was my fault, Anubis. Please make sure that ARTS, Rime, Zero, and Turf get off easy. If anything, I think that they actually helped me get Lunacy under control tonight, and now I feel a lot better than I have recently. I guess a little hunt and some reconnection with my family did me well..."

Anubis's golden eyes scanned the tired and injured group of students, "Considering my team's… reputation, I don't know if I have much say in the matter," he paused, "but I'll try my best to put in a good word… as good as one I can give... to Gavin and Alabaster." He pointed to everyone, "I refuse to promise you'll get off without punishment."

"We weren't expecting no punishment, to be honest. Once we got to the windows… and doors... and the books… and the whole breaking curfew… and assaulting another student… yeah. I think we just want the rest of the night to go get some food, right guys?" Timbre looked around at the other members of her team.

Everyone nodded.

There was a pounding at the front door, "Yamuna! Yamuna!" The other members of Team GLXY yelled from the other side.

Set unbolted and opened the door for them. He smiled stupidly at them, "Sup guys! Glad you could join the party!"

Gavin and the Rhea twins ignored him and shoved past. They ran up to Yamuna, who Sköll and Hati had helped to her feet.

"Yamuna!" Gavin held her shoulders, "are you okay?" he said, looking into her eyes. When he saw that one was blue and one was yellow, he let out a sigh of relief and hugged her. "Oh man, you scared me this time. You've never been that bad when you went into Lunacy before."

"I'm fine, I promise," Yamuna smiled up at him. She wrapped her arms tight around his body armor, "Look, before you freak out at the first years, hear me out. They're the reason that I'm okay now. Had Turf not talked me down, I would have still been on a rampage." She figured that begging to Gavin might improve the first year's chances.

Gavin's worry and sincerity melted into anger and disappointment. He stood up and stepped closer to them, "There was a curfew. Nobody was supposed to be outside tonight except for Team GLXY, Team ASHS, and the professors. You could've gotten killed," he turned back to his partner, "you could've killed Yamuna… and I won't tell Alabaster otherwise."

"But you'll make sure that they don't get in trouble until tomorrow, given that they did save me, right?" Yamuna further pushed.

"I'm with Yamuna on this one. They found her and talked her down before we could," Lurida examined the students, and, surprisingly, smiled just a little back. She was at least a little relieved that her friend was alright, "We owe it to them."

Xannie couldn't help but smile. "Yeah!" She wagged a finger at Timbre, "looks like going against orders actually ended up _better_ for you guys this time, huh?"

Timbre shrank back a little bit at the mention of her past mistakes, "Yeah, let's forget that this isn't the first time…" Timbre couldn't help but feel like the conversation was going in a different direction than it should have. "But… why are you guys not flipping out at us this time? We disobeyed the rules…"

Clacking of loafers echoed from the hall. When the sounds stopped, Professor Alabaster and Professor Maple stood in the doorway.

Alabaster cleared his throat, "I have to say, I sympathize with these students a little bit. You should tell me that they had good intentions so that I keep the punishment at the minimum, Gavin. Wouldn't you agree, Carmen?"

"Totally. A punishment _is_ in order, but at least they all stuck together. No one went lone wolf… no pun intended," Professor Maple typed a few things onto her scroll. On the screen were videos from various angles of students running away from and fighting Beast-Yamuna, "I'm happy to see that no one is hurt too terribly."

"Right, so," Professor Alabaster leaned on a table with one hand and examined the first-years, "Detention for all of Team ARTS, Rime, Zero, and Turf for the next week in addition to any other sentences that some of you might have already… acquired," he cast his gaze onto Roland and Timbre, then returned his attention to the group, "Every afternoon, you will all be either repairing the damages. Tomorrow and Sunday, you all will be working in here to get a head start, and I expect that none of you will use your Semblances to make the job easier," he pursed his lips in thought, "but tonight you're welcome to head down to Vale and enjoy yourselves for a job well done. Does that sound fair?"

Nobody protested and instead all, except for Zero and Sepia, responded with "Yes, sir."

"Good. I look forward to having some company in my office," Alabaster turned to leave, "Oh, and Mr. Umber. You will be replacing the drawings in the books while the others make repairs," he gave out that one last instruction before leaving with Professor Maple close behind.

Students began filing out, but Roland latched onto Arty's shoulder with a crushing grip, "Replacing…? _Replacing?!_ Your Semblance _destroyed_ the illustrations?! Some of those books were first edition, Arty! Some of those were even the first prints!"

Arty chuckled nervously, "Oh… yeah… you see. I can _animate_ the drawings, but once they're out of my control they just kinda… melt back into whatever they were drawn with…" he looked down to the puddle of ink they were walking through, "Yeah…"

"I'm going to eat so much tonight that your bank account will be _empty_ by the end of tonight. Do you understand?" Roland released him and glared at him while they left.

Arty groaned, "Yeah… yeah… I know. But after what we went through, I don't mind. You can't eat Lien… and food's kinda the only thing on my mind right now."

And with that, the ransacked library was void of students and the doors were shut.

.

Despite it being the early hours of the morning, the diner was packed. Team ARTS sat at a round table off to the side near the window. Before leaving campus, Zero and Rime decided that they were dead tired and were going to return to Team FREZ's room. Turf stayed behind with Teams GLXY and ASHS, probably to spend some time talking with his cousins and making up for the lost time throughout the semester.

"So," Timbre said through a mouthful of chocolate-chip pancake, "It was really nice of Alabaster to send up an airship so we could come into town."

Arty sipped his orange juice, "No kidding. I was half expecting him to push us off the cliff and tell us to swim!"

"M jes hepi fr fod," Roland tried to speak through a mouth full to the brim with pancakes. He swallowed the inhuman bite hard, then looked up and down the stack of twenty-four pancakes that he ordered. He was going to bleed Arty dry. This was his way of avenging those poor books, "I'm just happy for food," he clarified, "Totally worth getting chased by Yamuna."

Sepia nodded and shoveled a bit of pumpkin pie into her mouth and nodded happily. In front of her sat two full pumpkin pies with one of them having two slices missing. After using her Semblance so much, she was also exhausted and hungry.

"So," Arty cut into his omelette, "aside from Turf and Yamuna's whole… identity issues being worked on finally. Can we discuss how Yamuna's family… are basically _werewolves_?"

"About that," Roland began cutting off another bite of his pancakes, "In Menagerie, there's a few stories that tell of a Faunus clan that could embody their traits. My grandfather was born in Menagerie and told the stories to my mother, then she told them to me. I didn't think that they really existed, but apparently that clan they were talking about were the Lunas."

Arty looked to Timbre, "Has Turf ever said how big that side of his family is, Timbre? I mean, you have _five_ Luna's at Beacon."

"Not… really. I'm in the same boat as you guys. I found out about Turf and Yamuna being cousins the same day as you guys," Timbre popped a bit of her pancakes into her mouth.

"Huh…" Arty took another bite of omelet. "Well, let's just hope Yamuna's temper doesn't give us anymore issues."

Roland scoffed through another mouthful of pancake, "As long as Alice stays away from her, we'll be fine!"

"Oh god…" Timbre held her head in her hands, "I can't _wait_ to see how that confrontation goes after she gets out of the infirmary…"

The team laughed as they pictured the ordeal.

"Say," Arty wiped his mouth with his napkin, "I have to come back into town tomorrow to get supplies to fix the books in the library, and I was going to go ahead and pick up some more Dust. I'm kinda running low. You guys want to come with to hang out?"

Timbre clapped her hands giddily, "Oh yeah! A new music store opened up near the docks! They're supposed to have _everything_! CD's, vinyls, sheet music, really anything you can think of that's music related!"

Roland looked over to Sepia and nudged her with his knee, "There's that media store nearby, too. Who knows, maybe we'll find a book I haven't read before or a new indie movie to rent."

Sepia nodded happily, ' _Sounds great!'_ she signed after putting her fork down.

"It'll be nice to have a break after the past couple of weeks… or days, really," Timbre put her fork and knife down on her empty plate, "Finally, we can bond over something other than monsters and gunfire for once!"


	19. V1Ch15: Not-so-Fine ARTS

The morning after Yamuna was cornered and calmed down, students and staff were shocked when they found the library in complete chaos. Those involved with the giant wolf fiasco the night prior had already started dealing with their punishments, re-shelving the books and making repairs. Roland, having known the organization of the books beforehand and still being able to sense the writing, had an easier time than the others. This lead the rest to begin work on fixing the window and damaged doors.

Arty began his special punishment of recreating the illustrations of the books with the help of the school's database and with the limited amount of useful supplies he had brought from Atlas. As anticipated, his supplies began to thin out after only repairing a handful of books. A supply run was inevitable.

Professor Alabaster, being the enigmatic and usually kind old man he was, allowed the rest of Team ARTS to go with Arty into town while he got supplies as long as they were back within a few hours. The teens found this fair, and they arrived at the docks in the City of Vale after a short ride on the airship transit.

"So," Timbre walked alongside her team. She wore the hoodie from her first day at Beacon, and pulled the hood tightly over her head to avoid being seen in the streets of Vale, "what's the first stop for us?"

"Well," the leader said as he scanned through the shopping list on his scroll, "I need to stop by an art supply store and or a stationary shop for supplies to fix the library books, and I'm running really low on paint... so I'm gonna stop by the Dust shop too." He put his scroll back into his pocket, "You guys are welcome to join me if you want to grab some ammo or some stuff to try it out. You never know what Dust can do for your combat."

"I think I'll take you up on that." Roland thought about his weapon. With a few modifications, adding different colors of ink that correspond with Dust wouldn't be a terrible idea. At the very least, he could make some really interesting ink grenades, "I have a few designs thought up on how to utilize Dust in my ink, but I don't know anything about the ratio of Dust to ink that I should use. Do you think that you would be able to help we with that?" he asked, "I'm thinking that Gravity Dust would be my best bet, since it wouldn't mess with the mechanics of my weapon or the paper itself. I could probably use any kind in some new grenades."

Arty thought about it for a moment, "I don't know how different Dust _ink_ would be from Dust _paint_ , but yeah, sure. I'll see what I can do to help." He looked over to the girls, "You two want to try some out?" images of flaming wires and electric bullet barrages spun in his head.

' _Me pass,'_ Sepia signed, being careful to only use words that she explicitly taught Arty. On the downside, her words came out similar to Everest's. She turned so that Timbre could see her hands, ' _How about we head over to that music store? I'm in need of some earbuds. Mine got trashed.'_

Timbre nodded enthusiastically, "Okay! I should pick up some new headphones too, but you _are_ gonna probably want to make plans to meet up with _Roland_ somewhere ASAP," she winked to her partner, "I'll be in there a while, and I'm sure you won't want to stick around and listen to me blather about instruments and artists."

Sepia's cheeks flushed red. She was a deer in headlights. No good response to that would come out of her hands. If she did respond, then there would be no end to Timbre's prying. Though Timbre was a great friend, she was one to get a little too far into other people's business.

The eyes of Arty and Timbre naturally fell onto Roland next. He didn't seem nearly as flustered, but he did seem hellbent on keeping his gaze firmly fixed in the direction that they were walking. Finally, he spoke, "Sepia and I are both single. Leave it alone."

An initial reaction from Sepia was that of irritation, but then indifference. _I mean, technically…_ she thought to herself. Of course, her impression of relationships between team members was that it was frowned upon, so she didn't push the issue any further.

"Okay, whatever," Timbre smiled and grabbed Sepia's arm, "C'mon, let's go!" She waved goodbye to Arty and Roland as she dashed away, nearly dragging Sepia behind her. "See you guys later!"

The two guys stood there and watched as Sepia struggled to keep up with Timbre. She looked back at Roland pleadingly. She couldn't call for help while the singer dragged her around the corner.

"Wow," Arty said as they walked in the opposite direction, towards the other end of the shopping district, "When it comes to her interests, there's nothing that will stop her, huh?"

"Let's just get to the Dust shop." His partner hurried ahead, "I was thinking that some Steam Dust might be useful in a grenade. It might make the spray thinner. Maybe even some Magma Dust to get some better coverage."

.

The _Bite the Dust_ Dust shop was the go-to place for most of the first years at Beacon Academy. Unlike other Dust shops, this one specialized in pre-weaponized Dust for Huntsmen and Huntresses as opposed to the general wholesale Dust available to everybody. In addition to the display cases and pipes full of powder and crystals, the store even had stock of cloth infused with Dust for clothing and ammunition for some of the more common types of guns found in Huntsmen weapons. What Arty was most thankful for, however, was that they had a nice supply of an oddly rare variety of Dust, despite its status as a base type.

"Oh yes…" Arty said, pushing his hands and face against a display case where a bag of powdered blue Dust sat, "I'm so glad I finally found a place with Water Dust…"

The young woman behind the counter laughed, "Yeah, you'd think it'd be much more readily available. Too bad it's not that practical for the everyday man," she pushed a lock of lime green hair back behind her ear. Her pale blue shirt, which was similar in color to her eyes, displayed the logo of the shop.

B _ut don't liquid projectiles defeat the purpose_?… Roland pondered. He had never given much thought to Dust, so he had trouble imagining the various applications for the wide variety of Dust types.

However, as the scenarios played out in his mind, he began to think that Water Dust might be useful to him. It would help him greatly to be able to increase the spread and volume of his ink grenades. That would be a question to save for someone with more hands-on experience with Dust like Arty. The employee seemed to be knowledgeable, so she would probably be the best one the ask about Dust.

"I don't mean to interrupt," Roland took on a surprisingly pleasant and patient tone, "but I have a few questions regarding the usage of Dust. I never really use it, so forgive me if I'm a little clueless." He removed his hat as a show of respect, "I was wondering how Gravity Dust might function if it were compressed and then expanded within a fluid. For instance, if someone infused it with a liquid, applied pressure, and then released it within a localized explosion."

As Roland and the woman discussed the process of altering gravity by spreading it over an area of effect, Arty just looked at his partner and tilted his head slowly to the side in confusion. _Is he being… polite?_ He thought to himself. He decided to ignore it, and went off to figure out how much of each kind of powdered Dust he'd need to make equal amounts of every kind of paintballs for his next batch.

"Right, so if I coated my hand in Gravity Dust and punched someone, then we would both go flying," Roland inquired the employee, and was pleased to receive an enthusiastic nod. Gravity Dust seemed like a great start, so he put in his request. He wanted to shop a little more, but Arty knew this stuff better than he, "Hey, Arty. Would you mind to give me some insight as to what the most dangerous type of Dust that you know of is?" He didn't want to be rude, so he extended the same question to the employee, "I would also like to hear your thoughts, ma'am, if that isn't too much trouble. You've been incredibly helpful."

Arty took a minute to respond due to the sheer shock of Roland's… performance.

The shopkeeper gave Arty a minute, but as he stood there with a blank dumbfounded look on his face. She decided to go ahead and answer, "Well… I personally don't fight. I just know how _others_ fight and supply them, but if I had to say the type of Dust I've heard more people having trouble with is-"

"Magma. Either that or Fire," Arty finally responded.

The shopkeeper nodded, "Yeah. Fire causes a lot of problems. Though its effects can be compared to electricity, the effects can last a lot longer and can be a little less predictable. Magma's quicker and more explosive, so it doesn't cause as much lasting damage."

"Tell me about it…" Roland said, giving a quick glance to Arty as he remembered the forest fire he had caused with his paint when they first met, "This might be a little scary, but what happens when you mix Fire Dust with that Electricity Dust that you mentioned?" Roland looked between Arty and the shopkeeper. The shopkeeper looked at him like he was crazy, while Arty looked on like he had seen a ghost.

Roland decided it best to share where his line of thought was going, "Wouldn't that create something like a Plasma Dust, or something of similar nature?"

The woman was now fully invested in discussing Dust with Roland, "Yeah, I mean, I've never heard of anyone using that _particular_ mixture, but... I wouldn't mind having a buddy of mine work to combine some for ya if you want. I'd ask a teacher first about using it before you actually try it out, but yeah, I'd definitely be willing to do that for ya." She began scribbling down a note on a pad of paper that basically read 'flame + electricity = ?', "Combining Dust is always fun. Dangerous, but fun. One time, that same buddy of mine tried to combine gravity and force Dust. Idiot practically caved in his workshop… Took awhile for him to get back up in business, but he says he's glad he tried it. Never would've found out what it did otherwise, y'know?"

"That would be excellent. Thank you very much," Roland laid his debit card down on the table, "I'll go ahead and grab a bag of Gravity Dust powder," he thought for a moment, "Three bags, actually. I have a few tests that I plan on doing with it." From his pocket, he produced his own notepad and pen and began scribbling down his contact information, "My name is Roland Wells. I'm happy to make your acquaintance. This is my information so that you can contact me when that mixture comes in," he handed the slip of paper to her, "Oh, and is there any way that I could tip you? You have been truly helpful to me today."

The woman smiled, "Glad I can help. You've gotten me wondering about other Dust fusions now. There's a ton of unexplored territory!" She put the three bags into a cardboard box before taping it up, "Just sign there on the pad for your payment. There's an option to tip at the bottom, but you really don't have to."

Arty watched as Roland quickly signed the pad, making sure to tap the small green box at the bottom of the screen. His mouth fell open Roland tipped the shopkeeper the full amount of his order.

"Wow! Thanks so much!" The shopkeeper grabbed the note that she made and nodded to the back, "I'll go get this order put in, and have my coworker take over here for a bit. Have a great day!" she waved goodbye and disappeared behind a door marked 'Employees Only'. Shortly thereafter, one of the other attendants began ringing Arty up.

"What's up with you, Arty? Your brain finally short-circuit?" Roland's polite attitude was gone with the shopkeeper.

Arty just pointed at him, "Was that- was that _real_? Because for a second there, I couldn't even tell if you were still _you_."

"The girl works in retail. She probably deals with jerks all of the time, so I'm not going to be one of them. People in the service industry go through enough already," Roland shrugged, "I get that I have a tail, but I'm not an animal."

"What about everyone else who doesn't work in retail?"

"They're fair game."

"Nice," Arty moved away from the display case, "Well, I'm gonna go get my stuff now. I'm heading to the art store down the street, so you can go off and find Sepia now." Arty pushed past him and began listing types of Dust he wanted bags of to the new employee behind the counter.

"Why do you automatically assume that I'm going to run off with Sepia?" Roland asked quickly. Sure, hanging out with Sepia was his initial plan, but he didn't want to arouse too much suspicion. They had plans to go back to the cafe that Team ARTS had adopted, maybe even catch a movie after, but he wouldn't let that happen if it made Arty and Timbre think something was going on.

Arty looked at him quizzically as he paid for his Dust, "You two are dating aren't you?"

"No! Not at all!" This time, Roland's face did flush red, "I mean… not exactly," he slumped his shoulders in acceptance of his defeat. "Do you want the full story…?"

"Do I really need it?"

"I think it would add some clarity to why her and I act strange around you and Timbre."

"Roland," Arty picked up his box of Dust and thanked the attendant again before turning to leave the shop, "I don't care if you two date. It's honestly not a big deal to me."

"Wait, what?" Roland looked at his leader in surprise, "I was just about to tell you about how we kept getting detention and spent more and more time after that, and that we aren't technically dating, and that we both feel really awkward on the idea of team dynamic if we became a couple, and…" he forced himself to hold back, "Arty, you're the one who tells me to _not_ do stupid things."

Arty arched his eyebrow, "Really…?" _Is that part of the leader position?..._ "Roland, our team dynamic is fine. You scared about focusing too much on her when we're in a fight and getting yourself hurt in the process or something?"

"I don't know, man…" Roland kicked a pebble down the sidewalk as they got outside, "It's not so much getting myself hurt, but getting you guys hurt. I'm worried that… well…" he sighed, "I don't know what I'm so worried about, but I know I'm definitely worried. She's great and all, really great, but what if it goes down hill? What if she has, like, a super crazy sister or a psycho ex or-" he realized the stupidity of his rambling, "That aside, wouldn't that make it really awkward for you and Timbre?"

"Hey, you guys do what you do. We don't care, or at least I don't. I know I'm supposed to be leader and all, but nobody's ever told me inter-team relationships were against some sort of Huntsmen code. Even if they were, I'd say forget about it and do what makes you happy. Honestly, the only thing I'd be worried about is how Sepia'd act if you broke up with her… It's not a pretty image…"

.

"Sepia!" Timbre shouted in the music shop, "What are you _talking_ about?! You and Roland make a… cute… couple…" she then realized she was talking about the two maniacs of their team.

' _Cute? That's the word that you use to describe me? Cute?'_ Sepia looked at Timbre in disbelief, ' _Look, I like him, yes, but the moment that we make anything official is the moment that the school burns down. You've seen the havoc we cause together, Timbre.'_

"Well, yeah," Timbre pulled a vinyl record out of a bin to look it over, "but I mean, regardless whether or not you're a _thing_ , the school's gonna burn. Why not burn it together, y'know?"

This wasn't a position that Sepia had ever been in, so she was at a loss as to what to do, ' _Well, he keeps being awkward about it when I bring it up!'_ her motions became more and more frantic as the conversation went on, ' _And I don't want everyone talking about us! And what about the flack that we'll get for a human/Faunus relationship? Alice will flip a lid and go out of her way to make our lives miserable.'_

"Sepia… when have you _ever_ cared what Alice thought about you?... When have you ever cared about what _anyone_ thought about you?"

' _I don't! I care about how she treats Roland! I don't want to go overboard and seriously hurt her just because I have feelings for that stupid cowboy!'_

Timbre was taken back by Sepia's show of affection. Her mouth curled into a grin and began to rapidly kick against the floor as she squealed in delight. "Sepia! Don't you _see_?! Just the fact that you'd be willing to knock someone to the floor for Roland says it all! Imagine if you put that into a battle, not saying that that's the only reason you two should be together, but if you saw Roland getting cornered by Grimm or something," she stopped herself, "Carmen has a motto. The moment you find someone that you would throw away everything for, including yourself, is the moment that you should start doing everything you can to make the most of the time you have with them. I know we're just teenagers and people say teen-love never lasts, but holy crap, Sepia. We're training to be Huntresses for crying out loud!"

' _You know what? Fine. I'll tell him how I feel the moment that we see them,'_ Sepia signed forcefully.

"You girls finished in here or what?" Roland's voice came from the front door of the music shop. He poked his head in, and behind him was Arty holding a few bags with stickers on them to alert the owner that the contents were hazardous along with a few plastic shopping bags.

Sepia's eyes widened in horror. She looked back and forth between Roland and Timbre. Her hands were positioned just so that Roland couldn't see her sign, ' _I take it back. I take all of it back.'_ In a panic, Sepia quickly yanked down Timbre's hood and began pointing to her. Unfortunately, she couldn't yell "Hey, everybody! Look, it's Timbre Forté!", so instead, she ran to the back of the store.

"Is she okay…?" Roland asked as he stepped into the store.

Timbre looked to Arty, who just rolled his eyes. She quickly pulled out her scroll and texted Arty:

 **Timbre Forté: U talk 2 him bout Screenplay being more thn just a team atk?**

Arty grabbed his scroll, read the text, and turned it away from Roland. He responded.

Timbre looked down and saw one word appear in her message box.

 **Arty Umber: yep.**

She smiled widely as she shoved her scroll back into her hoodie pocket. "Yeah. She will be." She began walking to the door, but grabbed Arty by the black sleeve of his shirt on her way out.

"Hey! Timbre!" he yelled in protest as she dragged him out of the store.

"Have fun, you two!" Timbre sang out as the door closed behind them.

Roland began his search of the shop, given that he knew Sepia's tendency to flee and hide from awkward situations. This wasn't a situation that he wanted to be in, but he felt as though avoiding it would just annoy Arty more, and he wouldn't hear the end of it from Timbre either. A few of the store's patrons pointed in the direction that she went, and he was both thankful for and frustrated by their actions.

He finally reached a small booth that served as a quiet place for people to try out their new music with the curtain drawn, "Hey Sepia, you can hear me in there, right?"

The curtains flailed to life for a second before Sepia tumbled out of them. She looked up at Roland, her face blazed red, ' _Need something?'_ she signed from the ground.

"Care to talk… or sign, rather? Arty and Timbre are gone at the moment." he extended a hand to help her up.

She slowly took his hand and stood, ' _What's going on?'_

"You know, Timbre is onto us. Now Arty's aware that something's up… to say the least," he looked down at the ground. Faced with the choice of dragging it out or just getting it over with, he figured that Sepia would appreciate an attempt at the latter option, "I don't mean to beat around the bush. We've just got a lot going on with classes and everything, you know? Everything between Mikado and Yamuna and Turf and… We've all been through a lot. Arty just wants me to spit it all out, and now that we've been out a few times and all… I mean…"

' _You're asking me out?'_ she signed to him. Butterflies zoomed around in her stomach. Her hands trembled. For the first time in a good while, she was nervous.

"Not exactly, since we've kind of been out a few times already," he scratched the back of his head, "Look, I just don't want to be making this out to be such a big deal if it isn't. I mean, I get it. You could shoot for the stars when it comes to guys. Like Gavin, no pun intended. Maybe the ASHS guys. Or anyone else, really. I'm just a Faunus with anger issues, you know?"

' _And I'm a psycho. I don't follow anything even resembling a rule. Let's be honest here, Click-Clack,'_ she punched his arm, ' _I can't even talk.'_

"Most would see that as a plus," he nodded to the door, "Look, you want to go hang out for a while? I mean, with Arty and Timbre of course, maybe, if you want, but without all of the-"

' _Cloak and dagger?'_ she signed, ' _As in, we stop worrying about everything and do what makes us happy?'_

"I mean, I suppose. Arty doesn't care if we're in a, you know…"

' _Relationship?'_ she covered her mouth as if she were giggling, ' _Yeah, Timbre's been shipping us hard since I told her just now. We might as well go for it. We don't have anything to lose.'_

The two sat there for a moment and smiled to each other, taking solace in the tension that they had finally broken.

.

"Do you see them?!" Timbre whispered harshly to Arty as they hid behind a row of bushes. "Are they coming out together?" she gasped, "ARE THEY HOLDING HANDS?!"

"I wouldn't know…" her leader grumbled, "I kinda can't tell since you shoved me into this shrub over here. That, and I honestly don't care if they start a relationship. Things don't change in Team ARTS, got it?"

"Yeah, yeah. Shut up Painter Boy." She suddenly squealed and fell back to sit next to him.

"They come out of the store?"

"Yes!" she clapped giddily. "They _are_ holding hands!" she began slapping him on the shoulder repeatedly out of excitement, "We did it, Arty!"

" _We_?..."

"I'm with Arty," Roland leaned over the bush with Sepia right by his side, "You guys didn't do much. Neither of you are exactly what one would call quiet, either."

Sepia used her free hand to send a message to the group, ' _Take a lesson from me.'_

Timbre's cheeks flushed red. "Oh… haha. We were, just leaving!" She jumped up and dashed away, "See you guys back at school!"

Roland and Sepia watched as she disappeared down the street before returning their eyes to Arty, who was still tangled up in the bush.

Arty struggled to get his clothes free from the branches, "I wasn't here by choice, okay?" he went limp, "Help a guy out? I still have to buy supplies to fix the library books…"

Roland grabbed Arty by the arm and helped pull him out, "You alright, man? You seem a little… pissed. I thought you were cool with this."

"I am, but it's being in a bush and crumpling my box of Dust and my art supplies that has me annoyed…" He picked up the bent up box and brushed it off carefully. "If Timbre had shoved me just a little bit harder… this whole city block would… _not_ be a city block anymore…"

"Right, so you have to go get supplies, yeah?" Roland looked at Sepia and then back to Arty, "We were going to hang out with you guys, but with Timbre gone… do you care if we go back to campus and torment Alice by walking by the infirmary hand-in-hand a few dozen times?"

Sepia gave Arty her usual crazed, wide-eyed look of excitement.

Arty laughed, "Like I said earlier, Roland, I don't care if you're a couple. I have no qualms with inter-team relationships. Go do what you do."

"Chaos?" Roland asked the girl latched onto his hand.

Sepia nodded enthusiastically and splayed her fingers out, mimicking an explosion with her free hand.

"Right," Arty began walking off, "Have fun you two. Just make sure you're back from torturing Alice before it gets too late. I don't want Alabaster extending our punishment."

.

" _ **YOU BLOODY DOLTS ARE**_ **WHAT** _ **?!"**_ Alice screamed at the top of her lungs from the doorway of the Team ANTE dorm, apparently having been released from the infirmary since the debacle at the library, " _ **YA CAN'T JUST DO THAT WITHIN YA OWN TEAM, YA TWITS! DID YOU NOT THINK ABOUT ONE OF YOU BEIN' A**_ **FAUNUS** _ **?!"**_

"I was born of a Faunus mother and a human father. I'm not technically a full Faunus, but whatever," Roland informed her. Of course, he didn't expect Alice to be out of the infirmary, so he and Sepia were taken by surprise when she yanked the door open and began screaming at them.

" _ **YOU-"**_ Alice trembled in her fury, "What tha 'ell is goin' on, huh? Turf spends a little time with you guys an' now he refuses to leave our dorm, Yamuna's walkin' around like she owns thA place, an' now you two think that you can start foolin' around with each otha-"

"What do you you mean fooling around?" he shot back.

"Well, you are a Fau-"

Sepia held up her scroll to show her message, ' _What happens in our relationship is our business,'_ she looked cross, to say the least, ' _Being a Faunus has no bearing on a relationship, so you can kindly keep your thoughts to yourself.'_

"I couldn't have said it better myself," Roland gave the faintest ghost of a smile, "Hey! Timbre! Come here!" he called into the dorm for Team ARTS. He jabbed a thumb back at Alice, "You've got to see this! Her face is as red as her hair!"

Timbre opened the door and couldn't help but chuckle when she saw Roland and Sepia holding hands as Alice fumed from the open door of her room in her pajamas, "Guys, leave Alice alone and get back to the library. Arty's going to need help identifying the books that need fixing."

Alice narrowed her eyes at Timbre, "Oh ya. I almost forgot _your_ team was involved in all that. Thanks, by the way, for dragging Turf into everything. Thanks for driving home my point," Alice winced and put her hand to her side, "I'm goin' back ta bed. I'll be seein' you three in Carmen's class," and with that, she slammed the door in their faces.

Roland stared at the door in disbelief, "There's more than a stick up her butt. I think it's an entire tree that has made its home growing straight out of her a-"

Sepia tugged on his hand and shook her head and began signing, ' _Don't let it get to you. I don't want to have to break her,'_ after her conversation with Timbre, her mind was pushing her to take Alice on, ' _We'll get her back, I promise. You know, I did notice that Alice does writes her notes with pen and ink.'_

A sadistic grin found its way onto Roland's face, "Ooooooooh yes… We'll get Turf to send some photos of her notes. Change a few words, and boom!" he whispered in her ear, "Or we use some of those recon orbs."

' _I agree wholeheartedly,'_ Sepia silently giggled.

Timbre rubbed her temple with her fingers, "Oh man… guys. Don't make me take back what I said, or else I'll try to break you up for the good of humanity."

' _Then you'll be the next target,'_ Sepia winked at her partner.

"And there is a ton of ink on CDs and the like. It would be a shame if that got… rearranged," Roland bumped his fist against Sepia's.

Timbre's smile faded and she closed the door. From behind the door, Roland and Sepia could hear her mutter, "Not my babies…"

Roland and Sepia made their way to the library without another word. Their mission was a success. Alice was fuming, and Timbre feared them. At this point, they could actually get down to business.

When they arrived at the library, Arty was already working on the illustrations in the damaged books.

"Hey guys," Arty said without looking up from the book he was currently drawing in, occasionally looking at a reference image on his phone, "Glad you could join us."

"Us?" Roland looked around for the others in the punished group.

"Hey, Roland. Hey, Sepia." Rime's voice echoed from somewhere.

The couple looked around until they found the petite girl at the top of a tall ladder, where she was reshelving a book.

Sitting on top of the shelf was Zero, who had more books stacked next to him. After shelving the book, he handed Rime another one from the stack. Zero gave a small salute, touching his right hand to his forehead before flicking it outwards.

There was a moment of silence as Roland surveyed the stacks of books. He nodded slowly, "Hold on. I know Alabaster told us not to, but..." he waved his hands, causing all of the books to begin levitating. Some of them even came off the shelves. They shot back into their places, all of them except for the ones that Arty still had to work on.

"There, you guys can come down," he sat down across from Arty, "Want me to look over your illustrations and make sure they're accurate?"

"If you really want to. Some of them are from the Great War and before, so the style is a little weird," Arty said, still keeping his eye on the pen as he dragged it across the page in a smooth arc. After finishing the line, he patted the stack of books to his left, "These are the one's I've gotten done so far."

Roland looked amazed at the stack. "You've gotten all of these done since you left the music store?!"

"You can read and type fast. I can draw fast. We've talked about that."

Roland cracked open one of the finished books and began looking over the new illustrations. He sat in stunned silence, but that quickly turned into rage, "This… this is not perfect…" he murmured, "It's better," he growled and slammed the book down, "These were first editions, Arty…"

"Well now they're all version 1.1," He pushed the book he was working on to the side to let the ink dry, "I'm sorry if I can't recreate age, Roland."

' _Nicely done,'_ Sepia messaged Arty, ' _Roland getting fussy aside, what do we need to do?'_

Arty leaned back in his chair to stretch. He cracked his knuckles, "Really the only things to do in here are reshelving books and repairing furniture," he nodded to the giant broken window where Yamuna had crashed through, "The school's handling the window."

Roland looked around to the damaged pieces of furniture in the room. Thankfully, none of them seems irreparably damaged. It wasn't anything a little elbow grease couldn't fix, so he sent a text to Timbre to get him his supplies.

 **Roland Wells: Hey, could you grab my toolbox before you come down here? It's dark purple and right underneath my desk. Careful, it's a little heavy.**

He waited for a response.

 **Timbre Forté: Sure thing.**

.

Timbre took off her new headphones and got up from her bed. She stepped over to the bed opposite of hers, where the neatly arranged books were stacked in the space underneath. She bent down under the adjacent desk and found the toolbox Roland had mentioned. As she was about to get up, she saw something that caught her eye under Roland's bed. Behind the walls of books, there was a small opening, hidden from view from anyone unless they were kneeling down near the foot of the bed. Timbre's curiosity won over her better judgement and respect of her teammate's privacy. She reached her arm into the small compartment and felt plastic and paper in her fingers. Lots of plastic and paper. When she pulled the heavy object out she found it to be a large black and purple binder stuffed to the brim with tiny notes written on the same paper Roland used in Writer's Block. A looser slip of paper fell out of the collection. She picked it up and skimmed over it.

 _Hey mom, I just thought that I'd update you on Beacon. I'm having some trouble getting along with some of the other students, but I'm sure that you could have guessed that one. You always told me that I could tell you anything, so I want to tell you that I'm scared._

Timbre covered her mouth. Why had Roland not sent these letters? She heard someone walking down the hall, and the heaviness of the steps made her scared it was Arty or Roland wondering what was taking her so long. She quickly shoved the note back into the binder and returned it to its hidey-hole. Timbre shot up off of the floor and grabbed the toolbox just as there was a knocking at the door.

She ran and flung it open, "Sorry! I couldn't find my other boo-"

Turf jumped back as Timbre almost ran straight into him, "Woah! Hey Timbre! Slow down there," he looked down at the metal box in her hands. She didn't seem like she was struggling, but didn't want to find out later if she did, "By the color, I'm guessing that's Roland's toolbox, not yours," he gingerly picked it up from the bottom, "Is it heading for the library?"

Timbre pushed a lock of hair behind her ear and smiled nervously, "Oh… yeah. It is." She folded her arms and pushed them upwards in an attempt to push her hoodie up over her face, which she felt turning red.

"You alright? You're looking a little feverish," Turf examined her with care and concern in his eyes. Sure, Faunus only had one physical trait, but it wasn't uncommon to pick up the mannerisms of the animal whose trait it was from, "I'll run you by the infirmary on the way to the library if you need. We should get a move on, though," he nodded her along.

Timbre chuckled, "Turf, I'm fine. Really. I don't need to go to the infirmary," She always found his puppy-like enthusiasm and concern adorable. She looked up to the ears on his head, showing that he still hadn't found his beanie, "but you can walk with me to the library if you want." She then realized something, "Wait, shouldn't you already be there? You're on the detention list, too. Remember?"

"I already spent the day fixing up the lecture halls, but I'm about to head down and help with the library. I like doing handyman work, so this punishment is a bit of a plus to me. Since I had a bit of a break, I thought I'd search for my hat. Navy kind of hid it during the whole me being a Faunus thing," Turf heaved up the toolbox so that he could hold it against his chest with both hands, "Geez, what does this guy have in here…?"

"Well, I'll help you look for it, as long as you think it's not in your room. I don't think Alice would like anybody outside of Team ANTE being in there. And knowing Roland, there's probably a bunch of pens and paper in that thing. Why keep tools when you can make your own out of ink using your Semblance?"

"Maybe he likes the feel of real ones. I mean, if I had that Semblance, then I think I'd still keep my tools around. Maybe it's a guy thing, I don't know," he headed for the stairwell, "I thought you would want to know that Yamuna is doing a lot better, by the way. We've been hanging out since last night, and it's just like old times. She's been following me around while I make repairs, but left to spend some quality time with her brothers and her team."

Timbre smiled, "That's great, Turf. I'm glad," she looked down at her feet as they walked. "Do… do you think she meant what she said? Back at the library?" She kicked at the carpet with her heel, "I just don't want her to hate me. I really look up to Yamuna… well, you get what I mean. I really appreciate everything Team GLXY's done to get us acclimated to the Huntsmen Academy environment. I just feel like all the trouble my team and I cause makes us look… ungrateful, y'know?"

"In answer to your first question, no. She didn't mean anything, not truly anyway. She… resented humans when she first got to Beacon, actually. You should have seen the girl when she got put on a team with three of them," Turf laughed, thinking back to the conversations that he and her would have about life at Beacon on family visitation days, "Sometimes that comes out when she's out of control, but that's just old habits. You know what they say about old habits," he shifted the toolbox to get a better grip on it, "As for your team, it's a little hard for you guys to sound ungrateful. Yamuna has told me all about the trouble that GLXY used to cause, and about how Team ASHS drums up a lot less trouble now than they used to. You guys are pretty much the average."

Timbre sighed, "Well, that definitely makes me feel a little better. Thanks."

The two students in green walked into the library. Arty was still at the table drawing as Rime, Zero, and Roland put up books that he finished.

"Hey guys," Arty said, still focussed on his drawings, "Glad you could join us."

"Hey, Arty." She walked over and looked at the spread of drying illustrations, "Wow… you've been busy!"

"Yep," he blew gently on the drawing he just finished, "at this rate, I should be done within four days max."

Roland clapped his gloved hands together and sat next to a broken chair, "Toolbox, please," he ordered impatiently.

"Oh, sure thing." Turf said as he handed the purple container to Roland.

Timbre watched as Roland set to work putting a chair's leg back together. She felt bad for what she had found hidden away behind Roland's under-the-bed-library. Half for what it contained, half for the fact she neglected his right to privacy. Arty always talked about how the team should share anything that would help them know each other better, but Timbre knew that Roland had demons he'd rather keep hidden. The fact that Arty neglected to tell his team his Semblance for so long made her confused as to whether or not he really wanted to stick by what he said about not hiding things from one another when they first met. But then again, she had her own secrets to hide as well.

Still... Why wouldn't Roland send those letters?


	20. V1Ch16: ASHS to Ashes

Clanking metal, gunfire, and loud buzzing explosions rang out from within one of the training rooms in the Beacon Academy weapons workshop. The rectangular rooms were set up so that the Huntsmen and Huntresses in training could practice their techniques. Each one allowed the practicing teams to train in recreations of real-world terrains. Some included entire artificial forests, city blocks, or rocky gorges. Two of the rooms, the ones in highest demand, could simulate nearly any environment using Dust, holograms, and other equipment. Team ASHS was using the basic room that resembled a gymnasium for their late-afternoon training session.

"C'mon, Anubis. Couldn't we have reserved one of the funner training rooms?" Set pulled three arrows out of the black and gold quiver hooked at his side. He pulled back the string on his weapon, a golden bow with red embellishments at the curved bladed ends. When he let go, every arrow flew the entirety of the forty-foot length of the room, piercing three targets in the center. Bullseyes. He grabbed the bow by the center of the frame and pulled it backwards. The frame folded in half. He swung the newly-formed fan axe behind him, slicing a straw dummy in half. "I mean, the space is great, but it's so… _boring_."

Anubis aimed his collapsed khopesh-pistols ahead of him and fired at a larger straw dummy resembling a warthog, more specifically a Boarbatusk. He lowered the guns and observed the scatter of bullet holes on the cloth surface. He sighed in annoyance. "Set, I've told you before, and I _really_ don't want to tell you again," he hooked the blades to the clasps on either side of his dull gold and dark green _shendyt_ , "But it looks like I have to." He turned to his twin brother, "If, by some miracle, we represent Beacon in the Vytal Tournament this summer, we need to work on our…" he looked over to see the other twins, Sköll and Hati, trying to balance their weapons on the bridges of their noses, the golden twin with a longsword, the silver with a battleaxe, "team skills."

Anubis walked over to them and flipped his arms upwards, knocking the loosely-balanced weapons off of their faces.

"Hey!" they protested.

"As I was saying," Anubis felt the headache coming on, "We wouldn't even pass through the Team round if we're not able to work together."

"Yeah, but," Set put an arm around his brother's shoulder, " _but_ … the tournament coliseum has those badass biome battlegrounds. So… tell me why we didn't rent the cliff room or the room filled with water and the floating platforms? Heck, why not that crazy, adaptable, future room simulator thing?"

Anubis scowled and slowly lifted his brother's arm off of him, "Because, _Set_ ," in one quick fluid motion, he lifted his brother up and slammed him down against the ground and onto his back. He knelt down and looked him in the eye, "if we can't even _work together_ , what's the point of fighting on a cliff or in a body of water?"

Hati laughed and pointed at Set, "He's got you there, bro! But… the water room _does_ sound like a lot of fun…"

Anubis stood and growled, "Don't. Start. Hati."

Sköll smiled slyly as he began juggling his battleaxe in one hand, "But, Anu…" He said with his best puppy-dog whimper, "we're _bored_ in here." He tapped the blade of the weapon against Hati's wooden shield, "How are we supposed to work like this if we can't even focus?"

Anubis reached up and grabbed his pointed dog ears. He pulled them downwards, a gesture that told his brothers that he was getting annoyed and/or stressed. "I… _hate_ … you guys…" He muttered under his breath. He took a deep breath to calm himself. "Well… unfortunately, because of a certain trio of troublemakers, Team ASHS is the only second-year team to have their equipment and reservation privileges restricted."

Hati folded his arms behind his head and grinned, "We get bored alot, don't we?"

"Which is why," Anubis let go of his ears, "I'm trying to keep you guys busy. It's _very_ unlikely, but I'd like to go the rest of the semester without the four of us spending any more time in Professor Alabaster's office. If I have to hear any more about the wonderful process of growing cranberries, I'll lose it."

Sköll leaned over to Hati with his mouth covered, "If you ask me, our little bro lost it when the four of us got teamed up last year."

Anubis, having extremely sensitive ears, heard this. He felt his head beginning to throb as the anger rose in him. "You know what, Sköll? You can-"

"Hold up!" Set pushed Anubis back, preventing him from attacking their smart-aleck brother. He stood for a second, his Faunus ears perked up as he seemed to listen for something. He ran to the door to the training room, knelt down, and pressed an ear against the wood.

Anubis watched Set as he sat there listening to the door, "Set, what are you d-"

Set shushed him.

"Set…" Anubis began to stomp over to him.

"Shhhhhh!" he pointed to the door, "it's Gavin." He listened for a second, "he's talking to _Xannie_."

Anubis shook his head and shrugged, "So…?"

"Hold on…" Set listened and intently. A mischievous smile spread across his face from what he heard.

.

"Gavin, why are you so worried about all this?" Xannie asked, sounding a bit concerned.

"Because," Gavin sounded stern, "I don't believe that it was just rats in the tower's vents. After the maintenance team found the damaged ductwork, I remembered Carmen telling me about a student from twenty years back that managed to scale the tower to the top of Alabaster's office. I'm hoping it's just some copycats, but with this extremist group causing trouble across Remnant, I'm just worried that there's something bigger going on…"

Xannie scoffed, "Gavin, I can tell you that the probability of the Grimm Brotherhood even _attempting_ anything at Beacon is slim to none. It has to be some adrenaline junkies trying to be the next school heroes and make it to the roof of the tower," she giggled. "How much you want to bet it was Team ASHS?"

Gavin thought for a moment before responding, "I wouldn't put the Luna brothers past it. I'm just glad they boosted security after the first time, considering the sensitive equipment up there. If someone messed with the CCT transmitters, then all the communication across Remnant could go down."

Their boots began to thud against the ground as they walked further down the hall, their voices trailing off as they moved.

"That's a scary thought," Gavin said as he and Xannie began to move out of Set's range of hearing, "Could you imagine what chaos would ensue if Team ASHS got near that stuff?"

"I can, and let me tell you that most of the possible outcomes aren't very pretty..."

.

Set heard the weapon workshop entrance door open and close as Gavin and Xannie left.

Sköll ran up to Set, "What'd they say, dude?" his silver wolf tail began to wag back and forth, "Anything interesting and _not boring_?" He wasn't even bothered by Anubis snarling nearby.

Set grinned as the gears turned in his head, "Oh yeah. Anu, you aren't gonna like this, but you're going along for the ride."

* * *

"I. Hate. You. Guys." Anubis looked up towards the top of the Beacon Tower, hidden high above the grey cloud-cover. Rain beat against their leather jackets and armor.

"Well," Set rubbed his hands together in anticipation of the challenge, "I think this is gonna be what cements Team ASHS in Beacon history!"

He and his brothers stood near one of the flying buttresses of the colossal building. They picked the support structure on the opposite side from the entrance to the CCT area, as far away as possible from any potential traffic. The secluded grove of trees surrounding the buttress allowed them to start their ascent without anyone in the central courtyard seeing them.

Sköll and Hati stood nearby, also gazing to the the skies. The scarves they usually wore around their necks were drawn up like hoods to cover their faces from the rain.

Sköll, in his makeshift blue hood, knocked his knuckles against the bricks of the pillar, "You mean that all the pranks and being overall screw-ups won't do that?"

"Or, you know, showing our skills at the Vytal Tournament and possibly winning it for Beacon," Anubis muttered under his breath.

Set waved him off, "That's all beside the point. Our objective right now," he pointed to the sky, "is to get to the top of this tower."

"Or," the team leader furrowed his brow at him, "we could go back to the training room since we still technically have it reserved for the next hour and put some effort into how we work together in combat."

Sköll moved backwards away from the group. He knelt down like a runner ready to start a sprint, his fingers touching the ground, his right foot back, "Aw, c'mon Anu," he sprinted forward and scrambled up the wall, grabbing onto a small ledge about ten feet up before hoisting himself onto it, "We can work on your teamwork jazz together with this and have fun with it too!" He looked down at his brothers, "We all win!"

"Heck yeah," Set repeated the process and joined Hati on the ledge, "C'mon guys! The weather sucks up here!"

Anubis was fuming. He was about to start yelling when he felt Hati put a hand on his shoulder.

"C'mon, bro. Let's humor them. What's one more referral on Team ASHS's record?"

Anubis looked at him incredulously, "This wouldn't be just a _referral_ , Hati… Messing with the CCT could get us _expelled_."

Hati sucked at his teeth for a moment, "Look at it this way: we're still on Alabaster's good-list for helping out with Yamuna. He knows us. There's nothing malicious about this. You know what people say, it's just ASHS being ASSES. At worst, we get detention again." He nudged his brother, "I doubt we'll get expelled just for trying to climb the tallest structure in all of Sanus."

Anubis was about to retort, but, knowing his brothers, there was no arguing. "Fine, I'll go, but, when we get caught, I tried to talk you all out of it." He watched as Hati ran off to join Sköll and Set as they scaled the stone pillar.

"And when we get expelled, you three can do the explaining to everyone back in Menagerie!" He took a step back, his sandals crunching the grass as the rain began to pour harder. He hesitated, as if about to turn and leave, but then dashed, kicked off the wall, and jumped. His fingers dug in the mortar between the bricks to begin the ascent.

.

"Come on, Anu!" Set called while looking over the edge from the peak of the buttress. Looking down, he could see a soaked Anubis about twenty feet below, still climbing.

"Shut up, Set!" His foot slipped, almost throwing him off of the structure. Looking down, he could see the ground far below him. He regained his footing, "Sandals. Aren't. Good. Climbing shoes!" he scurried up the rest of the way. He kneeled over with his hands on his knees and huffed. This was the third climb that they had made, and easily the most arduous thus far.

Set slapped him on the back, "Glad you could join us, Anu!"

Anubis punched him, sending Set sprawling to the wet ledge, "Stop calling me Anu!"

"Okay, okay!" Set laughed as he slapped the water at his twin before pushing himself up.

Sköll and Hati laughed as he watched the other set of twins argue.

Hati looked to Sköll and rolled his eyes. "Hey! Anubis! Set!"

Just as Anubis had Set pinned to the wall and was about to throw a punch, the two snapped their heads to look at them.

Hati pointed behind him to the sharply inclined ramp that connected the pillar to the tower. "Considering we're doing this in the rain, how are we gonna, y'know, run up this thing?"

Anubis shrugged, "Don't look at me!" he narrowed his gaze at Set, "This was _your_ idea. _You_ figure it out." He shoved his twin towards Hati and Sköll.

"Fine, fine!" Set fixed the broad collar around his neck and pulled his sleeves back down, "You need to calm yourself, Anu…" he mumbled.

"What was that?!" Anubis shouted.

"Love you too, bro!" He walked up to the ramp and watched as the water ran down the ramp and poured off the sides. It couldn't be walked across without risking falling to the concrete, and the distance was certainly far enough to break their auras and cause a nice loud _splat_ when they hit the ground.

"If only the sun was out," Sköll stood beside Set and watched the water, "Then we wouldn't have to deal with this water."

The words clicked in Set's head. "Sköll, you're a _genius_!" he whipped around and looked to Hati, smiling as he eyed the emblems on his brother's shoulder pads. The etched wolves with suns behind them glared back at him from the dark brown leather.

Hati looked uncomfortable as he rubbed his arms in an attempt to warm himself up, "Set? What're you looking at me like that for? You're freaking me out dude."

"'If only the sun was out!'" Set yelled, "You can do that!"

Hati gave Set a wary look, "You want me to go Lunacy and evaporate a bunch of water just so we can climb the stupid tower?..." He looked to Anubis for help.

"Hey, you went along with this too," the leader said bluntly.

Hati groaned, "Why can't Sköll do it?!"

Sköll laughed, "Cuz wet ice isn't exactly easy to run across, duh. If we did that, we'd _definitely_ fall to our deaths."

"Okay! Fine! Fine…" Hati conceded. "Just stick close while we run. But I'm warning you, it's about to get pretty warm out here if I'm gonna evaporate this water."

His three brothers watched as Hati's golden eyes flashed bright right before he was enveloped by a swirling inferno. When the flames dissipated, a wolf covered in fur the same dull gold as Hati's hair stood before them. Small flames flickered off of its body. Hati turned to Sköll and Set with the same annoyed look he had given them moments before.

Sköll pat Hati's back, "C'mon bro! Let's get across this thing before somebody notices Beacon Academy has a new beacon!"

Hati grunted and tensed up. The heat emanating from him intensified. Anubis, Set, and Sköll felt their clothes and hair begin to dry as the wave of heat enveloped them. The rain now evaporated when it got within a few feet of the team.

"Okay," Set panted as beads of sweat trickled down his face, "Let's get across before I melt."

Hati snarled at Set and began to run, his paws slamming loudly against the tiles. The brothers stayed close as they made their way across the arch, the rain that was flowing across the tiles disappeared as it crossed into the moving bubble of heat.

Anubis looked up and saw the sky darkening further as the sun set. "Guys, it's getting dark. We need to hurry before anyone notices the glowing wolf ru-" Anubis yelled out as he felt his foot slip off of the side of the arch. For a split second, he could see the lamp posts glimmering below him in the darkness. Right as he was about to go over the edge, he was held back by the back of his jacket. When he regained his footing, he turned to see Set smiling at him.

"Told you we'd be working on teamwork if we did this," he chided as they continued running, "Don't worry, Anu. I'm always watching your back, even if it doesn't seem like it."

Anubis was surprised for a moment. It wasn't very often Set acted as a team player, especially one that actually watched for his teammates rather than himself. He grunted, "Whatever, Set. Let's just go."

The brothers made it to the exterior wall of the tower at the end of the arch. The field of heat quickly dissipated as Hati reverted back to his regular self.

"That… was… _miserable…_ " Hati doubled over and was panting heavily, trying to catch his breath.

"C'mon, bro. It couldn't have been _that_ bad." Sköll smirked.

Hati quickly threw a jab at Sköll's shoulder, "It wouldn't have been if I didn't have to be a living space heater! You know as well as I do that it takes a lot out of us to expand our thermal fields."

Sköll rubbed his sore shoulder. "Psh… why do you gotta go giving that a complicated sciency name? I always just called them Heaty Bubble and Coldy Bubble."

"I actually prefer Hati's…" Set leaned against the wall, "Sounds cooler."

"Regardless," Anubis took control of the conversation, "What now, genius?" He looked up above them where the massive building punched through the grey clouds. The sky beyond was completely black. "We're not even halfway to the top of the tower."

"Don't worry," Set opened his jacket and reached inside. He pulled out a short golden staff and his black and gold quiver, "the genius has had a plan for just this occasion."

Anubis's eyes widened, "You brought your axe?!" Anubis stormed over to Set as the staff expanded and the blade unfolded, revealing the fan-shaped blade.

"Technically, I'm using the bow, not the axe, but yeah."

Anubis felt his blood boiling behind his eyes, "I told you to leave that stuff in your locker!"

"You did," Set nodded thoughtfully, "but I didn't leave it in my locker," he opened the blade via the hinge and unfolded it into his bow. He notched an arrow with a long trail of wire attached to the end, "We can go rappelling," he stated and launched the arrow up about ten stories and into the side of the tower.

"I thought this might be cool for a battlefield that's different from a gymnasium," he smirked at Anubis, "I rigged it up the other day because the idea came to me," he held three specially fitted carabiners to the rest of his team, "We get to the arrow, I'll pull the line up, and then shoot the other end up so we can keep going."

Hati looked to Anubis. Both had faces of disbelief. "Did… did he actually?..."

"Come up with a decent plan?..." Anubis finished, "Although, Set, rappelling means to _de-_ scend, not _a-_ scend."

Set began clipping himself to the wire and motioned for the rest of his team to do the same, "Close enough."

Hati examined their way up carefully. Having grown up with Set, he knew his skill with a bow well. The arrow would serve as a good enough anchor for all of them, and their climbing skills were good enough for him to trust that they wouldn't all fall. The Hati seal of approval was given when he clipped the carabiner to his belt and attached the wire.

"That's two!" Set began looping the end of the wire into his belt, "Sköll, you in?"

"Duh!" Sköll fiddled with the device and managed to attach it to the wire after a few moments, "All that's left is Anu!"

Anubis stood defiantly. Was this where he could finally draw the line? This went far beyond the antics that Team ASHS had pulled before, all of which also had his name attached to them. Getting detention would be the least of their worries. This punishment would go far beyond what they normally got, but would it be worse if he, the leader, abandoned his team? If they got hurt and he wasn't with them, then he would be a disgrace. A deserter.

"Fine," Anubis forcefully clamped onto the wire, "Let's just get this over with and get back down."

"I knew you'd come around, Anu!" Set began the climb with Hati right behind him, Sköll behind Hati, and Anubis taking up the slack as the caboose. It wasn't long until they hit the first arrow, cuing Set to tie an arrow to the other end of the wire and sent it skyrocketing up a few more stories. He rinsed and repeated the process a dozen or so times until the team reached the lip below the spire atop Beacon Tower.

On the way up, Anubis couldn't help but notice something strange. There seemed to be holes pierced in between the bricks every few feet or so, the edges of which were charred and melted. Perhaps these marks were what the last climber left behind.

"Finally!" Sköll yelled, "the summit is in sight!" he cheered triumphantly.

Anubis grabbed the dark-colored tiles. That's when he noticed an issue. "Guys… there's no way we're getting onto the spire from under here. That's at _least_ a twenty foot jump from here to the edge," he looked down to the clouds below them and felt his knees tremble a bit. Though Team ASHS were good climbers, this was far above Anubis's usual comfort zone.

Set realized his brother had a point. Even if he could shoot an arrow close enough to the edge, there was no guarantee it would hold at that angle. "Um…"

"Set…" Anubis held tight to the wire with one hand and cracked the knuckles on the other, "don't tell me you managed to think this far ahead, and didn't think about how we'd get onto the actual roof…"

"Way to go, Anu! That's exactly what happened!" Set put away his weapon and began assessing the situation, "If we jump, we die, huh?" he gazed down to the ground below, "I really didn't think this through, but at least we have each other!"

Anubis looked down and whined. "Great… Now I'm stuck here. In the middle of the night. Hundreds of feet off the ground. With my stupid brothers," he tugged at his ears again, "I really hope this gets better before it gets any worse…"

The four brothers stayed there for a moment, hanging over the clouds by a thin wire. Their toes barely kept them balanced on the lip below the spire, and the bricks served as somewhat stable handholds.

As the cool night breeze blew past them, Sköll's eyes lit up. He tilted his nose up, sniffing the air and tilting his head around. He hit his brother with his hand.

"What is it, bro?" Hati asked.

"You smell that?" Sköll sniffed again, "that… burny, metallicy smell…"

Hati tilted his nose up and smelled. "Yeah… I do…" He looked to his brother excitedly. "It smells like a bunch of computers running! Anubis! There has to be a hatch into the CCT tech room nearby!"

Anubis had always been thankful he and his twin brother had been blessed with enhanced hearing, but he was now equally thankful for Sköll and Hati's strong sense of smell. "Really?! Can we reach it from here?" His shoulders slumped. "Please tell me it's not above the ledge..."

Hati shook his head no, "No way bro. Smells way too close for it to be up there." He pointed towards the cliff, "wind's coming in from the ocean. It has to be this way around the tower."

"Bet it has a lock on it," Sköll thought out loud. Even though Beacon was chock full of great warriors, the tower was too tall for the vast majority of them. The lock on the hatch probably wouldn't be more than a padlock, "I can pick it. I've got my lockpicks on me," he pressed himself against the bricks and began making his way around the ledge, "Come on, guys! We can actually do this!"

Anubis glared at him for what had to be the hundredth time that night, "I thought I told you to get rid of those things?..."

"Hati still has his firecrackers," Sköll told his leader without looking back.

"Stop trying to change the subject," Anubis pointed at Hati, "and I'm taking those from you as soon as we get back to the dorm. I don't want us to repeat the incident with the exploding apple on Professor McGouran's desk."

Sköll sighed and leaned his head back as if remembering something pleasant, "Good times. Goooooood times."

Anubis shivered against the cold, "Set, just… just get us to the hatch and get us inside. I'll figure out a punishment for disobeying direct orders from your team leader later."

"That's on Sköll, man," Set focused a few feet ahead, "Aaaaaaand, there it is."

With lockpicks at the ready, Sköll braced himself against the wall to keep himself from falling. As expected, the hatch was a steel door with nothing but a padlock holding it closed. It was rusted over, which wasn't in his initial plan. A quick bash with his elbow and the padlock fell away. He passed his lockpicks to Anubis without looking, "Here, you can confiscate these now."

Anubis took them and stuffed them inside his jacket pocket, "Good. Glad you're complying for once."

"Hey, just think" Sköll climbed into the open hatch followed closely by Hati, Set, and then Anubis, "if I _had_ complied, we would still be hanging outside in the cold and dark Vale night."

The room they had just entered was filled to the brim with flashing green lights and sleek black computers. Giant, rectangular boxes formed hallways, all of which radiated heat. Fans from within the electronics, as well as the vents in the walls, whirred like clockwork in the dimly lit heatsink of a room. All of this was contained within the spire atop Beacon. This powered all communication throughout the Kingdom of Vale and was a vital component to communication across the globe. This was the brain of the CCT.

"Woah…" Sköll looked around in wonder, "and here I thought _Hati_ gave off some serious heat."

"Shut up, Sköll," Hati glared at him.

"C'mon!" Set raced to the opposite side of the large maze of electronics, where a silver ladder shimmered in the darkness, leading up a dark shaft in the ceiling above, "Bet you that leads to the top of the roof!"

Anubis grunted in annoyance, "Well, considering there's a sign _right next to the ladder_ that _blatantly_ says 'ROOF ACCESS', I'm pretty sure it couldn't lead much of anywhere else."

Set had already disappeared into the ceiling, "Stop spoiling my fun and climb, Anu!"

The rest of the team followed close behind, Anubis still taking up the rear out of spite. The ladder led up to a panel in the tip of the spire, presumably to give access to the main antenna. Once they got to the open air, the wind whipped around the team. All of them would have been knocked off had they not been braced for the gale.

Sköll howled into the night, "I'm just glad that we came up the other side of the tower, or else we would've gotten blown away like fleas long before we got here!"

Set latched onto the base of the antenna, "We've done it! Now get up here! The signal is great, and we need to get a photo out to let everyone know!"

Sköll and Hati pushed against the wind to go up to Set, who was holding onto his scroll with a vice-like grip.

"C'mon, Anu!" Set could barely be heard yelling through the wind.

Anubis tried to cover his watering eyes as he pushed his way hesitantly towards his brothers. He pushed himself to Set's side as they leaned against the small railing dividing them from a slippery slide to what would definitely be certain death. Hati pushed up against Anubis's other side, while Sköll pushed up against Set.

Set held up the scroll to where the holographic screen faced them, showing their squinting faces as their hair whipped around wildly in the wind. "Okay you guys! Say cheese!"

"Just take the damn picture, Set," Anubis snarled as the simulated shutter clicked.

"Let me see! Let me see!" Sköll tried to take Set's scroll.

Set shoved it back into his pocket, "When we get back on the ground there, silver wolf!"

As his brothers bickered, Anubis caught himself staring off into the night sky as it stretched onward into infinity in every direction. The stars dotted the dark surrounding the fragmented moon above. Through the clouds, he could see the faint glow of the city below the cliff. Despite the wind, he found the sight pretty calming, even beautiful. It wasn't very often that his brothers' antics led to something like this.

"So, how's the view?"

Anubis shouted and nearly jumped out of his skin as the female voice came from the other side of the railing. He sprawled to the ground and began to push himself backwards with his elbows. He kept going until he hit Set's feet. He blushed when he realized how much of a fool he must have looked like in front of Lurida as she floated up from below the railing.

Lurida looked even more furious than she did astounded, "Well well well… Looks like Gavin was right about you guys being the ones sneaking throughout the tower… I think you guys should know that Alabaster has known what you were doing since Hati used his Lunacy, and I'm just sitting there in awe that Xannie actually got a prediction about Team ASHS correct," she rolled her eyes, "They called me to come get you down when you got to a safe extraction point," she crossed her arms and began tilting to the side in her antigravity field, "I tried to get you all before you got to the maintenance hatch, but you idiots went in too fast. You better thank me if I don't drop you on the way down, understand?" she splayed out her fingers and the team began rising.

Sköll smiled stupidly, "Sup, Purps?" he flailed around a little as he became weightless, "How's our little sis been doin'?"

"If you morons weren't constantly in detention, then you'd know that she's fine. It'd be awesome if you had more time with her after what happened a few weeks back," Lurida grumbled. They slowly floated off the side of the spire and began descending towards the one of the windows of Alabaster's office that was open.

The Luna brothers found themselves floating downwards and into the well-lit office.

Lurida lowered herself down onto the ground. As soon as she did so, she shut down her Semblance, causing Anubis and his team to fall to the ground with a thud. She smiled when she heard grunts and wheezes of pain from behind her. "Found these idiots on the roof, Professor."

Anubis felt like jumping back out the window when he looked up to see Professor Alabaster standing before him.

Despite the time, he was still in his usual fitted suit jacket and black slacks. The only addition to his attire were the bright red bunny slippers.

Anubis quickly shoved his brothers off of him and jumped to his feet in attention, "Hello, Professor Alabaster… sir…"

"I congratulate you all on your accomplishment tonight," Professor Alabaster tapped the padded sole of his slipper against the tile floor. He tipped an egg-shaped glass of red juice to take a sip, "Please, tell me, what made you all think that I wanted to relive a night from twenty years ago?"

Professor Maple sat in a chair on the opposite side of the room, but she had on a pale red nightgown beneath a white zip-up hoodie instead of her normal attire. Though, as if to contrast Alabaster, she was dead asleep and snoring.

For once, Anubis fumbled to find the words to explain himself, "We… we… uh… were just… um…"

"I got this, bro," Set pushed Anubis to the side to address Professor Alabaster. "Sir, you see, we just so happened to hear about the night you mentioned only moments ago. When we heard that _one_ student made it to the top of Beacon Tower, we decided that we should be the first whole _team_ to make it to the top of Beacon Tower!"

Anubis shoved him out of the way, "You idiot!" He looked to Professor Alabaster pleadingly, "Sir, I can assure you, I didn't _want_ to climb the tower. These dolts dragged me along to-"

Professor Alabaster held out his free hand to tell Anubis to stop talking. "How about I just give the four of you a week of detention and leave it at that? You'll be spending your time up here with me, naturally." He walked over to a group of good-sized potted bushes dotted with bright red berries. "You can help take care of the plants."

Anubis felt like screaming at the mention of his prized cranberry bushes. Then is registered in his mind. They were only getting one week of detention? No suspension? No expulsion?

"Sir, why only one week…?" he finally asked.

Professor Alabaster chuckled, "As Set said, only one student made it up there, and they left their team behind. As wrong as it was for you four to do that, at least you all did it as a team. No one got hurt, the CCT system is perfectly fine, and I feel that you four are better for it at the end. It's the first time that I've seen you all cooperate," he tapped at his scroll and showed them footage of their climb, "If you four ever try that climb again, then I certainly will expel you, but not this time."

Set, Hati, and Sköll pumped their fists in the air and shared a few high-fives while Anubis stood in disbelief. Him staying with the team was what kept them from getting expelled. Being the leader of Team ASHS had been a nightmare, but that bad dream seemed to be softening.

"Um… sir…? Can I head back to my dorm now?" Lurida asked, "I don't mean to interupt, of course. I was just having a good dream for once. One where Chris Matte took me out for the day, and…"

Sköll scoffed at her, "You still have a crush on that guy from Team Ocean?"

Lurida glared back at him.

Before she could pummel him, Professor Alabaster spoke up. "Yes, you are dismissed. Send young Yamuna my regards, and take Team ASHS before I have them spending the night tending to my plants," Professor Alabaster clapped his hands to wake Professor Maple up, "Carmen! You're free to go as well!"

" _ **NO MORE PELICANS!"**_ Professor Maple screamed and shot up to her feet. She blinked a few times, "Oh… sorry… Grimm pelicans… bad dream… yeah…" she sleepily hit the button for the elevator and leaned her head against the sliding metal doors.

Anubis held his head just higher than usual as he followed his brothers and Lurida into the elevator.

As the doors closed, Carmen, through her grogginess, whispered to Anubis. "So, I remember that night. The one when that student first climbed the tower. Don't tell Alabaster I said this," she held out her fist to Anubis, "but good job being the first team. Must've been hard keeping these three in line for so long."

Hesitantly, Anubis returned the fist bump.

"Carmen, please," Lurida whined, "don't _encourage_ them!"

"Encourage them…?" Carmen laughed hard enough to bring her to the edge of her sleepy haze, "No, no, not at all. I already encouraged them. I'm where the idea came from."

Anubis' eyes lit up, "You mean… the marks on the way up…?"

Set nodded, "Totally knew it."

"Yeah, I saw those too!" Sköll stared at Carmen in disbelief.

"So you've always used your laser swords?" Hati looked between his brothers and their instructor.

"Arco Iris has been my weapon set since I started my training. They work as great climbing tools," she grinned. Once the elevator dinged and opened to the empty lobby of the CCT, she began making her way towards the doors, "You all have a nice night! Sleep well! I know I will!"

Lurida followed her out, but Team ASHS stood in the elevator dumbfounded.

"Well that was- wait!" Set held out his arm to stop the elevator door from closing.

Hati pushed it the rest of the way open and began heading for the doors with Sköll, "Nice one. Let's just get to bed. We had a busy night."

"Got that right!" Sköll jogged for the doors as the shut behind Lurida.

"I guess we did kind of earn it… horribly…" Anubis joined them, "Set, come on."

"Yeah, that's going to be an issue."

Anubis was about to question what his twin meant by that, but then understood when he turned to see Set dangling from the top of the elevator doors by the wire attached to his belt.

"Wanna give your bro a hand?" Set waved helplessly.

Anubis considered this for a moment. His brother certainly deserved to be stuck but… "Yeah. I've got your back," he began the long process of freeing Set, "Even if it doesn't seem like it."


	21. V1Ch17: On Thin Ice

As the final bell rang, the students of Beacon began buzzing around campus with hours of pent up energy at the ready. Every Huntsman and Huntress in training shared the need to continuously be on the move. Honing the ability to be in constant sensory overload was essential to becoming a great warrior, so keeping one's mental health in check was of utmost importance. This was an undeniable truth, or at least it was for Frost Aurora, leader of Team FREZ. She had been the one to drag her entire team out to the courtyard after class each and every day for an hour of relaxation and meditation. While good in theory, her team was always... less than thrilled to be finished with class for the day.

Frost sat in the grass with her back against the concrete retaining wall of the path circling Beacon's courtyard. Her legs were neatly crossed over one another. A deep breath passed her lips. With her hands clasped together in her lap and her eyes closed, she spoke with an even-toned and blissful voice, "This is nice… huh?"

Rime was lying on her back on top of the wall, "Yeah… sure…" she tugged at the collar of her shirt, "but, can't I go back to the room and change for once? These uniforms are torture…"

Zero sat a few feet down the wall, under a large oak tree. His long black hair was hanging out, an uncommon sight. He held his hand over his face in an attempt to block out the sunlight from hitting him. "I second that…" he muttered quietly while pulling up a blue scarf up over his face.

A forceful, booming sigh came from the pile of muscle lying in the grass next to Frost. Everest's sleeves were ripped due to the fact that even the largest uniform that Beacon had to offer was far too small for the big guy. He spoke in a seemingly less monstrous voice than normal, "Everest. Like. Relax. It. Good."

Rime couldn't believe how much calmer Everest had become since arriving at Beacon. She associated it with how often he and Frost were forced to be around one another. "Frost? What in the world did you do to my best friend over here? Every one of my attempts to get him to calm down over the past ten years either ended up with him punching stuff or trying to eat a table or something…" She shook her head with an amazed yet confused look on her face, "What exactly _are_ you? The caveman whisperer?" She quickly looked over to Everest, "No offense, big guy."

"NONE," he boomed back, but quickly collected himself. Another deep breath passed through him, "Everest. Relax. Now."

"My mother is a therapist, and she taught me how to, you know, quell the beast within," Frost looked at her mountain of a teammate then shut her eyes again, "Everest, sweetheart, make sure you let yourself loosen up from your head to your toes. Segment by segment."

"Yes. Frost." Everest made a divot in the ground when his head sank down into it, "Thank. Frost. Muscles. Feel. Good."

"That's great, dear," Frost opened her left eye and peered over at Rime, "By the way… how did he get approved to come to Beacon, again…?" she whispered, "I know you've told me, but…" she looked over to Everest as he began to snore loudly, "please remind me…"

Rime swung her legs around to sit up on the short wall. She leaned forward and began to play with a strand of pale blonde hair, "Something about how his battle prowess and listening skills make up for his lack in… intellect and reasoning. We also figured out that he only needed to pass the written part of the test with a forty percent or better as long as he got a perfect score on the physical portion. Apparently he got at least that after the months of studying that we did, but I can't remember the actual numbers. He ate his test scores and acceptance letter pretty soon after we got them in the mail…"

"He likes getting his fiber in, huh?" Frost examined the hulking being beside her. She still couldn't understand how he was seventeen, but Rime had confirmed on many occasions that he in fact was, "Anyway, how are you two doing on your breathing exercises?" she asked Rime and Zero.

"Well, I haven't asphyxiated, so I guess I'm still doing fine," Rime said with a bored tone, "How 'bout you, Z?"

Zero grunted under his scarf.

"Gotcha." Rime said through a loud yawn.

Frost began feeling herself get a little antsy. Now that Zero had opened up a little and began communicating with his team, she felt a little inclined to get to know him, "Zero, tell me more about what your life back home is like, please."

"Nonexistent," Zero sleepily looked over at his leader, "I came to Beacon with nothing, that's all."

Frost sighed, "That's the answer you _always_ give me, Zero," Frost knew how touchy some life stories could be given how merciless parts of Remnant could be, "But if we want to work as a team, don't you think that maybe we should know each other? The _real_ each other? Or do you want to end up like Team ANTE or Team ARTS?" She reflected on all of the signs she had seen over the past couple of months whenever she was around the other two first year teams. How Wells always blocked out questions with violence and anger, how Fescue had forced himself to pass himself off as human when he really wasn't, how Forté tried to ignore the events of Koruss stadium the summer before the semester had started. Of those, the Forté girl's story intrigued her most. The girl who everyone knew seemed to have the most about her past to hide.

She puffed her cheeks at the thought of being a dysfunctional team. She could not allow that, "They're not _my_ teams, so please, just let me ask this."

"You always get worked up, Frost," Zero pulled down his scarf so that he could be heard clearly, "I am not avoiding the question when I say that I wandered Sanus for most of my life. There really isn't any more to it," he replaced his scarf, "Please don't make me make up some tragic story to satisfy you."

Frost tried to think about what her mother would say in response if a patient told her this, "Well, how about a story then?"

Zero folded his arms.

"I mean, if you've been all around Sanus, you must have at least one interesting story to tell. Like," she thought for a moment, "did you meet any interesting people? Did you do something you'll never forget? Or maybe a question Everest here might want answered, like if you've ever tried any different local foods in the villages," _Always start with small easy-to-answer questions_ , Frost reminded herself.

"I visited a few places like Mikado Village, the one with the former Kokonatsu problem ARTS and GLXY helped fix," Zero shifted his weight back against the tree that he sat beneath, "I had a sandwich in Vacuo when I was there. Nothing interesting."

Frost was sorely disappointed with the response. "Really? That's it? You seriously didn-"

"Frost, please," Rime interrupted, "You bring us out here every day to relax, not to get interrogated." She looked over to Zero, "Some people aren't really comfortable talking about themselves and not everyone's had terribly exciting lives. I mean, that's why _I'm_ here."

Zero gave her a thankful look for diverting Frost's focus away from him.

"You haven't talked much about your past either, Rime," Frost shifted her jaw, "Please, enlighten us on your supposedly boring life."

Rime straightened her posture, pretending to be prim and proper as Frost always was, "Well, I never knew my parents, grew up in an orphanage where I met Everest, went to the same foster home where we've been together ever since. Heard about what Huntsmen and Huntresses did from my foster father and, after lots and _lots_ of arguing, he finally conceded and let me start my combat training. We ended up getting into Beacon Academy. There, we met lots of interesting people and were put on a team called Team FREZ along with a quiet ninja and a girl who thinks she can play psychoanalyst," she smirked, "There you go, almost eighteen years summed up in less than a minute."

"I'm glad that you've shared you and Everest's stories in greater detail today," Frost told her teammate whilst ignoring her psychoanalyst comment. She pushed her grey locks back behind her ears and began telling her own story once more, "I'm the daughter of a psychotherapist and Dust miner. We never had a lot money, but we certainly had enough to get by. My home is near the ports in Vale, a place where my father can catch his boat to Vacuo every month. I showed interest in becoming a Huntress, as well as the ability to do so. We spent most of our spare money preparing me to go to Beacon," she explained. She had done this on the first day that they were a team, but she didn't go into much detail out of sheer awkwardness, "My life hasn't been anything special, and I'm truly thankful for that. The fact that I had the natural ability to fight told me that my life needed to be special, though. I had the abilities, and I couldn't waste them in an office or a mine. I had to use the gifts that I was given to protect everyone, even those who don't want protecting."

Rime huffed and folded her arms, "Okay… so… maybe you don't exactly fall into that category of people who don't like talking about themselves…"

Frost looked off across the courtyard, "Not exactly. I don't like talking about myself because I prefer to listen to other people, but I will do so if it helps people open up to me. It's called building a rapport."

The group fell silent, except for Everest. His snoring still rattled the courtyard. Rime and Zero were both thinking that the conversation had gotten extremely awkward.

"So…" Rime began, "can we go back to the room and change out of these uncomfortable uniforms yet?" Rime was still annoyed with Frost's prying, but after she had just poured out her life story to her, she couldn't help but feel bad about insulting Frost's desire to know and listen to people when she picked that up from her mother. Rime knew how much a mother's, or at least a mother _figure_ 's, tendencies could rub off on a child. She played with the necklace hanging around her neck.

"Maybe we could go to the commons on our floor, grab some snacks and watch a movie?" Rime jumped down off of the wall, "You know, take it easy for a little bit? I mean, we're pretty much the only one's to have our essays on Grimm done for Professor McGouran already. Why not lounge back and watch people stress out?"

"Why waste that time when we could be working on our skills?" Frost inquired to her teammate. She still didn't look too happy, "If you don't feel like relaxing, then go train with some practice dummies. If you don't want to do that, then spar with Zero. If you don't want to do that, then crack open a textbook and start studying."

Rime couldn't believe that she had the gall to say that. "Frost, we haven't had a break from work for over two weeks. Don't you think it's time for a little goofing off?"

"You'll be without a break for a months at a time as a Huntress," Frost didn't even so much as look at Rime. She just kept her eyes closed and continued her breathing exercises, "I am preparing you for what you will experience later. You will be thankful that I put you through this."

"Frost, I don't want your blood on my hands either," Rime growled and stood up, "Zero, come on. Let's go have some fun with Team ARTS or GLXY or… literally anyone else."

Zero began to follow, but was stopped dead in his tracks when he was met with Frost's icy gaze.

She shot up and trotted right over to Rime, "I will have you know that I am _very_ fun. You think I'm not fun? I can prove you wrong. No problem. Is that what you want, Rime? For me to make sure that we have some real fun? Maybe then you won't have to go to other teams to have _fun_ in the future."

Rime turned to face her, but was still moving backwards away from her leader, "You know what, Frost? That would be _great_!" she held out her arms, "I'd _love_ to see your idea of fun!"

"My idea of fun, huh?" Frost eyed her teammate, "Everest! Rise and shine! We're having _fun,_ " she stomped off towards the dorms without looking back.

Everest stirred, "FROST. NEED. HELP?" he boomed and clawed his way up. In the grass behind him was a man-shaped divot in the ground. The groundskeepers surely wouldn't be happy with that, "EVEREST. HELP. GOOD," he bounded off after his leader.

"Rime, do you… do you think this was a good idea?" Zero looked at his teammate sheepishly.

Rime shook her head, "I don't know, Z. I just… I just _really_ need a break from her…" they followed quite a bit behind Frost and Everest, "We're _ahead of the curriculum_ and she still wants us to study. That's insane."

"Right, but she does that pretty well," Zero trudged along into whatever trainwreck was coming, "I'm just scared that her idea of fun is worse than her idea of training."

.

The team arrived back to their dorm's hall as daylight began to fade.

"I'm going to show you three that I can be a fun person," Frost repeated as she unlocked their door. As soon as the door opened, a blast of cold air blew out into the hallway. Though they had their disagreements, the one thing they could all four agree on was a low room temperature.

Frost pulled a flat, rectangular box out from the underside of her bed. The front read 'Compost King', denoting it as one of the most time consuming and tedious games ever created in the world of Remnant. She began unpacking it in the floor and motioned for everyone to come sit around the board, "Okay, come on, we're playing a game now. You wanted fun. Games are fun, and we will have fun," she narrowed her frigid gaze on Rime.

Rime just stared at the board while Frost set it up. "You're kidding, right? Compost King was what they made us play at the orphanage to get us to quiet down. It always ended up with the board being thrown across the room when someone ended up stealing all of someone else's crop yield..."

"Isn't it so much fun when you actually get into it, though?" Frost asked not with a nostalgic happiness, but a sarcastic defiance, "My parents and I played it when I was young, and I always managed to come out on top. I have to warn you all that I'm really quite good at this game," then an idea struck her. One thing that she knew about Rime was that she was just a little hot headed, "Come now, Rime, don't tell me that you're scared of little old me! It's just a simple, boring little game after all."

Though Rime's memories of the game weren't her fondest, she refused to let her team's leader get to her. "Pff, like I'd be scared against you in a game where you play as farmers," she picked up a green token representing a small farmer and placed it on the board, "We've fought what normal people consider walking nightmares, I think I can handle the Compost Queen."

Finally, things were beginning to go Frost's way, "Perfect. We're going to have so much _fun_! Come on Zero, Everest! Have a seat! We. Are. Going. To. Have. _Fun_!"

"Right…" Zero mumbled and sat facing one side of the board. He hadn't played before, but he thought that he might be able to fake it long enough for things to begin going down hill.

"COM. POST…" Everest thudded down on the floor, causing the whole room to vibrate for a moment. There was no way for him to mentally form the words to articulate his disdain of Compost King, but the scowl that he gave the board seemed to convey at least some of his hatred.

Unfortunately, the game didn't last very long. On the first turn, everyone began setting up for their plans to achieve victory, and Rime kept Everest from eating the pieces. On the second, Frost, in an incredible turn of events, managed to beat both Everest and Zero simultaneously.

"So, scared now?" Frost asked Rime, who sat on the opposite side of the board.

Rime stared down at the board in disbelief, "When you said you won against your parents so much, I honestly thought that they did what every other adult does and lets the youngest win… you're _actually_ good at this game…"

"They did let me win… when I was about five years old. Age six was when they started trying to beat me. They even looked up strategies to beat me, but they couldn't. We have played 3,948 games, and I have not lost once. The last game that we played was on family day, and they brought a guy with them to help them win. I crushed them, Rime. I crushed my parents without any show of mercy," the gaze that Frost gave Rime was of waning sanity and competitive fire, "I. Am. The. Compost. Queen."

Rime slowly reached her arm out to the dice to make her next move.

The board began to vibrate from the angry hum coming from deep within Everest. He slammed a fist down into the board, dead center. The pieces flew in every direction. An impact crater was formed when the board crumpled around his hand like a glove. He stood, hoisting the board into the air like a fresh kill, " _ **EVEREST! STRONGEST! ONE! THERE! IS!"**_ he threw the board against the window hard enough to shatter it, and sent the board rocketing outside. He huffed, and then began roaring louder than any animal on Remnant, " _ **RAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHH!"**_

Frost and Zero just stared in confusion. Despite living together for a couple of months, they were still having trouble dealing with Everest's temper tantrums.

Rime, however, sat there as if she'd been through it hundreds of times before, because she _had_ been through it hundreds of times before. "Did I mention that when the board was flipped back at the orphanage, it was usually _Everest_ that flipped it?"

"Let's… Let's just… take a breather," Frost slowly stood, shaking from head to toe. She lightly placed a hand on Everest's shoulder, "Everest, dear, would you like to eat some snacks? Maybe watch a movie? It's okay, really. We can just relax. I'll track down as many bags of beef jerky as you can eat, or I will at least try."

"EVEREST. NO. WANT. COMPOST," Everest boomed, but began to simmer down, "BUT. EVEREST. Want. Snack. Yes…" he plopped down on his already broken twin bed and pulled the blanket, which was far too small to fully cover him, up to his shoulders.

Zero leaned over to Rime where Frost couldn't hear, "So… it took an argument and a super-sized hissy fit to do what you suggested almost four hours ago?..."

Rime watched as Frost continued to whisper to Everest in an attempt to calm him down. "Looks like it," she turned and left the room for the commons, "I'll grab popcorn and some sodas. Anything else you guys can think of?"

"Yeah…" Zero spoke up, "a movie…" He gestured around the room when Rime raised an eyebrow at him, "We don't have any to watch, Rime."

Rime smacked herself in the face for forgetting. "Oh crap…" she let out a disheartened sigh, "Can't really do a movie night with no movie…"

"You know what…? I'll just ask Sepia for a movie to watch…" Frost slumped her shoulders and began heading for the door, "I'm sorry that I screwed up…" she mumbled and began making her way down the hall.

She knocked on the Team ARTS's door, "Hey, I want to talk to Sepia. We need a movie to watch," she called into the door.

Arty began to answer, "Hold on a bit, we're in the middle of- woah! Sepia!"

A series of crashes were heard, as well as the thudding of Sepia's heels against the carpet. The door whipped open, and Sepia stood in the frame with a cheap CD case clasped firmly in her hands. Strangely, she was also wearing Roland's hat, and had Arty's backpack tossed over her shoulder.

"It's good to see you again, Se-" Frost was quickly met with Sepia's disc being shoved into her gut. She coughed and struggled to look back up at Sepia, "What has gotten into… you…" and the door slammed back closed.

She made her way back to her own dorm and walked in to see Everest piled up in his bed and Zero and Rime sitting on her bed. Neither of them seemed like they wanted to move.

"Hey… Sepia gave me this," Frost held up the disc, "Let's go downstairs and watch this. I don't know what it is, but I'm assuming that Sepia has good taste. Let's just… watch this and have fun… okay?" she looked down at her feet as she held the DVD out to Rime.

Rime took the disc and looked it over, "'Monstrous Shadows From Solitude: The story of a runaway fighting against the odds and the creatures of darkness that plague her world'... Sounds… interesting," She stood up and followed Frost into the hall, followed closely by Zero who held a few drinks and a bag of popcorn in his arms. Where exactly he got it all from was anyone's guess. He had a way of making things… appear.

"So… Sepia told you to watch this?" Rime turned the DVD over.

Frost nodded, "Yes. Well... sort of. She kind of just… shoved it into my stomach and closed the door on me. I know she's mute and all, but she's still a weird one…"

Rime smiled, "Tell me about it. You should've seen her during the… night… Yamuna…" she stopped when she remembered the fact that Frost was pretty sore over her and Zero's involvement with that disaster, "Um, nevermind…"

The three stayed silent until they got to the lounge on the first floor of the dorm building. This late and this close to finals, it was empty.

When the disc was in the player of the TV on the back wall, Frost sat down on the couch next to Rime and Zero without a word. She just stared at the holographic screen in silence. Maybe without having her own decisions to interfere, her team would actually have fun. With Everest asleep, she had to make sure that at least Rime and Zero had fun. Keeping her word was nothing short of proving that she could be trusted as a leader.

The movie began with a shot of the deserts of Vacuo. Sand whipped around in front of a panning shot of the descending sun. The wailing winds picked up as the sky faded from orange to violet to black.

The sound of shifting sand faded in, and then a hooded figure began striding across the horizon.

"They've followed me through this gods forsaken desert for years now," a narrator began speaking as the camera zoomed in on the figure's position.

Rime perked up. Upon taking a closer look, the shape of the figure began to look familiar, but the voice was completely foreign to her. The narrator's voice certainly didn't sound refined, being a little lower and rougher than the average girl of her stature. She was petite, and when the moonlight illuminated her face beneath the hood in the next shot, Rime nearly screamed.

"So, those things caught up with me again, huh?" the woman, who was easily identifiable as Sepia in a very nice blonde wig, spoke to the horde of Grimm charging towards her from behind.

"No way…" Zero whispered in awe.

Rime held out her arms, "Woah. Woah. Woah. One: did Sepia give us a student film she did a few years ago or something? Two…: Sepia wasn't always mute…?" She looked to Frost and Zero, who still sat there stunned.

"I… I don't know," Frost stared at the TV, dumbfounded, "I'm just as surprised as you two. This doesn't look like something a student would do, though," she examined the film further, "I'm blown away. This actually looks… professional," she turned to Rime, "Can you text her and ask about her involvement in this film?"

"Yeah, sure," Rime quickly pulled out her scroll and texted Sepia:

 **Rime Chione: SEPIA! It might just be us, but we SWEAR that you're in this movie! Are you really an ACTRESS?!**

Sepia's response came immediately after Rime pressed 'SEND':

 **Sepia Hughes: You'll see. Just watch it through the credits! Hope you guys enjoy! ;)**

"Well," Frost asked expectantly, "what did she say?"

Rime closed her scroll and put it on the arm of the couch. "She said to just watch the movie to the end of the credits…"

.

The three sat in stunned silence for the next hour and a half, each reacting to every detail within the film. When the credits began to roll, the name 'Sepia Hughes' appeared as the lead producer, director, head of sound design, head of scene design, the lead character, five minor characters, and even as the screenwriter and the editor.

"No freakin' way…" Rime uttered through a mouthful of what was left of the popcorn.

"What is a girl like that doing _here_?" Zero asked aloud.

Frost tried to collect herself. The ending of the movie still had her teared up, but she had to bring herself back to reality, "She's really talented, huh…?" then she thought about another member of Team ARTS with an incredible talent, "Sepia's film is amazing, Timbre's singing is top notch, so do you two think we should check up on what Arty has been drawing and painting or whatever Roland writes? Are all of them this good?"

Zero spoke up again, "Well, then I'll re-ask my question. What are people like them doing _here_? How can artists fight monsters and criminals?"

"What are people like _us_ doing this?" Frost asked, "Some girl from the suburbs, a little girl from some village, a caveman, and a wandering ninja are unlikely candidates… sort of."

"We'll just have to ask them, I guess," Zero checked the clock above the TV, "I'm going to bed. I'll see you two tomorrow," he opened a nearby window and began to crawl out of it, "Goodnight."

Rime and Frost watched Zero jump upwards and out of sight to his space outside the window of Team FREZ's room, where he had a hammock set up. He preferred sleeping outside.

"I will never get used to that," Frost sighed.

"That's one thing I've learned ever since my first day here," Rime led the way up the stairwell after throwing away empty bottles and wrappers, " _Everyone_ here is weird, Frost. Some have such a bad temper they want to fight everyone, some can change their demeanor on the spot, and some..." they reached their dorm. Rime opened the door to the chilly room. Outside, Rime could see the black mass of Zero's hoodie in the dark blue hammock hanging in the oak tree outside through the broken window, "prefer to sleep outside." she shut the door quietly as to not wake the sleeping boys. "I guess he got used to it while wandering Sanus before coming to Beacon."

Frost didn't say anything back to Rime's observations. If she was being honest, then she would have told Rime that she wished that she were as skilled as her at learning about people holistically, rather than just looking at what goes on in their heads. The mind was something that Frost was comfortable with, but people's pasts always left her wanting more.

They got ready for bed with their backs to each other. Frost changed into a long, white nightgown while Rime donned a white t-shirt and wore black basketball shorts.

An hour or so later, Frost found herself staring up at the ceiling, lost in thought. She turned her head to face Rime, "Hey, are you awake? I can not sleep for the life of me."

Rime turned her head, her light blue eyes wide-open in the dark, "I think I drank too much soda… I'm still going on my sugar high."

"Would you go for a walk with me then? I want to talk," Frost shifted her gaze away and began getting out of bed. She picked up a black hoodie from her desk chair and pulled it on. She glanced over at Rime only to see that she looked stunned.

Frost pointed to the door, "Are you going with me, or am I going alone?"

Rime shook off her confusion, "Oh, yeah. Sure." She hopped up and pulled on her white sneakers and grey jacket.

.

The cool night air flowed through the complex of buildings that littered Beacon's campus. High above, the top of Beacon Tower glowed with a green glow from the lights within. Further up, the shattered moon cast the cloudless night in a wash of moonlight that lit up the path. If the lamp posts weren't on, Rime and Frost would have still been able to see.

The walk was fairly awkward at first as the tension that had built up from their conversations throughout the day still hung between them. Rime wanted to try to break that tension with her leader.

"So," she began sheepishly, "nice knowing we can walk around campus this late without worrying about, y'know, being mauled by a huge wolf."

"No need for small talk, Rime," Frost stared up at the moon as she walked ahead, "Look, I have been stiff since I became the leader of Team FREZ. I have honestly just been focusing on making sure that we were statistically the best team around. I got harder and harder because I saw how heavy hitting Team ANTE can be in combat practice, and how creative Team ARTS gets when it comes to… well, anything. Team GLXY is always making A's across the board, and all of the other teams are just… doing better than us in one way or another. It bugged me a lot, you know? I want us to be the best team, but I am thankful for how fantastic we already are. I am just upset that we are not perfect in every category, but I also know that we can not be," she took a deep breath, just as she worked on earlier in the day. Those breathing exercises did come in handy as it seemed, "I am sorry, Rime, for the way that I have treated all of you. I understand that it must be hard to be open with me when I have acted in the manner that I have."

Rime wasn't expecting to be apologized to, especially in the form of a long-winded speech. It threw her off guard, but as she processed what Frost said, she began to feel horrible about how Frost felt. "Frost… I'm sorry if I made you feel that way. Trust me, we want to be the best we can be, but… I think Zero, Everest and I just can't handle working 100% of the time. We're first years. We'll be able to get to the point where we'll be able to give everything to being Huntsmen and Huntresses, but right now, well…" she began to play with her necklace again, "We're still… kids. When the work in front of us is done, we want to goof off in the spare time we have until more work is put in front of us. McGouran's essay is taking everyone else _weeks_ when you had us finish it within days of it being assigned. I understand you're trying to help, but maybe… there is such a thing of helping _too much_ … if that makes sense."

"We are not just kids, though," Frost clenched her fists and stared at the ground, "Bad things happen in the world, Rime. Bad things that we can prevent. We stepped into this life, and that is not a decision that a child can make," she bit her lip, hesitant to be honest with her teammate. She would not allow herself to be a hypocrite, "When I mentioned my parents earlier, I was referring to my mother and my step-father. My biological father died in a Dust mine collapse, and my step-father worked in the same mine as him. He called in sick to work that day, and so he was not caught in all of the rubble," Frost peered up at Beacon Tower, a symbol of what they were there for, "My step-father blames himself because he believes that he could have done something to prevent the collapse or get everyone out of there, even though he probably could not have. We are here to be the ones that can prevent what may seem to be unavoidable tragedies to most. We are here to be the best for the people of Remnant because they can not fight on their own. We are adults, Rime, and we need to accept that to some extent."

Rime was having trouble processing everything Frost was telling her. "Frost… that whole thing earlier when you were trying to get Zero to talk about his life before Beacon… why didn't you tell us _your_ story first?"

"Like I said, I want to help _others_. I do not care much about helping myself."

Rime stared at the grey stone beneath their feet as she contemplated her next words. "Frost. I don't know about you, but I'm a firm believer that you can't truly help others if you can't help yourself. If we're going to be dealing with the _real world_ every day from here on out, you need to learn that you're gonna need a break from it every now and then," she gave a small smile, "Like when you played Compost King with your parents, or sitting down to watch a movie with your friends."

"I guess I can concede to that point," Frost slowed to a stop as they reached the courtyard, "Thank you for being patient with me, Rime," she looked to the girl that she was actually beginning to think of as her 'friend' rather than teammate. Not knowing entirely sure where to go, she held out her arms and wrapped Rime in a hug, "Thank you so much, from the bottom of my heart."

Rime found the embrace rather awkward, partially due to the conversation they had just had, and partially due to how Frost was almost a full foot taller than her. "No… no problem, Frost."

"So, what…" Frost slowly let go, but then kept her eyes trained on something behind Rime, "No… they can't be..."

Rime turned to where Frost's gaze was pointing. At first, she couldn't tell what she was looking at, but the slight movement gave it away. Someone in dark clothing with a hood pulled tightly over their head was hiding in the shadows just beyond the illumination of the lamp posts. From where they stood, the two girls couldn't be completely sure if it was someone they knew, but the hoodie and posture looked at least somewhat familiar.

"Zero? Is that you?" Rime called out towards the figure.

After she called out to the figure, it turned and ran further into the darkness.

"Hey! Hold up!" Rime immediately dashed off of the path and began to pursue the hooded person.

"That is not Zero." Frost sprinted past in an attempt to catch up with the figure. She and Rime were led closer and closer to Beacon Tower. They reached the base, but the figure was nowhere to be seen.

Frost looked around, "Where did they go?" her fingers clutched the sleeves of her jacket, "How could the be here…? This isn't good…"

"Frost!" Rime ran across the empty courtyard and reached down to pick something up. She returned to Frost while holding a square piece of dark blue cloth. Embroidered in white on one corner was a emblem made up of a triangle made up of three smaller shapes within a circle. "It's Zero's…"

"What…? Maybe he's nearby. He can help us find them." Frost looked around the entire courtyard, but then her eyes fell onto Beacon Tower, "That is the only place that they could have-"

"What are you two doing out so late?" a voice asked from behind the two girls.

Rime and Frost spun around to find Zero standing before them.

"Zero?!" Frost whipped around to look towards the direction where they saw 'Zero' heading last, "Did you see them? Did you see where they went?"

A look of realization came over Zero's half-hidden face, "You saw him too then?"

Fear crept over the girls.

"We did..." Frost said quietly. She reached instinctively to her wrists, but she had left her bracelets in her locker for the night. She stared at the piece of cloth that Rime still had, "Zero, how did this end up out here?"

"I saw some guy in a cloak skulking around the dorms from my hammock just a while ago. He bolted off when I got up to see what was going on. I lost him when he ran by Beacon Tower and to the buildings on the other side. It must have fallen out while I was running after him." Zero peered around like Frost and Rime had been doing, "I don't know how he lost me, though."

Frost tapped her lips as she thought, her brows furrowed, "This is bad..." she collected herself. Maybe it wasn't a worst case-scenario. Maybe this was just a student playing a prank, "Did you get a good look at the cloak?"

"Black with red trim and bright red lines all over, like cracks. Why?"

"Just like the ones that appeared at Koruss…" a shiver shot down her spine, "The Grimm Brotherhood's cloaks have that same look about them, but what are they doing here…?"

"The Grimm what now?" Rime asked.

"I'll explain in the morning," Frost motioned for Rime and Zero to follow her back to the dorms, "I will report this to Professor Alabaster first thing in the morning. For now, we sleep and get rested."

Rime was confused as to why Frost seemed so anxious, but she did know a stranger on campus couldn't be a good thing. She went to mess with her necklace again when she realized that she still had Zero's handkerchief. "Oh! Zero!" She handed it to him. "I'm sure that you want this back."

Zero snatched it from her and shoved it into his pocket, "Thanks, Rime." he kept close behind the two.

When they reached the dorms, he began making his way back up to his hammock, "I'll keep a lookout and let you two know if they come around again. Sleep well."

"You too, Zero," Frost didn't even look at him as she pulled Rime into the dorms with her.

"Frost, what is going on?" Rime questioned as Frost climbed into her bed, facing the wall as she pulled the covers over herself.

"Just wait until tomorrow. It can wait until the morning. Go to sleep," Frost rolled over on her side and adjusted her blanket, "Goodnight."

Rime felt annoyed, but after the conversation they had had before seeing the mysterious figure, she realized maybe that she couldn't always disagree with Frost's decisions. "Okay… fine."

She crawled under her sheets and, as she lay her head on her pillow, she gripped the crystal on her necklace tightly. "Goodnight, Frost…" Dozens of questions spun in her head until she finally fell asleep.

* * *

"You idiot!" a figure in a black cloak drove a fist into one of the columns in the Beacon courtyard. Their stark white mask resembled the skull of a kangaroo, and red lines glowed and pulsed with crimson hatred. Molten eyes glowed in their sockets.

Oro dug their hand out from the crater left in the side of the column, "Damn it, now I left evidence… great…" Thankfully, they were out of the range of Beacon's security cameras. It would likely go unnoticed for the time being, or assumed to be an accident by a student.

They stood with another figure, one in an identical black cloak with red cracks streaking down its length. They also wore a mask, but theirs was fashioned to look like a big cat's skull. A cheetah, perhaps. Red cracks and molten eyes glowed on their mask as well, but it was notably dimmer than Oro's.

"Look, it only matters that I got away. They saw me, but that doesn't change the objective, right?" the figure turned their head towards the tower, "I can get up as long as Echo cuts the cameras. I might have gone unseen if he just did his job…"

"You work too fast... Speeder… yeah, actually, that's to be expected…" Oro chuckled, "Looks like your namesake fits you a bit _too_ well, eh, rookie?" They clicked the communications device in their ear, "Echo, give me a status on Beacon Tower's cameras."

Computers hummed in the background of the radio. "Tell Speeder to head over there. I will have them down in three… two… one… and there. He has thirty minutes." Echo said from the other end.

"Right," Oro turned to Speeder, "Thirty minutes. You shouldn't have a problem getting into the CCT," they threw a bag to him, "Make sure the goods get in there in one piece, m'kay?

Speeder caught the bag and clutched it to his chest.

Oro smiled underneath their mask, "Oh, almost forgot to tell you that those ASHS idiots busted the lock on the maintenance hatch a while back, and it doesn't seem like they've gone through the trouble of putting a new one on. Not like you could've broken it yourself, but it's nice to have someone to pin it on when we make our move. Have fun, and try not to get seen this time!"

Speeder ran off for the tower without another word, leaving Oro all alone.

"This is going wonderfully…" Oro began walking towards the cliff, "The devices are coming along great, this whole deal with the CCT is much easier than we expected, and our favorite students are well on their way to becoming little warriors. Tell me, Echo, isn't this all just lovely?"

No response.

"Right. You're busy. I get it." Oro stepped right off the cliff. Instead of falling to the water below, they dropped down to a pitch black airship. With one final look at Beacon, Oro opened the hatch, "I look forward to meeting our favorite students soon… My little sweetheart needs to stretch her legs."


	22. V1Ch18: Cold Snap

"Okay, Frost, Zero. Both of you, explain. _Now_." Rime demanded as she slammed her tray down on the table. She had been waiting all night to hear what Frost had to say about the events that occurred before they went to bed. She even dreamt about grabbing Frost by the shoulders and shaking her to get answers, but Frost just stayed quiet the entire time. Rime's experience with Dream-Frost had gotten her even angrier at Real-Frost, and it showed. "What was going on last night that you had to wait until this morning to tell me?"

Zero looked to Frost, "You seem to know much more about this than I do."

"Which is not saying much. I honestly do not know much about them. Judging from Zero's description of the person we chased last night, I told Professor Alabaster that I believe that they were a member of the Grimm Brotherhood. In short, they are a bunch of Grimm worshipping buffoons," Frost scooted her own tray to Everest, who happily went to town on it. She got up early that morning and gave her report to Professor Alabaster before breakfast, but the whole situation had made her feel uneasy, "They are terrorists, but I have heard that they like to do their research first."

Rime couldn't believe what she was hearing. "Grimm worshipers?... As in, the _Creatures_ of Grimm?... Why would anyone-?"

"I don't know," Frost cut in, clearly agitated, "Maybe they got fed up with the world and decided to try a different route to changing it. Maybe they are just insane. I honestly do not know," she still sipped at a cup of black coffee in spite of her queasy stomach, "My mother has treated people affected by them. They are disturbingly barbaric when they attack, but then they just disappear until the next act. The last big attacks were at a natural history museum in Vacuo and more recently during a concert at Koruss Stadium. What they are doing on Beacon grounds is beyond me. It could be nothing, though. They have never been consistent in their tactics."

Rime tried to process everything "Right, I remember you mentioning Koruss last night. I remember seeing some vague report about it on the news when it happened, but I don't remember any mention of this Grimm Brotherhood since they went quiet after that. Are you sure that it was them?"

.

Nearby, Team ARTS were eating their breakfast and talking with one another when Timbre heard the words 'Koruss Stadium' cut through the chatter surrounding them. She turned from her group and looked around. She heard it again. This time, she watched as the words left Frost Aurora's mouth. She didn't want to eavesdrop, but she couldn't help but listen in on the conversation.

.

"Members of the group came in on some airships they somehow got their hands on and used explosives to blow holes into the roof. It is still not clear what they were trying to do, but if you ask me, those black-cloaked monsters were just trying to kill as many people as possible."

.

The mention of the black cloaks made the hairs on Timbre's neck stand up.

"Yo, Pop-Star, you okay?" Arty asked from the seat next to her. He put a hand over her trembling fingers. They were ice cold. "Timbre?..."

"It's… it's nothing…" Timbre shook her head quickly, "I'm fine. Really."

Sepia heard what Frost had said and her eyes flashed with realization. How could she have forgotten? ' _Koruss Stadium was the place of your last show, wasn't it?'_ she signed.

Timbre didn't respond.

Arty and Sepia looked to each other worriedly.

Timbre shot up and walked around the tables to get to Team FREZ and sat next to Frost, who looked at her quizzically. "I'm really sorry to interrupt Frost, but… did I hear you guys talking about what happened at the stadium here in Vale this past summer?"

Frost and Rime looked to one another.

"Yes. Why?" Frost asked. She put on the usual calm tone of voice she usually did when trying to 'treat someone' as her mom would say. Frost knew full well why Timbre was asking, but she wanted to hear the story from her.

"Did I also hear you say something about the people who attacked the concert, the ones in black cloaks?" Timbre asked, ignoring Frost's question.

"It was in the news, so yes. I heard that the attackers killed a few people, but everyone was able to escape mostly unscathed. As Rime was just mentioning, the report was vague, so not many details are known," Frost answered, trying to bait Timbre into telling more about the incident. She knew how people might shrink up if they were put totally in the spotlight.

Timbre held her hands tightly together in her lap. She looked scared, but on all of her past interactions with Frost Aurora, she had learned that there was something with the way she talked that made Timbre want to open up to her. She had heard about the stress exercises and meditation Frost put her team through, so Timbre had a good grasp of Frost's ability to help ease the mind. Besides that, Frost also seemed to know a little about her attackers, "When you said black cloaks, I knew immediately what you were talking about. I… I was there. I was performing my last show at Koruss Stadium when those people attacked."

"I had completely forgotten that you played a show there that night. I am glad that you made it out okay," Frost placed a hand on Timbre's shoulder, "Will you tell me about what happened? The full story?"

"Frost!" Rime began to protest, "Don't you think that there may have been," she loudly cleared her throat and nodded her head towards Timbre, "a _reason_ that there wasn't that much detail?" Despite Timbre ignoring her celebrity status, Rime hadn't forgotten that Timbre more than likely still had connections in high places, possibly ones with enough power to limit the release of details about a terrorist attack at one of her concerts.

"No, Rime. It's okay," Timbre assured her. "This is something I've been needing to talk about for a while, and my team has never tried to pry about it, but I need to get it out." She took a deep breath. If Frost knew much about this 'Grimm Brotherhood,' then maybe she would be able to get a better grasp on what had happened, "The news didn't have the full story. When they began to drop in from the ceiling… I stayed behind to fight them. I don't know why… maybe… maybe I just wanted to help. Maybe I just wanted to prove to my dad I could fight. Maybe I wanted to prove to myself I wasn't scared… But seeing the innocent people there. The Grimm," she shuddered, "their leader. The one in the metal helmet."

Frost held her hand up when she saw how upset Timbre was getting. "Hey, hey. Timbre. Listen to me. How about we go somewhere else and talk?"

"Or you could stop," Rime spoke up, "We talked about this last night, Frost. You can't keep going around and playing therapist! The day's barely started and you've got her on the verge of tears!"

"I'm fine, Rime!" Timbre yelled loudly. The room fell quiet.

"Okay, okay. Come on. Let's go." Frost helped Timbre up and they went to leave the cafeteria.

"Timbre! Are you okay?!" Arty asked as he ran up to them with Sepia at his side.

Sepia grabbed Timbre's other arm and scowled at Frost.

"Guys, I'm fine." Timbre said, her voice shaking.

"Are you sure?..." Arty was obviously concerned for her.

"Yes, Arty… I'm just going to talk to Frost for a little bit." She looked to the leader of Team FREZ, "She wants to help me get some things off of my chest."

Arty looked confused, "Timbre, what happened?"

"I'll tell you later, Arty. Just… just let me talk to Frost first, please?" Her voice trailed off as she lead Frost away.

Sepia began to follow Timbre, being her partner and all, but was swiftly met with Timbre's outstretched hand telling her to stop.

"Sepia, I'm sorry, but I don't want for you to see me like this either, okay?" Timbre told her while choking back an oncoming sob.

Her partner took a few steps back and stood by Arty. She glanced up at Arty, then back to Roland, who was still sitting at the table and chowing down on breakfast. _Way to be sensitive…_ she thought.

"I'll see you in class, guys," Timbre said as she left, "Promise," and with that, she was out the door with Frost.

"I can't _believe_ her!" Rime exclaimed. Arty and Sepia didn't even notice her walk up.

Zero showed up behind her, "Rime, just let it go. You can't expect Frost to change overnight, especially after what happened."

Rime let out a defeated sigh, "Yeah… I guess you're right, Z."

Arty cleared his throat to get their attention, "Um, I'm sorry, but what the heck is going on?"

"Oh boy…" Rime rubbed her temples, "We've got a lot of explaining to do."

* * *

"What happened when the Grimm Brotherhood arrived?" Frost asked. She brought Timbre to the locker room, which was completely empty. With everyone at breakfast, no one was worried about their weapons. With no one around, she hoped that Timbre would feel comfortable enough to let everything out, and maybe even give her some insight into the events of the night previous.

Timbre nodded, "I told my dad to run away while I fought off what I could. The leader cornered me while the others shot at me. I honestly didn't know if I was helping… but… I think…"

"It's okay, Timbre," Frost reassured her.

Timbre felt the tears start flowing, "They… they wanted to take me, Frost. I… I think I'm the whole reason they attacked the stadium in the first place."

Frost kept a straight face. If she was surprised by what she was being told, she wasn't showing it. She tapped her lips again as she considered how to continue. "How do you know this?" she asked, trying to avoid forcing Timbre to go into more detail than she could handle talking about. She didn't want the emotionally unstable girl to shut down.

"The head guy told me! He… he told me to go with them. He didn't tell me why…" the tears began to freely fall from her face. "I've… I've never been so terrified of a single person in my life, Frost. When we went with Team GLXY and Carmen to Mikado Village to deal with the Kokonatsu infestation, there was a moment when we were out in the woods and... I swore he had come back to get me. It turned out it was only Gavin, but I swear… for a moment… I couldn't do anything but scream and beg. It was horrible…"

"Timbre, I truly do not mean to alarm you by telling you this, but…" Frost bit her lip. If anyone needed to know about the night before, it was someone who had first hand experience with the Grimm Brotherhood, "Rime and I saw someone in a cloak like the ones that the Grimm Brotherhood wear. They were not wearing any armor or anything, so I do not think that this was the same person."

Timbre felt like she was going to pass out. Her face contorted as she began to sob. She fell against Frost, her back heaving as she cried.

Frost wrapped her arms around Timbre and allowed her to let it all out. "Shh… shh… everything is okay, Timbre. You are safe here. You do not know what those insane cultists are even doing here, or if it is really them."

"You don't know that!" Timbre yelled. "They're back for me, Frost… I… my dad was right! I'm not safe at Beacon! I'm not safe as long as they're after me!"

"They aren't here for you, Timbre," Frost held her close, "Listen, if they were here for you, then they would not fool around with scoping out Beacon. I am sure that they have just gotten too big for their britches and decided to bite off more than they can chew. This is a Huntsmen Academy. There are hundreds of highly skilled warriors here that are trained to deal with whatever comes, and you are one of those warriors," she held Timbre out in front of her and locked eyes with her.

"Timbre, all of Team FREZ has your back on this, and your own team most certainly has your back. If it came down to it, then Team ANTE would have your back too. Team GLXY and Team ASHS are some of the greatest warriors here, and do you know what? They have your back too. This is not a place that you should be scared in. There is not anything that we cannot get through, especially the Grimm Brotherhood. They are no match for a Huntsman or a Huntress. You have held them off before, so obviously you can do it again."

Timbre's sobbing seemed to calm down. "Are… are you sure?..."

"Of course I am sure." Frost smiled, "Try to name one thing that Everest could not handle all by himself. I mean, just look at him. If he does not club whatever it is to death, then he would just eat it. How about Professor Maple? I heard about her laser swords. Or maybe Turf. I have seen the way that he looks at you. He would protect you until the bitter end." Frost sighed, "I told Proffesor Alabaster about it this morning. He promised to increase security after dark."

Timbre's crying had almost stopped. She reached up and wiped away the last of her tears with her sleeve. She knew Frost was right. There was no safer place than Beacon Academy. "Right…" she pushed herself away, "Thanks, Frost." She allowed herself to smile.

"You are welcome." Frost stood up and helped Timbre up by the hand, "Let us get going. We have about twenty minutes before we have to be in combat practice. What do you say that we get you back to your team?"

Timbre fixed her hair back and spent a moment to straighten up her uniform as a few students began to walk into the locker room. "Yeah. Right."

.

Frost returned Timbre to her own team, and then went to join back up with Team FREZ. She could sense that Rime was still a little upset with her, and she felt that she needed to address the issue. Since Rime was practically her second in command, it was a must for them to be open with each other.

"Look, I pushed the issue because the Grimm Brotherhood is a serious issue. Sometimes we can help people individually while helping all of us, and in this scenario we have to get as much relative information to Professor Alabaster that we can. Helping Timbre is important, but preventing a potential terrorist attack on the school takes priority," she explained without any prompting from Rime. She just wanted to get the lecture over with as soon as possible. "As if they would ever try anything like that." _Would they actually be that direct?_

Rime couldn't argue with the reasoning, but she knew how… sensitive, Timbre could be. She sighed, "I guess that makes sense. And I guess I don't _have_ to like the fact that you did that, but if it ends up helping in the end, even if that guy last night was just a prankster… If Professor Alabaster puts something in place, then maybe it'll make people feel safer." They sat down in the curved desks in Professor Maple's classroom, "Just the thought of those creeps makes me shutter. I mean, Grimm worship? How backwards must they be?"

Frost nodded in understanding, "Incredibly… I just really hope that whatever may be going on is nowhere as serious as I believe it to be."

Rime waited for an explanation.

"If the Grimm Brotherhood has the gall to have someone run around one of the four Huntsmen academies, then they must be planning _something_ , right?"

" _Or_ , they may just be trying to scare people, like usual. Get everyone into a tizzy before going one step further and making demands for whatever they want.."

"That's just it, Rime. Nobody knows their true motives… they've changed so much over the years and their higher-ups, if there even are any anymore, never come out of hiding. They get their grunts to do all the dirty work for them. What the end goal is for a bunch of Grimm worshipers is beyond me, but I say, for the time being, they are not much of a threat to us. Like I told Timbre, we are currently in the safest place in all of Vale, if not the safest place in all of Remnant." Frost took out a pen to take notes as Carmen moved to the front of the class, behind her podium. "Nothing is going to hurt us here except for a bad grade or a small injury in combat practice… well… those and whatever happens when playing Compost King with Everest."

Rime had to agree with her. But the idea that there were people out there that not only didn't fear the creatures they were currently being taught how to kill for the sake of humanity but also _worshipped_ them honestly scared her. She knew full well that people had different ideas about the world and how it should work, but this was something completely different. She pushed the thoughts to the back of her head as Carmen began her lecture.

* * *

Timbre sat beside Sepia, putting her partner between her and the rest of their team. She began to feel a little shaky after Frost had parted with her. Images of blown out walls and citizens fleeing for safety filled her mind. It felt unreal that she survived Koruss, but she had to ignore that. She had to keep looking forward. Her fists were clenched on the trim of her skirt, her knuckles blanched white.

Arty wanted to ask Timbre what had happened. As he watched his teammate, he noticed that she was really on edge, but not so much so that she wasn't able to function normally. He watched as she jumped a little when Sepia accidentally dropped a pen on the floor. Arty decided that he would ask when they got back to the dorm. Whatever Frost talked to her about, it brought up some bad feelings, but somehow, Timbre didn't seem as on-edge as he had expected considering the condition she was in when she left the cafeteria.

The concern on Arty's face was obvious, or at least to his partner. Roland was aware of what was going on. Though he didn't come off as having paid much attention, he certainly had. As far as he understood, Timbre was whining about how her life had be _so_ hard. If she wanted to whine about the bad things in her life, the least she could do is work it out within herself before exploding on everyone.

"Get over whatever it is, Pop-Star. You're no good to the team if you're caught up in your own self-pity," he crossed his arms and kept his field of vision trained on Professor Maple as she went over the lesson for the day. Out of the corner of his eye, he caught Timbre's deadly gaze. A little clarification seemed to be necessary, "Grow up and get over your past. So many people have it worse than you. You aren't special."

Timbre couldn't help but laugh in sheer disbelief, "Excuse me?..."

"You've lived a cushy life with your music career. Don't act like you know what a real struggle is," Roland still didn't even look at her, "You're a singer turned Huntress. Nothing more, nothing less."

Timbre stopped writing and gripped her pen tightly, "Don't start with me, Roland."

"I'm not the one going off and complaining about my problems to another team," he shrugged, "Right, I shouldn't start with the one who's scared out of their mind and doesn't trust their team. Makes total sense, huh?" he shifted his gaze away from Professor Maple and onto Timbre.

Arty leaned his head forward and glared at him, "Roland, cut it out."

"No," Timbre held her hand out to tell Arty to back out of the conversation, "You don't know what you're talking about, Roland. I went to Frost because I heard her say something that led me to believe that she may know something that would help me. And you know what? It did help," she pointed a finger at him, "so back off."

"Then by all means, enlighten us so that we may help you in the future," the sarcasm in Roland's voice was unmistakeable. Timbre seemed ready to play ball, and he was ready to go, "We're your team, so it would be great if you would be _so kind_ as to fill us in."

Timbre dug her nails into the edge of the table. How could he be so apathetic? She lowered her voice as to not distract the class, "I was attacked and nearly kidnapped back at Koruss Stadium," she tried to keep herself under control, "The Grimm Brotherhood attacked a bunch of people and even killed a few of them. I fought them off, but I nearly got taken away, Roland. That's what happened."

"That's the world that we live in," Roland still showed no sign of any semblance of concern for Timbre, "That's over and done with, so suck it up and keep moving forward."

"How can you be so cold, Roland? The past echoes into the present, even if it's just in the mind. I'm hurting, and you're sitting here telling me to suck it up," Timbre shook her head and stared down at her notes to prevent herself from jumping over Sepia and teaching Roland a lesson, "Like you can preach about sucking it up. You won't even talk about your past."

"It doesn't hold any relevance to the team," he told her defiantly, "I got over my past when I came here. I dealt with my demons already. There is no point in me spilling my feelings to you guys because it won't do anything."

"You want to push my buttons about sharing, but you won't even share for yourself. That's real mature."

"I have nothing to share-"

"What about those letters that you refuse to send?" Timbre cut in.

Roland was taken back by this, "Letters? What _letters_ are you referring to?"

"That binder under your bed, the one that it full of a bunch of letters that you haven't sent to your mother. What's the deal there?" she wrinkled her nose in disgust of the rage on Roland's face. His face was turning blood red, "Oh, what? You going to get mad about that? Why don't you fill us in on that, huh?"

"Timbre! Roland!" Professor Maple began to talk the students down from the impeding screaming match, "If you have a problem with each other, then g-"

" _ **How**_ **dare** _**you go through my stuff!"**_ Roland shouted and shot up from his seat. He was ready to settle this, " _ **Leave my mother out of this!"**_

"Did I strike a nerve?" Timbre stood and took a step towards her teammate, "What? Are your mommy issues preventing you from having a good time here at Beacon?"

Roland held out a hand, causing all of the notes that Team ARTS was taking to go flying towards Timbre. He bounded over Sepia with a raised fist, but his arm and tail were caught by Arty and Sepia respectively.

"Knock it off, man!" Arty shouted to be heard over the waterfall of profanity coming from Roland and onto Timbre, "Get a hold of yourself! We're in class!"

Timbre pulled herself up off the floor and took a few steps back. She had seen her teammate enraged before, but never this… out of control, "Roland, I didn't mean to-"

" _ **IF YOU**_ **EVER** _**SPEAK OF MY MOTHER LIKE THAT AGAIN, I'LL MAKE YOU WISH YOU DIDN'T COME OUT OF KORUSS!"**_ Roland yanked against Arty and Sepia's holds on him, " _ **DON'T YOU EVER GO THROUGH MY THINGS. STAY THE HELL AWAY FROM THAT BINDER!"**_

Professor Maple ran up between the restrained Roland and shaking Timbre, "Get out of my classroom. Both of you!" she looked between them both, "This is way out of line. Leave, now."

Arty pulled on Roland. He was infuriated with his partner, but more concerned with the ticking time bomb that Roland apparently was. Prying wasn't an option as it seemed that prying could get the doing it killed, "Go to the dorm. We can talk this out."

"I'll go myself, thank you," Roland shoved off of Arty and Sepia. He couldn't even look at Timbre. He just turned on his heels and stomped out of the room.

Timbre held her arms against her chest and began walking out the opposite way. After being brutally attacked once again, she felt like throwing up. The blind rage that Roland displayed threw her right back into Koruss. That one comment about not making it out of Koruss brought back too much for her. She left the room with tears streaming down her cheeks.

The entire room was silent. Not even Alice had anything to say.

Rime couldn't believe it. She glared at Frost accusingly.

Frost could only sit there with her hand over her mouth as if contemplating what went wrong.

"Arty. Sepia." Professor Maple addressed them sternly, "Go with them if you have to."

Arty was in a complete daze from what he had witnessed. He hadn't a clue as to what to do, but he had to think of something, "You go be with Roland. You can be more… affectionate than me to him," he told Sepia. It wasn't so much his decision, though. He could see the concern in her eyes. She wanted to help them both, but knew that she was about the only one there that might be able to bring Roland back down to their level for a while.

Sepia darted off. A quick message was sent to Arty shortly after the doors closed.

 **Sepia Hughes: Timbre is a touchy person. She needs hugs. Just let her vent.**

Arty left through the same door that Timbre had.

 **Arty Umber: Got it. Good luck with Roland.**

.

Sepia was at the dorms in no time, hoping that she would beat Roland to the punch. Unfortunately, she went to turn the knob and found that it was locked from the inside. A few knocks gave no results. She began pounding on the door, but this went ignored. A text was sent to hopefully make up for her inability to vocalize her concerns.

 **Sepia Hughes: Open the door. We need to talk about what happened back there. It's okay. I'm not here to judge you.**

Nothing was sent back to her in return.

 **Sepia Hughes: Please.**

Still nothing.

She shut her eyes and focused on her corner of the dorm. A glowing orb of light appeared where her pillow was. She could see Roland sitting with his back to it. He seemed to be trembling. What she didn't see was that he was biting his neckerchief to refrain from sobbing out loud.

 _I've never seen him like this…_ she thought. Then the unexpected happened. A book slammed shut around the orb, sending a bolt of pain between her temples. She gasped for air when she opened her eyes, _Roland, please..._

Unable to do anything, Sepia just sat against the wall next to the door to their dorm. She sent a text to Arty to fill him in on her objective's status.

 **Sepia Hughes: He locked the door and isn't answering. I tried to send an orb in to check on him, but he smashed it. How is Timbre?**

.

 **Arty Umber: I dont know. I cant find her anywhere!**

He ran through the lecture hall building's corridors where he had last seen Timbre running. He jogged down the hall as to not make too much noise. "Timbre! Timbre!" He called in a harsh whisper. No response. He held his hands to his head in a panic. It seemed to him that his whole team was falling apart. That's when he heard the sobbing coming from the other side of the nearby exit door. He ran to it and pushed it open. Timbre was sitting on the short stoop leading to the door.

She had her head resting on her knees. Her hair and arms covered her face.

"Timbre!" He ran over and knelt down next to her.

"I don't get it, Arty…" she sobbed, "He's a monster!"

Arty wanted to say the usual 'he doesn't know' or 'that's just the way he is' whenever Roland got into trouble with others, but he knew that wouldn't help in this case. What they had said to each other really drudged up something from deep inside both of them. What they were, he didn't know. "Timbre… what happened at the stadium?"

"A bunch of psychos killed people and tried to kidnap me, Arty! That may be _normal_ in Roland's twisted view of the world, but I've never had to go through something like that before. I tried to be brave! I wanted to prove I wasn't scared. I thought I was handling it fine. But… something was dragged up, Arty. I'm not okay… I'm a coward." She sobbed heavily.

Arty sat down next to her and wrapped his arms around her, letting her grab onto the sleeve of his uniform and cry. "Timbre… you're not a coward."

"Yes I am, Arty!"  
"No you're not! A coward wouldn't have run into a forest full of Grimm to make sure that her friends weren't hurt. Timbre, anyone in that situation would've broken down. You wanted to help and you made it out alive. That's all that matters now. So what if Roland doesn't give you any sympathy?"

"Because Frost told me I was safe here, Arty… She said that Beacon was the safest place for me right now…" her face twisted more as the tears flowed freely and her face turned a deep red, "but Roland just showed me that I'm not even safe within my own team…"

Arty took Sepia's advice and hugged her awkwardly. That's when he remembered what Timbre had said to Roland to make him blow up at her. "Timbre… what exactly did you find?..."

"It was the day we went into town to hang out before we started fixing up the library. Roland wanted me to bring him his toolbox and… I saw something under his bed hidden behind all of his books. It was a binder stuffed with letters. I didn't read any entirely, but every one that I looked at started with the same phrase… 'Hey Mom'."

"Timbre-"

"What kind of guy writes letters to his mom and doesn't send them, Arty! If my mom was still alive I'd talk to her every chance I had!"

"I'm sure he-"

"He's not normal, Arty! We try to talk to him and he keeps pushing us away! He keeps telling us he's accepted the fact he's stuck with us for four years, but he refuses to open up! I know I can't force him to, but it's hurting our team! The longer he hides these secrets from us the more violent he gets!"

Arty let go of her and stood up. He held a hand out to her. "I'll have a talk with him."

"Arty-"

"Alabaster made me leader of this team. I have a responsibility to uphold with my teammates."

Timbre smiled and took Arty's hand. When she got to her feet she hugged him tightly. "Thank you, Arty… I don't know what I'd do without my team. I don't… I don't want us to be broken up."

"I'm going to meet up with Sepia and see how she's doing with Roland. You go back to class. Okay?"

She nodded and wiped the tears away.

"Good," Arty turned and ran towards the dorms as Timbre walked back inside. As he ran, he typed out a message to Sepia on his scroll.

 **Arty Umber: Im headed your way. Ts feeling better-ish. I told her Id talk to Roland. Howre things going with him?**

She replied almost immediately.

 **Sepia Hughes: I can't get him to open the door, and I don't have my key. He isn't texting back now.**

Arty was just as annoyed as he was concerned now.

 **Arty Umber: Hold on. Im coming up the stairs now.**

Arty ran up to Sepia with his key at the ready. He knew that as soon as Roland heard the tumbler of the lock moving, he'd be ready to kick someone's teeth in. In one fluid motion, Arty unlocked the door and flung it open. He held his hand over his face and stomach in preparation for any attacks coming his way. He braced himself, but nothing hit him. When Arty uncovered his eyes, he found a mess. Roland's books were scattered across the floor. "Roland?..." he called out.

"Go away, Burne," a muffled voice came from the mass of sheets on Roland's bed. The books scattered about vibrated, primed to work as projectiles.

Sepia pushed past Arty and sat on the side of Roland's bed. She placed a hand on where she assumed that his head was.

"Both of you, get out," Roland ordered, but made no effort to get Sepia off of him.

After a few moments of examination, Sepia motioned for Arty to come over. ' _All clear,'_ she signed out with her freehand. When all of the books stopped moving, she figured that the room was relatively safe for the time being.

Arty sat on his bed, across from Roland's. "Roland… what's going on, man?"


	23. V1Ch19: Grimm Encounters

As Arty stood with Timbre and Sepia at the edge of the large circular pit, he couldn't help but think about how chaotic the night before was. After Arty had asked what was wrong with Roland, his partner jumped out of his bed and shoved past him and Sepia. As they turned to follow him, they found a wall of books preventing them from leaving the room. By the time the books unfixed themselves from their places, Roland was long gone, and nobody had seen him since.

"Mr. Umber!" a gruff voice echoed across the room. In front of the group of students stood Professor Victor McGouran. His appearance didn't match his voice, as the gravely tone came from a thin man with dusty blond hair that didn't look too much older than the teens that stood before him. He wore an unkempt brown vest over a long-sleeve white shirt and rust-colored slacks. Perched on top of his head was a pair of bronze and gold goggles with greasy black lenses. He looked down at Arty with a skeptical look, "Are you going to turn in your essay, Mr. Umber?" The smile he gave him seemed friendly, but the tone of voice made Arty somewhat uncomfortable.

Arty remembered the bundle of papers in his hand. "Oh, right," he held them out to his teacher, "Here…"

Victor looked over him with judgemental, beady eyes, "Mr. Umber… is there any reason that you're turning in ten pages of… drawings?..."

Arty shrugged, "It was the only way I could think of to get my point across…"

"Mr. Umber…" Victor pinched the bridge of his nose between tight leather gloves, "your team seems to have had… trouble understanding the requirements for this assignment. Aside from your… doodles, Ms. Forté turned in song lyrics she wrote, Ms. Hughes turned in a film that she made, and Mr. Wells…" he paused, "Well, he hasn't even shown up today."

He held his arm out, gesturing to the rest of the first year students behind them, "No matter, I'll have something that might help your grade. You can go stand with your classmates now." As soon as the three members of ARTS took their spots with the others, McGouran slammed his hands on his desk, "For those of you that don't feel like your essays were your best work," he pulled a lever next to the desk.

From the ceiling of the domed room that acted as the Grimm Studies classroom descended large black metal cages on chains, each of a different size, but all quite sizable. The students gasped at the writhing black masses inside the cages. Ol' Mad McGouran had Grimm in backstock for just such an occasion.

"You were each assigned to write about the weaknesses, tendencies, and special traits of one particular kind of Grimm as well as how to deal with them. As you can see, I have here some specimens of the Grimm that each of you wrote about in your essays. I'm giving you all the opportunity to put your research to the test," he gave a devious smile, "Your teams may sign up to fight these Grimm at any time today, but all of your team must show up. You will be fighting the subject of your essay using the knowledge that you obtained in your research, and the grade that you make on the fight will replace your grade from the essay… if it's better, that is," Victor McGouran explained, "I have the sign-up sheet here for whomever wishes to take this opportunity. Otherwise, class is dismissed so that you all may review your notes before the fights, or not if you are comfortable with your essay."

Though Beacon wasn't what was considered 'normal' by the average people's standards, extra credit meant extra credit. After some split-second deliberation, all of the team leaders rushed forward to sign up their teams for a time slot. Arty, in the scramble, ended up in the back of the line.

"Arty…" Timbre tapped his shoulder to get his attention, "hold on," she raised her hand, "Professor McGouran! What if… our whole team can't make it here?"

"Then you receive your grades from the essays. I suggest that you get Mr. Wells to tag along by any means necessary if you want a better grade," Victor began packing his bags to return to his office.

Arty hesitantly went up to the sign in sheet. Of course, Team ANTE were signed up in the very first slot. Frost signed Team FREZ up for later in the afternoon, and gave Rime and Zero a long winded explanation on how important it was to have experience fighting the Grimm that they had read about. Arty went ahead and signed up for the absolute last slot for later in the evening. _That should give Roland time to actually show up,_ he thought to himself. He pulled out his scroll as he walked back over to the girls, "I messaged Roland our time, hopefully he-" a loud ding interrupted him.

 **Roland Wells: Fine.**

"Guess that answers it then…" Timbre said halfheartedly.

"Okay…" Arty shoved his scroll back into his pocket as they left the room, "guess we should head to the library to get in some last minute-"

"Where's your _Faunus_ friend, Umba?" a familiar snarky voice rang out from behind them.

"Oh no…" Arty turned to find Team ANTE standing at the edge of the pit as the monsters growled and flailed in their cages. "Not now, Alice."

Alice faked being offended, "Now, Umba, that's not very nice. Is that any way ta treat a girl who's had it pretty rough the past couple of weeks?"

"I said not now, Alice!" the rage in Arty's voice pierced through even her hateful haze.

Alice took a step back in surprise, "Geez, Painta-Boy… what's gotten Team FARTS in such a tizzy?" the smirk on her face showed she was enjoying the newly formed fissure within one of her rival teams, but quickly faded.

Turf stepped up next to her, Timbre couldn't help but notice his beanie was still missing. "Not now, Alice. Please. We have Grimm to fight."

Alice scowled at him, "I don't _have_ ta listen ta _you_ , Turf, but I guess you make a point." She turned on her heels, causing her dress to spin as she walked off. She gave a dainty wave, "Ta-ta losers!"

Timbre and Sepia followed Arty as he stormed out of the room.

"Why is it that when Team ANTE has problems, she doesn't care unless the world is unfair to her? Why is it that when Team ARTS has problems…" he stopped in his tracks, "there's nothing I can do to help…?"

"Arty, whatever is happening isn't your fault. Roland's just finally gone off the deep end. This is his fault, not yours," Timbre walked beside Arty. She placed a hand on his shoulder, "You're a great leader. It isn't your fault that you got paired with a maniac."

Shortly after Timbre finished, both her and Arty's scrolls dinged.

 **Sepia Hughes: He isn't a maniac. He's hurting. A lot. You guys haven't seen him when he's happy. When he would take me out, he actually vented and talked about the problems that he was having. He hasn't told me what is going on, but he has everything else. He's scared.**

"I understand he's been through some stuff, Sepia, but that doesn't give him the right to discount everyone else's problems," Arty gestured to Timbre as he continued leading the girls to the library. Getting Sepia upset with him wasn't going to help matters.

As they neared the library, he found the words, "Everyone copes differently. I get that. But I don't think telling other people to just 'deal with it' is anyway to go about it."

Timbre took a deep breath, "When I talked to Frost about what happened to me, it helped me feel better. When I told you guys everything… it helped even more because, well, Frost is cool and all, but you two are actually my _friends_. Does that make sense?..."

The two agreed.

"Maybe he needs to do the same and talk to somebody else before coming to us. I mean, I'd like to believe that Roland considers us his friends and trusts us enough to talk about stuff with… but after yesterday…"

Arty held the towering library door open, "I don't know either, Timbre. If you ask me, I think we should just do what we always do and let him rant and fume until he tuckers himself out."

"But what if that isn't enough, Arty?" Timbre took a seat at a nearby table, "He's _really_ mad this time… What are we going to do if one member of the team just _refuses_ to talk to the other three? We can't do that for four years."

Arty didn't know how to answer. As he sat down with his sketchbook and flipped through the original drafts he had made for his 'essay', he tried to run through the different scenarios in his head. Each ended pretty badly. He wished he could ask Team GLXY for advice, but they were away on a mission. "Well, let's study up and get through the fights tonight. We'll have the whole weekend to figure it out once we're done with that."

He began to focus his Semblance on the book, the first time he'd used his Semblance since the Beast-Yamuna fiasco. Each sketch quivered before popping into existence as miniature versions of their bigger, more dangerous counterparts. They began to run around Arty's open sketchbook. Arty cursed to himself before quickly taking a pen from his backpack and drawing a rectangle around the entire spread. A quick and crude wall sprouted from the ink. "You okay with that plan?"

Timbre nodded as she watched the graphite constructs scurry about the paper, occasionally bumping into the barrier, "Yeah... we'll see…"

* * *

Boots clacked against the tile floors as the purple menace paced back and forth in front of the door to Professor McGouran's room. Roland was ready to fight his target. Writer's Block was cleaned and already had a small piece of paper trailing off of it.

 _Hey mom, I'm writing to tell you that I'm… I'm really mad again. I need to talk to my team about what happened, but I just… can't._

He stopped typing and stared at the words for a moment. For once, his weapon was living up to its name. A groan passed his lips as he slid down the wall. More words forced themselves out.

 _Why is it always like this, huh? Why did I go and screw it all up even worse? The moment I see them, I'm just going to screw it up even more. I can't even look at my team without seeing red._

His fingers curled on the keys in hesitation, but he had to ask a question that he hadn't yet.

 _Why did you have to die, mom? You were so strong, and someone managed to kill you. How is that possible? How am I supposed to take out the person that took you out, mom? That's what I'm scared of. I'm scared of them. I'm scared of what their actions are turning me into. I can't stop. I can't control this. I… I've failed you before I've even had a chance to start making things right._

"I'm sorry, mom…" he finally said out loud. After staring at the words for a few moments, he finally finished the letter off.

 _I love you, mom. I love you so much. I miss you every day, and I will come visit you as soon as I can. Please don't be there when I do, though. Please call me from an airship heading to Beacon and tell me that it was all fake. Tell me that you aren't gone. Come here and tell me that you're going to stay here with me. Tell me that I can do this. Tell me that I'm worth something. I'm sorry that I couldn't be better for you like I promised you before. I'm sorry that I'm still just as useless as that night. I can't take this. I can't bear this pain alo_

Three sets of footsteps could be heard from down the hall. It was his team, no doubt, so he ripped the unfinished note off of his weapon, folded it, and tucked it into his vest. When they came into view, he crossed his arms and faced the door.

"Took you long enough," Roland growled without so much as looking at his team.

Arty didn't respond and just led Timbre and Sepia into the room.

"Well, if it isn't Team ARTS!" Professor McGouran yelled across the colosseum of a room happily, "I was almost afraid you wouldn't show up, but I'm glad you did!" The room was eerily quieter than earlier now that most of the cages overhead were now empty.

Team ARTS slowly descended the stairs, except for Roland, who took a seat in a chair next to the door.

"The other fights went well for the most part," he continued, "So I have no doubt you'll end up in the same boat. But I have to say, your choices of Grimm are… interesting…" he smiled as he looked over the papers on his desk. He snapped his neck up to grin at them, "This is going to be fun," He shot a finger towards the group, "So, who would like to go first?"

Before anyone else could respond, Timbre stepped forward. Seeing Roland again not only made her upset, but also gave her the insatiable urge to beat him to a pulp. If she didn't get it out now, she would end up making more trouble for her team. "I will, Professor."

McGouran smiled and rubbed his hands together, "Ah, Ms. Forté, thank you for being so brave. Not many people would be so willing to go up against a Raach, especially one of the… _larger_ variety. Considering how common a fear of spiders is and all." He held his arm out like a doorman, "If you would please, enter the arena."

Timbre looked down the sloped bowl of a pit that took up most of McGouran's classroom. She looked to Arty and Sepia, who both gave semi-enthusiastic smiles and thumbs-ups. She didn't bother looking to Roland before sliding her way down the wall to the dirt circle below.

"Ready for me to release the Raach?" Victor called from his desk, which was full of buttons and levers. These served to release the Grimm from their cages, presumably.

"I am," Timbre released lengths of wire in preparation for her fight.

A lever was yanked back at the desk, and a cage descended from the ceiling. It slammed down into the dirt and opened out to reveal a hulking black, white, and red mass within the confines of the black box.

Four of its eight monstrous legs unfolded outwards and clawed at the dirt. White spurs of bone formed ridge lines along the ebony hair covered legs. Its face was covered by a flat mask of bone with eight fiery eyes of varying sizes glowing like molten iron. The abdomen was covered in the same black hair as the legs, and bone spikes formed five ridges going down the length of the bulbous mass on its hind side. The fangs dripped with a bright yellow and blood red fluid, and were surrounded by an extra pair of feelers made completely out of bone.

"Now tell me, Ms. Forté, what must one _never_ do when first confronted by a Raach?" Professor McGouran quizzed as he watched the girl and monster square off.

"Don't break eye contact until you know how to strike it."

"Good, good. Now, do you know how you're going to start the battle? Where are the Raach's weak points?"

Timbre kept her eyes focused on the burning orbs in the center of the Grimm spider's face as it growled and hissed at her. She knew the joints of the legs could break easily, weakening the Raach's mobility, but the joints holding the leg to the body were the priority. The less legs the Grimm had, the less dangerous it was.

She looked over its body, but apparently moved her eyes just enough to allow the monster to lunge.

The horror launched itself at Timbre, who just managed to roll out of the way. Had she been even a second slower to react, it could have clamped right around her waist and begun spinning her into a ball of tarry silk.

She wanted to swing her wires as she turned back to face the monster, but she was surprised by a splash of glowing magma. Her wires spun in circles in front of her in order to deflect it, but the metal soon began to break down and drip to the dirt.

McGouran winced, "Ooh, Ms. Forté, you seemed to have forgotten the Raach's main form of _ranged_ offense. The venomous substance that pours from its mouth can-"

"Burn through near anything it comes into contact with," she reeled out more wire and fixed her eye contact with the beast, "including steel, bone, and concrete. That makes it not only a threat to people directly, but also structures such as houses, where smaller Raach tend to make their homes."

McGouran nodded in approval, "You definitely know the right material Ms. Forté. I just wish you could have put it into an essay form rather than metaphorical song lyrics. The one thing that this professor believes equals an essay, is combat. So, if you would, show me how a true Huntress-in-training finishes off this arachnid Grimm."

"With pleasure," all of the anger pent up inside of Timbre came out as she whipped her cables at the spider, which only jumped out of the way with each attack.

"Stop moving!" Timbre yelled as she swung her arms towards each other, sending the wires flying at the Grimm from either side.

The spider's legs folded inwards as Klavier's thick metal cords closed around it. The force snapped the bone frames at the base of each appendage. With a loud thud, the creature fell to the ground as a writhing ball of black and white. Without its legs, it couldn't escape.

Timbre calmly walked up to it and looked down at it with disgust. She lifted a boot to crush its bone-plated skull.

The monster shrieked and in one last ditch effort to kill sprayed more magma at her, coating her fully-exposed leg.

Timbre shrieked and stumbled back. Through the pain, she had the sense of mind to bring down her other foot to finish off the beast before it could attack again. It faded away into black smoke as she fell to the ground holding her leg. Smoke curled off of her shin as she tried to pat out the liquid coating her leg.

Arty and Sepia shouted and jumped into the pit while Roland sat back unfazed.

"Timbre! Are you okay?!" Arty ran to help her and held Timbre's arms back when he saw the Raach's venom coating her hands.

"Ms. Forté!" Professor McGouran ran up with a bunch of towels and a bucket of water and knelt down next to her. "It's okay, it's okay. You're lucky you killed it when you did, or else you could've gotten hit by more than that little defensive spray." He pressed a wet towel against her leg, which sizzled from the heat, causing her to whine in pain. "Just hold on and let me get the rest off of you." Professor McGouran finished wiping the rest of the glowing substance off of Timbre's leg and hands. After he was done, there was no sign the burning magma was ever on her. "Now, Mr. Umber, I'd like you to observe Ms. Forté's aura levels."

Arty complied and pulled out his scroll. His eyes widened when he saw Timbre's readings. "Her aura's... over halfway gone. But sir, she didn't get hit and that acid was only on her for a minute or so."

Professor McGouran looked to Timbre, "Fascinating creatures, Raach are. Care to explain Ms. Forté? Why, other than its high temperature, is the Raach's venom so dangerous?"

Timbre stood up and reached down to rub her now sore calf. "Despite not being able to be hurt by extreme temperatures, those with aura can still feel them. The Raach's venom can reach such a high heat that it can literally burn away aura… meaning that someone completely coated in the substance could lose their only shield against it and quickly be taken out…"

McGouran nodded and patted Timbre on the back. "Good! Good! While your _use_ of the information was a bit… lackluster, your overall knowledge was very impressive. Does a B- make up for getting sprayed with spider magma?"

Timbre nodded appreciatively, "Yes, sir. It does."

"Good. So who's next?" he looked to Arty and Sepia before turning his head up to the rim of the bowl-shaped stadium. "Perhaps, Mr. Wells would like to take his turn?" He yelled up so Roland could hear.

"No," Roland tipped his hat down and leaned back in his seat for a nap.

"Alright then, how about Mr. Umber or Ms. Hughes?" McGouran looked between the students.

Arty began to stand, "I'll g-"

Sepia shot up and slid down into the battlefield. She held her guns up at the ready.

At this, Roland actually pulled his hat out of his eyes and leaned forward a bit.

"Of course he's actually interested in her fight…" Timbre grumbled to Arty as they ascended the arena's side.

Arty sat back down in his seat, "Give him at least a little slack. Sepia hasn't left him over this… temper tantrum," he whispered back.

Sepia, wanting to be able to brighten her teammate's mood at least a little, blew a kiss up to her partner, or, rather, romantic partner.

Nothing happened for a few moments, but then Roland lifted up his fingers and curled them into a fist as if he were catching something. The motion was miniscule and hardly noticeable if Arty and Timbre hadn't followed Sepia's gesture.

"Are you ready, Ms. Hughes?" McGouran asked.

Sepia raised her guns to say that she was ready.

"Great. You will be fighting the Scuttlepod. Due to your... condition, I will take the answers to my questions from the film that you made for the most part, and score you on your combat performance and tack it onto your essay grade. You are sitting at a 49 right now. You may make up to thirty-five points bonus on the assignment, making the maximum grade that you can make an 84,"

She lifted her thumb to the air to say that they had an agreement that sounded fair. She braced herself for the cage to come rocketing down from the ceiling.

The barred cage door swung open. Unlike the Raach, the Scuttlepod wasn't one to make a show of its entrance. It shimmied out of its cell and raised the front half of its body to examine its opponent. It was about as large as the average SUV, and just looked like a black centipede for the most part. What did set it apart was the flat bone plates that covered the top half of its body, one for each of its twenty-two segments. Red fissures glowed between the plates, and made trails across the bone. Each leg was flat and pointed with a spike, but the most frightening part of the monster was its ends. On its hind was a set of pincers with enough crushing force to shear straight through steel, and on its head was a second set of pincers, though smaller, covering a pulsating mass of fragments that served as its mouth. The molten eyes were set on either side of the head, and two eight-foot-long antenna felt around the air.

"As you know, the Scuttlepod is normally found in the deserts of Vacuo. They are nocturnal, which means that this one is ready to fight. You made it clear that their weak points lie between the segments, similar to most insectoid Grimm. Just watch out. It's quick," McGouran spouted off and leaned over his desk to get a better view.

Sepia stared down the Grimm while reaching for her bustle. Her eyes didn't leave the massive bug as she pulled out a plastic bag from her bustle.

"What is that?" Timbre looked at the bag. From the distance that they were, she couldn't make out its contents too well.

Arty almost asked the same question, but then it dawned on him. Sepia stopped for a snack at a vending machine on the way to these fights. After she emptied most of it into a plastic bag, she ate only a few pieces for herself. It was the beef jerky from their pit stop earlier, "That jerky…"

"Grimm have been shown to eat out of sheer boredom… and Sepia's so small that it might not see her as a threat…" Timbre thought out loud.

The bag was hoisted into the air for the Scuttlepod to see. It was open, allowing the stench of dried beef to waft out across the battlefield. When Sepia knew that it had the Grimm's attention, she lobbed the bag far to her left.

A few moments were taken by the Scuttlepod to contemplate the pursuit of the food. It must have decided that the jerky would make a better snack than Sepia, because it then shimmied over to the bag of meat and began ripping it to shreds.

This opportunity was not wasted. Sepia sprinted towards the Grimm and lunged onto its back. For a few moments, it didn't even notice her. It gave her enough time to get up to the fifth segment from its head. When it realized what she was doing, it began to squirm in a wild attempt to get her off.

Its clawed tail whipped up and stabbed into the bone plate where Sepia was. Sparks flew as its pincers bounced against its back plate, narrowly missing Sepia. A second stab at the third plate, but she was already on the second one. It let out a shrill cry when Sepia began unloading a few dozen bullets into the nape of its neck, between the segments. It didn't do much but anger the monster further, and she knew this well.

A final strike was given by the tail in an attempt to take Sepia out. The pincers were spread wide to catch her, but they only fell on the space between its head and its first segment. Sepia was left hanging from one of its antenna, using its involuntary movements to mask her use of it as a swinging vine. The pincers closed around the neck with a similar involuntary flexing, letting out a disgusting crack as they closed. The Scuttlepod's head rolled to the ground, severed by its own body.

Sepia landed right when the Grimm began to fade into black smoke and took a bow. She looked up to McGouran to receive her grade.

McGouran blinked a few times to process what he had just witness. It wasn't a display of power on Sepia's part, nor agility. She beat the Scuttlepod by exploiting its biggest flaws, "Well, I have to say that I didn't think that I could be surprised when you four came in, but you have definitely proven me wrong! In only two fights! Very well done," he made a mark in his gradebook, "Your aura levels are still completely full. The only loss is a little bit of your rations. B- it is Ms. Hughes. Well done."

Sepia jumped up and down with joy. She sprinted up the curved walls of the arena and jumped to Arty and Timbre.

"That was awesome! Good going, Seps!" Arty high-fived her.

"Kicking butt, ARTS style!" Timbre pat her on the shoulder.

' _Thanks!'_ she looked over to Roland, who still sat by himself. He didn't show much of anything on his face, but she knew that she caught a small smile from him while she climbed the Scuttlepod, ' _I'm going to sit with Roland. I think he needs someone to give him a little love.'_ she signed.

Before Arty and Timbre could protest, Sepia bolted over to Roland and slid onto the bench. She leaned up against him and examined his face for a few moments. He wasn't pushing her away or lashing out, which was a starting point.

' _You haven't shaved. You're getting scruffy,'_ she signed.

' _Forgot my razor in the bathroom,'_ he signed back nearly instantly.

' _I noticed,'_ she leaned up and pecked him on the cheek. No reaction, but no negative reaction was enough to tell her that he was at least a little better.

.

"Two down, two to go," Professor McGouran proclaimed as he made some notes in his gradebook, "So, which of the ARTS boys wants to go next?"

Arty decided to give Roland the opportunity to speak up, but he didn't budge. "I guess that'll be me." Arty stepped forward and drew Palette out of his backpack before sliding down the sloped side of the arena to the battlefield below.

The teacher pulled another lever. As the cage descended he began to ask his first question. "So, Mr. Umber, you decided to write about the Camolurker," he let out a small chuckle, "That's very fitting, given your artistic background. Now, tell me Mr. Umber, how does the Camolurker first launch its attacks against its prey?"

Arty watched as the cage lowered. The lack of movement worried him. He just imagined the monster within rearing back, ready to kill once its cage opened.

The black metal slammed into the ground and kicked up a cloud of dust.

Arty stared into the empty cage as the door swung open. He hesitantly answered Professor McGouran's question as he looked around warily, "It turns invisible and stalks its prey, circling it until it finds an opening," He heard something scrape against the dirt behind him, "Usually from behind while their prey looks where it was last seen." Arty spun around, swinging his leg sideways as he turned. His boot connected with something. The invisible creature suddenly materialized as it stumbled into the inclined extent of the battlefield.

"Well deflected, Mr. Umber!" McGouran clapped, "You cut it a little close, but good job surprising the surpriser!"

Arty wasn't able to revel in his return attack as he turned to face the beast. The Camolurker resembled a huge black chameleon and was the largest Grimm of the three so far. The skull plate fixed itself between two black orbs, each rotating independently of one another, causing the burning lights of its eyes to shift and look everywhere, occasionally fixating on Arty. Like all other Grimm, bony plates and spikes littered the surface of its inky black body. Its curled tail twitched and unbound itself occasionally. He took careful aim and held his paintball gun out at the monster's face.

Before Arty could pull the trigger, the beast opened its mouth. Arty felt Palette fly out of his hand as the beast's thick glowing yellow tongue yanked the orange paintball gun towards itself. The weapon flew to the other side of the field. The Camolurker effectively separated Arty from his one guaranteed chance at victory.

"Dang it…" Arty stepped back from the monster as it shrieked at him. He watched as the beast seemed to shimmer out of existence. Arty's eyes darted around as he looked for his enemy, but the whole field looked empty, with his gun on the opposite side of the dirt circle.

"Mr. Umber, now that the Camolurker has become invisible again, what do you do now?"

Arty scanned the field, being sure to stand perfectly still. "I…", he took a deep breath and tried to listen, "keep watch on the surrounding area. Watch and listen for movement," he reached for one of the tubes of paintballs hooked to his belt, the one full of bright orange spheres, "But if you can help increase the odds of making it reveal itself…" Arty dumped the contents of the vial into his hand. One by one, he threw the paintballs around the field, making sure that the scatter of orange paint was pretty equally spread amongst the dirt field as well as the slanted walls. He knew that, since the Grimm lacked an aura, it wouldn't activate the Dust paint like it would for another person, but he still watched the field to see if any of the large blotches smeared or moved. Even with the field set, he knew that if the trap didn't work he'd be in trouble. He needed more defense. He needed Palette.

Arty whipped his head to the left as one of the paint blotches on the wall next to him smeared. A three-toed footprint marked the wall nearby. Right above it, he could see the air shimmer when over an oven or concrete on a hot day. He knew it wasn't the heat from the Magma Dust. The Camolurker was right next to him.

In a mad dash, Arty ran for his gun.

Timbre gasped as she saw the chameleon-like Grimm reappear and begin to chase after Arty

He leaped around as he made his way to Palette, sidestepping the orange Dust-paint splatters to make sure he didn't activate the trap prematurely. He dived for his gun, but felt something catch his arm. He turned back to see that the Camolurker had managed to wrap his arm in a vice grip with its glowing tongue, and he was being dragged towards the gaping mouth ringed with thousands of tiny, razor-sharp teeth. No matter how much he pulled away, he couldn't break free from the Grimm's sticky tongue. His paintball gun was his only chance. He reached as hard as he could. He strained and struggled as he felt his arm about to be pulled out of the socket. His finger touched the edge of the barrel, but his finger only grazed it as the Camolurker reeled its head back.

"No… you… don't!" Arty's hand finally gripped the silver barrel of the gun. With a quick tap on the ground, the parts pivoted and shifted until the gun transformed into a baseball bat. Arty leapt up. With his feet no longer grounding him, he flew towards the Grimm's gaping maw.

"Arty!" Timbre yelled.

Sepia leaned forwards in her seat, but Roland barely budged.

Right as Arty would have been dragged down the deep red abyss, he swung his weapon, hitting the monster right between its bulbous eyes. The Grimm's top jaw came slamming down, effectively severing its tongue. Arty was able to free himself, pulling the glowing appendage from his arm. _Gross_ , he thought to himself as he watched the Camolurker reel back, writhing in pain.

It didn't take long for it to regain itself and focus both eyes on Arty. From his research, Arty knew that if both eyes focused on someone, it would stop at nothing to kill them. The monster lunged.

Arty heard Timbre yell out again, but he had a plan. He grabbed the handle of the bat with both hands and lifted it above his head. He brought it down on the orange splotch in front of him. The weapon channeled his aura into the Dust. Fire exploded across the arena.

Timbre covered her eyes from the intense light and heat. "Arty!"

Just as quick as the fire came, a forceful gust of wind blew the fire to embers and eventually ash sifted down through the air, leaving Arty as the only thing left in the arena.

Timbre jumped into the pit and tackled him in a hug, but not without punching him in the arm first. "You _idiot_! How did you even survive that?!"

Arty gave his toothy grin and held out a handful of bright white paintballs.

Timbre couldn't help but laugh, "You and your damn Dust paint, Umber."

"I try," he replied with a cocky grin.

Professor McGouran let out a sigh of relief, "Wow… I'm glad that my classroom was made to withstand Dust attacks now…" he chuckled, "Unlike Carmen's." He clapped and slid down the wall to congratulate Arty.

"Well done, Mr. Umber. A little more… chaotic than I would've hoped, but you not only used the battleground to your advantage, but you actually _changed_ the battlefield to make it even easier to find the Camolurker! While you _did_ get hit a couple of times, your demonstration of the information was impressive. I'll give you a B- as well for your effort."

Arty held his arms up, "I am _perfectly_ okay with that." He turned and gave Timbre a high-five before returning to their places at the benches.

"Good, good," Professor McGouran pointed to the cowboy in the back of the room, "Mr. Wells? You're the only one left. Come on down, or else your team won't get to keep the grades they received for their efforts."

Roland grunted, not removing his hat from over his face.

"After all that…" Timbre muttered angrily, "he better not screw us over…"

"He wouldn't have bothered to show up if he was planning to do that," Arty replied, but he didn't sound so sure of himself.

Of course, Roland had planned on getting his fight over with, but he didn't want to lose it on the battlefield. Even if it were against a Grimm, he was already having troubles holding in his emotions. He was still furious with them, most of them at least, but he couldn't just let down his entire team. That wouldn't help anyone.

"I will fight the Venice," he said flatly and slid down to the arena. He hadn't typed out any paper to use as a weapon, and he didn't need to. He just wanted to get this over with.

"So I hope that you understand that the Venice is a deer-like Grimm that has a very special ability, bein-"

"Get on with it, McGouran," Roland glared up at his instructor.

"If you don't answer my questions, then I cannot give you the full points, Mr. Well-"

"I said bring down the Venice, Professor McGouran. Please. I am fully aware of the situation with my grade," Roland informed him. Fury flashed in his eyes. He was sick of waiting for an outlet.

McGouran pulled a lever, sending a cage slamming into the dirt in front of Roland. "So be it," he said with nearly total apathy.

The cage opened, and out stepped a pitch black deer. It looked the most normal out of all of the Grimm that they had fought, though it was notably bigger than the average deer. It was roughly one and a half times bigger than a really large buck, but it still looked like one for the most part. It had the same bone mask as all Grimm, molten eyes, bone protrusions on its back and legs, and a massive pair of antlers that made a semicircle above its head like a broken halo. If one didn't know it was a Grimm, it would have been a serene sight to behold.

One truly notable thing about the beast was the human-like ribcage on its chest that seemed to be split by a red fracture across the breastbone. When it got its bearings and saw the cowboy that was set to kill in front of it, it reared up and took a stance on its hind legs.

Arty and Timbre watched on in horror and disgust as the Grimm began to transform.

Its neck contorted so that it could look down on its opponent. Lips parted to reveal rows of scraggly, horrific fangs. The ribcage popped open with an audible crack, allowing the chest to spread out wide so that it could effectively balance on its hind legs. The front hooves cracked and contorted into elongated hands with three clawed fingers each. The back hooves split to become wider, forming better platforms on which to stand.

"Another name for the Venice is the Wendigo, which you might know had you written your essay, Mr. Wells," McGouran had no clue as to why Roland would pick such a dangerous Grimm to fight. He watched as his student barely moved a muscle. On closer inspection, he saw that Roland's eyes were trained on the Grimm in a suicidal staring match. The student's eyes weren't lifeless like the Grimm's, though. They were burning beacons of violet fire. They were the eyes of death, "Mr. Wells, is everything alright…?"

Memories of the Nevermore flashed through Roland's mind. It too had dared to strut its stuff before attacking him. How dare such a monster act as though it were greater than he. This could not be tolerated. An insult like that could not be turned a blind eye.

In one fluid motion, Roland yanked off a grenade from his belt, pulled the pin, and lobbed it between the antlers of the Venice. It exploded into a cloud of ink, but that cloud condensed into a cat's cradle of ink between the points of the Grimm's rack of antlers. The Venice-turned-Wendigo gazed at him in horror as the antlers caved in on themselves into a mound of bone and ink atop its head. It let out an almost human-sounding scream as the top half of its bone mask crunched.

"I," Roland threw down a fist, sending the Wendigo in a back breaking arc towards the floor. The impact shattered whatever parts might have been inside a Grimm, as well as the front teeth of the creature, "hate," the fist came back up, then rocketing back down. The mask shattered in various places, and the Grimm let out another ear-piercing cry of pain, "you."

He began bashing its face into the dirt over and over, "I hate all of you," faster, "I HATE THAT YOU EXIST!" faster still, " _I'LL KILL EVERY LAST ONE OF YOU!"_ the Grimm already began to fade, but hadn't enough to fall out of Roland's inky grasp, " _ **YOU'RE ALL WORTHLESS!"**_

McGouran watched in horror as his student went into a berserker's rage on the Grimm. For the first time in his entire career, he almost felt sorry for one of the Creatures of Grimm, "Mr. Wells! That is enough!"

Roland threw a hand out, still bashing the shattered antlers against the ground. These were the only things that hadn't faded, " _ **BRING HER**_ -" he stopped mid sentence and stared at the empty wad of ink that he was still throwing against the dirt, "back…" he whispered low enough so that his team wouldn't hear, and then released his hold on the ink. It formed a black puddle where the Grimm had been.

Sepia looked wide-eyed at him. Even she had never seen him like that before. Sure, he went off on Timbre, but he walked away from that before things could get violent. It almost seemed like that Venice _was_ Timbre, or someone else that he was even angrier at. The thought of facing him like that chilled her to the core.

"He is a monster…" Timbre whispered. She shook from head to toe like she had the day before. Had she not known Roland's violent tendencies, she would've seen the fight as an entertaining show of power and skill. But she knew Roland. She knew that that anger wasn't aimed solely at the Grimm. Seeing that rage come out again wasn't on her bucket list, nor was seeing it acted upon.

Unlike his team, Arty actually began to have a thread of understanding. Timbre was right, but so was Sepia in saying that there was more to Roland's actions than just rage. Whatever was going on in his head was from the darkest depths of the imagination, and he needed help. He needed help bad, but that still didn't excuse his actions. He couldn't receive help if he wouldn't accept it.

"I apologize, Mr. Wells, but I cannot give you full credit for your fight. It did not last long enough for me to ask you about the Venice, nor did you allow me to," Professor McGouran cautiously slid down to the arena, "I am only able to give you a D-."

"Will you accept late work?" Roland asked quietly. He kept his head down, not wanting to meet anyone's eyes just yet. He felt embarrassed and ashamed. She would've frowned upon his violent tantrum.

"Well… I suppose that I could in this circumstance. You would still be turning in an essay on the day that it was due," McGouran examined the student for a moment, "Do you have your essay with you?"

Roland held up a hand towards where Sepia sat. A book bound in coffee-colored leather shot out from under the seat and into his hand. On the front it read 'Venice: A Brief History and Understanding of the Wendigo Grimm' in gold leaf, and underneath was printed 'Roland Solferino Wells' as well as the class information and due date. He watched as his instructor flipped through the pages in wonder.

"My father supplies a bookbinding company here in Vale, so I sent off the manuscript of my essay for them to bind. They were kind enough give me a discounted price. I went over the entire history of human and Faunus interaction with the Venice, habitats, temperament, and about everything else that I have read about them. The later fifth of the book is a full annotated bibliography complete with even the sources for the photographs and graphs that I used throughout the text," he paused, taking in the instructor's reaction. This was his normal essay format, even back in Sanctum. A few of the instructors even taught from his 'essays' from time to time, and he had even sent them revised editions of those 'essays' to make sure that the information stayed relevant. After all, textbooks written by Huntsmen and Huntresses _really_ sucked, "Will this suffice?"

"This is… how long did this take you to…"

"Four hours with breaks. Without breaks, two hours. Sepia kept distracting me," Roland managed to smile just a little. It made him proud that someone was so impressed with his writing.

"This is everything that I had in the rubric and more. This will certainly suffice. Thank you, Mr. Wells," McGouran looked up at the rest of Team ARTS, "Now, I hope that all of you have learned your lesson about your essays. I trust that this will not happen again."

"We will try our best, sir. Have a good night," Arty shouldered his bag. He began heading towards the door with Timbre at his side.

"Wait," Roland climbed up the side of the arena and caught up with Arty and Timbre.

Timbre shrunk back, seemingly in fear, "Look we can talk things out la-"

"I'm sleeping in my own bed tonight. I won't bother any of you. I won't say a word. Just leave me and my part of the room alone and we will all be fine," he stepped into the hallway. Time was what he needed. He could manage if only he had more of that, but he was scared it was already running out.

"Roland, you can't just make demands like that and not explain what's going on," Arty stared down his partner. If Roland thought that he could come back around just to continue being a brooding jerk, then he had another thing coming.

"Stay out of my business and we won't have a problem," Roland matched his leader's gaze, but it wasn't filled with fury like it was with the Venice. It was filled to the brim with pain, "I'm not ready to talk about things, alright? Timbre, you didn't want to talk about Koruss, right?" he asked the girl in green.

"That's different-" she began to retort, but Roland moved on.

"Sepia only told me about the stage accident after Mikado," he further pointed out.

Sepia stood in the doorway of the classroom and kept close eye on him.

"Arty, you still don't want everyone knowing what you did at Atlas," he clenched his fists.

"None of us got so violent, Roland. None of us disappeared because you did something that we didn't like. None of us put a burden on this team like you do because of our problems," Arty fired back. "When the time came, we told each other what happened before we came to Beacon and it's starting to look like that time's coming for you, too."

"Just leave it alone and everything will be fine!" Now Roland was beginning to get angry again. Just when he had decided that things might have a chance at getting better, his hopes were dashed. He wasn't getting the time that he needed.

Arty instinctively took a step back. After a long pause, he finally decided that he couldn't prevent his partner from sleeping in their dorm either way. He wasn't Alice. He wasn't going to do that to him. "Fine, will you please just talk to us in the morn-"

A fist collided with Arty's cheek. He stumbled into a nearby seat, but managed to catch himself before he could fall. He looked up at Roland, whose fist was still curled up into a ball.

"Arty!" Timbre shouted and put an arm around his shoulders.

"Screw off," he growled at his leader, "I'm sleeping in my bed tonight. I'm reading my books. I will eat my meals by myself, and I will sit away from you guys in class," he turned and began walking towards the dorms without so much as looking back.

"Bastard…" Arty straightened up with the help of Timbre. He rubbed his jaw, "I've had enough. We're talking to Professor Alabaster tomorrow. I don't know what else to do..."

Anything that might have been sympathy for his partner was dampened in Arty's mind as pain seeped in. He couldn't grab hold of Roland's reigns anymore, no matter how hard he tried. The dread Team ARTS being over before it even really started filled his heart, but as of now, it seemed to be the only possible result.


	24. V1Ch20: Old Demons

Tension still lingered in the room of Team ARTS the morning after the fights with the Grimm. Roland had gone to sleep the moment he got into the room and got in bed, but everyone else was concerned that he would wake up and decide that a round two was in order. This was not the case.

The first to rise was Sepia, or so she thought. It was difficult for her to sleep knowing that they were living in a worst case-scenario as far as teams went. Timbre was too scared of Roland to do anything, Arty was out of options, and she didn't believe that she could be of much help either. It all made her feel cold.

Upon realization that Roland wasn't in his bed, she ran over to Arty and shook him awake. Once he was no longer snoring, she did the same for Timbre. Despite what they were going through, it tore her apart to think that her teammate might have gone off and spent another night in Vale.

"Sepia? What is it?..." Timbre said groggily as she rubbed her eyes, "The sun's not even out yet…"

Sepia let out an ear-piercing whistle and pointed to Roland's bed.

"I'm honestly not surprised," Arty groaned as he got out of his bed, "It'd probably be better that way. I don't know how he'd react if he saw us leaving to see Alabaster."

"Do you want us to go with you?" Timbre asked, "I mean, I know you're leader and all, and it's usually the leader's job to report an issue with a team member… but it's _my_ fault he flipped out in the first place."

Sepia rubbed her arm nervously. She was at a loss as to what she should do, but she had to try something, ' _I'm going either way. I want to help.'_

Arty shrugged, "I don't see why you can't come, and something tells me that you're not going to let me stop you, Sepia."

Timbre nodded, "Okay. Should we try to go before Carmen's class?"

"That'd probably be best."

' _Then let's go!'_ Still in her pajamas, Sepia darted out the door without another word.

Arty and Timbre watched as she ran out.

Timbre pulled her uniform out from her closet, "She… she does know that she has to wear real clothes to class... Does she…?"

"I don't even know anymore, Timbre. I really don't."

.

"Okay," Arty led the way down the main hall of the lecture complex. It would be the quickest way from the dorms to Beacon Tower, "So I messaged Professor Alabaster telling him that we wanted to talk about Roland, but he hasn't messaged back. Let's just hope he responds and lets us up to his office before class starts," Arty noted the time on his scroll: half an hour until Carmen would begin her lecture, and they were walking right by her class. He half considered going ahead inside and hoping that things worked themselves out on their own, but he knew that that would be an irresponsible decision that would wind up causing more problems. The leaders of teams were supposed to do everything they could to resolve inner-team conflict, and he was no exception.

Sepia dashed ahead and held her arm out.

"Sepia, we don't have time for you to stop by the vending machines again," Arty protested, "We're going to talk to Alabaster, not fight another Scuttlepod."

' _Wait,'_ she signed. She approached the door to Carmen's classroom carefully. Muffled voices were all that she could make out at first, but she began to hear a conversation upon putting her ear to the door.

' _Come here,'_ she signed to Arty and Timbre as she pressed her ear harder against the door.

Arty continued to protest, "Sepia we don't ha-"

Sepia slapped his arm and pointed to the door. ' _I hear Alabaster talking to Carmen_."

"Alabaster's in there?" Timbre asked as she bent down to listen too, "What is he doing here this early in the morning?"

"Guys, this is wrong," Arty tugged at the backs of their uniforms, "We shouldn't eavesdrop."

Timbre's eyes widened, "Shh!... I just heard Roland's name."

Arty was intrigued now. They were already going to bring the problems with Roland to Alabaster's attention, but had the headmaster already beaten them to it? Reluctantly, he pressed his ear against the door.

.

"He keeps getting worse! He nearly began beating Timbre, Onyx! We have to do something about this!" Carmen stomped her foot. She stood in the center of her classroom with Professor Alabaster and, surprisingly, Vincentas, "I get it. He is one of our students, but I can't stand idly by and watch as he goes off on someone nearly every day! I'm scared that if this continues, he'll end up seriously hurting somebody!"

"Carmen, I understand your concern," Alabaster paced back and forth in front of her podium, "but we can't just kick him out of the school."

"I don't think that you want that kid anywhere else, either," Vincentas stood with his arms crossed. He shot Carmen a glare, "He's getting those memories dredged up again. It's just like when I dragged him away from Mistral. Ever dealt with a rabid animal? It's something like that, the only difference being that you can kill a rabid animal… _legally_."

"That woman's death is not an excuse to go on a rampage. His aura isn't right, Vince. It's always flaring up, but it got that… tone to it yesterday. A second before he went off, I nearly broke down from what I saw. You were right about who he is, but he is _dangerous_ ," Carmen retorted, "I'm sorry, but he's going to leave this school and become a criminal! We can not let that happen, but if he's going to stay here, he can't keep hurting other students!"

"You're just pissed that he went off on Aria's daughter. I'll have a talk with the kid, but that's all that needs to happen right now," Vincentas looked to Alabaster, "Will you dock my pay if I knock some sense into him?"

"I'm not solving problems with my students via violence," Alabaster looked between the Huntsman and the instructor, "You're aware that he actually managed to form a bond with Ms. Hughes, correct? I spoke with Victor, and it is my understanding that young Roland calmed down with her at his side, and only went into a rage after he left her to fight."

"Right, because he has another woman to hold onto and cry to," Vincentas rolled his eyes, "A bandage will only hold a wound together in hopes that it'll heal, but there's an issue with that. It can still be torn off with _very little effort_. He's gonna snap completely one of these days, and it'll be on _you_ when he does, Alabaster."

"If he would just talk to his team about what happened, then maybe he could stop holding all of it in," Carmen was at a loss, just as the members of Team ARTS.

Alabaster closed his eyes and considered the options, "At this moment in time, that rage won't help him, especially if it's directed at the other students."

Vincentas huffed, "Why don't we just explain to them what happened in Mistral? That way the ticking time bomb doesn't have a say in what they know about him?"

"That's out of the question, Vincentas," the anger in Alabaster's voice made the Huntsman and the instructor tense up, "That will only make things worse for everyone around him. The best course of action is hope that they can work it out for themselves in a manner that doesn't anger him further, and make him talk about his past without any intervention from the three of us."

Carmen stomped up to her boss and jabbed a finger at his chest, " _You_ were the one that wanted him here, Onyx. _You_ said it would be the best course of action, but if he hurts any of them, I swear… I will…" She struggled to find the words to finish her threat and ended up just throwing her fist through the air.

"Don't you mean if he hurts the little emo girl?" Vincentas scoffed, "If you ask me, she kind of had it coming. She's seen how that Wells kid is. She should've known how he'd react."

Carmen flew at him, her hand clenching around the Huntsmen's throat. She held him against the wall, his boots dangling helplessly above the floor, "Don't you _dare_ talk about her that way," every few seconds, she'd slam him into the concrete wall, "You know I made a promise to her mother, and I'm not going to let you and Alabaster's pet project put that in jeopardy!" She finally dropped Vincentas and stormed back to her podium. Her nostrils flared as she pretended to get her notes ready for her lecture.

Alabaster reached a hand out to her, "Carmen-"

She flung her arm up to bat his hand away, "Leave! I have a class in ten minutes and I don't want to take my anger out on my students."

Vincentas held his throat and coughed hard, sending out a bright red ball from between his rotted teeth. The slimy crimson candy rolled to a stop at Alabaster's feet.

"Psycho…" he growled while walking passed Alabaster. As he passed his employer, he leaned in closer so Carmen couldn't hear, "I'm starting to think that you're not paying me enough for what I'm having to deal with here."

"And you should know full well that money is nothing compared to what you're dealing with, so leave it be, Vincentas."

"Whatever, old man," Vincentas popped another candy into his mouth as he briskly walked to the large double doors at the top of the stairs.

.

Timbre cursed to herself as she pulled Arty and Sepia away from the door. She barely had time to lead them into the nearby cleaning closet before a rugged man with long sun-bleached hair and a red cloak stormed out of Carmen's classroom. They pushed the door open just enough to watch as the man grumble to himself as he paced around outside the door.

"I recognize him," Timbre whispered in surprise, "He's the guy that was escorting Roland around when we all first got here. What is he doing here?"

"Well," Arty thought aloud, "he did kinda keep Roland in check when I accidentally stepped on his tail… maybe some sort of anger management coach?"

"He's a Huntsman, Arty, not a therapist. Besides, you heard what they said. This guy's here for something _big_ …"

Sepia managed to push herself forward enough to see this man they were talking about. When she saw who it was, her eyes widened. If she wasn't mute, she would've had to slap her hand over her mouth to keep herself from screaming.

"Sepia?" Timbre said as she watched her partner fall back deeper into the closet, "What's the matter?"

Sepia signed something, but it was too dark to see.

Timbre and Arty were about to ask her to type on her scroll, but the sound of loafers on tile dragged their attention back out to the hall. Professor Alabaster stood with the man in the cloak.

"Vincentas, please," the headmaster put a hand on the Huntsman's shoulder, leading him towards the far exit to the tower courtyard, "just let things unfold. I'm sure things will turn out fine. Just stop trying to pick fights with Carmen."

"She started it," was the last thing they heard before the door closed behind them.

The three students decided the coast was clear enough to come out of the cleaning closet. The smell of bleach and soap was making their heads fuzzy.

"We need to go to the CCT after class," Arty said firmly, seemingly forgetting about Sepia's small freakout.

"What?" Timbre looked confused, "Why?"

"You heard what Carmen said, 'that woman's death is not an excuse to go on a rampage'," Arty held his hands out, "Who is she talking about?"

"She's probably talking about… about…" after all the years Timbre had known Carmen, she had never known her mom's best friend to hide a secret from her, especially one that could end up getting her hurt, "I don't know…"

"Well, I must say that I'm surprised that Team ARTS is here so early," Professor Maple said from behind Arty, Timbre, and Sepia.

Arty nearly jumped out of his skin at her voice, "H-hey, Professor Maple!" he quickly whipped around, "We're having a little trouble with Roland, so we were… looking for him."

"I see, well, I do hope that you're all keeping up with your study schedule for finals next week despite that!" her smile was as calm and genuine as ever, as if she hadn't just recently gone off on someone, "And I do hope that you all will be able to begin setting up for the welcoming ceremony for the students from the other kingdoms! We have to make a good impression on the representatives from the other schools, especially since they're going to be here _all_ next semester."

After the last few weeks of chaos, Arty had completely forgotten about Team ARTS serving as the welcoming committee, "Well… you see…"

"We won't be available to assist with that. Is there any way that another team could take over? Since we still have some… issues to work out in our team?," Timbre spoke up, knowing that her words would pull at Carmen's heart strings more than Arty's.

"Oh, don't worry about it. I completely understand. Do what you have to do," Professor Maple turned to begin return to her classroom, "Anything to get Roland in check…" her voice faltered as she realized what she said. She quickly darted back into her classroom, "See you all in class in a bit!" she called out before slamming the door.

"Anyway, about who they were talking about," Arty leaned against the wall outside of the lecture building door, "That's why I'm saying we go after class to look through Mistral obituaries."

Timbre shook her head, "Arty, people are dying _every day_. Remnant is a dangerous place. Do you have any idea how long that would take us?"

"We'll narrow down the search. Although our good friend hasn't really told us much, we know he's from around the capital, his dad runs a well-known trade company, and… uh…"

"He's a Faunus cowboy with a really bad temper. Yeah, we know a lot about him, Arty…"

"Hey," Arty held his hands up defensively, "it's a start."

' _Class later. We're helping Roland right now,'_ Sepia latched onto Arty and Timbre's arms and began dragging them out to the courtyard and off towards the CCT. The databases had all of the newspapers printed around Remnant stored digitally, so they could hopefully find something within them.

"Well, Carmen did say woman. We can narrow our search by fifty percent," Timbre thought out loud, "If she gives us trouble about not coming to class, then just let me do the talking. Alright?"

"Not like another referral will really do much to our current school record… you know, except getting us kicked from possibly participating in the Vytal Tournament… or get us expelled… or arrested if we end up destroying more school property," Arty counted off each possible punishment on his fingers, "You know, no biggie."

"If this solves the problem, then I don't think that they will be too mad," Timbre pointed out, "Look, getting punished is better than wondering if he's going to kill us in the middle of the night."

Arty considered Timbre's proposal, "You do have a point there… Fine, let's get to the bottom of this," as they began to climb the small stairway to the entrance of the CCT, the leader of Team ARTS couldn't help but feel like they weren't going to like what they were about to find out.

* * *

Although he had already been up for hours in order to make the airship back to Vale, Roland hesitated actually boarding. Roland wasn't one to skip class, but after his falling out with his team the night before, he was making an exception. Instead, he sat with his back against one of the columns in the courtyard that served as the dropoff point for airships. He clacked away at his weapon, making out another letter to his mother.

 _Hey mom, I'm still having a few issues. I punched out my leader yesterday, and I know that you would tell me off for that. You would go on about how when you were a leader, you wouldn't stand for such disrespect, and how I had better make amends before you came up here to drag me to tell Arty that I'm sorry. I feel_

"Shouldn't you be in class there, Roland?"

Roland looked up to find Gavin towering above him, his helmet and yellow visor disengaged to show his face. He glared up at him, "Shouldn't you be off on your mission?"

Gavin took a seat next to the Faunus, "Well, we got done early. Turns out that bandits give up pretty easy after they realize that the team of Huntsmen in training sent to capture them has a girl that can turn off gravity."

"Then get out of my hair and go back to your dorm," Roland grumbled. He tore off the letter that he was writing and folded it up. He slid it under his vest for safe-keeping, "I'm not in the mood for your fake bullcrap attitude."

Gavin grinned, "Nah, I took a nap on the way back. I just wanted to check up on the freshies," his attitude suddenly shifted as his smile faded, "but my attitude is _never_ fake, Roland. I'm always positive until someone tries to make things harder for everyone else." He nodded to Writer's Block. "What were you typing? Your cake recipe again?"

"How'd you know about the ca- nevermind," Roland glanced down at his weapon. It felt heavy on his arm all of the sudden. Being interrupted while writing was his pet peeve, but something else was eating at him.

"A letter to my mother," he finally said, but without any hint of enthusiasm.

Gavin raised an eyebrow, "You still write letters? I always thought everyone accepted the CCT as the main form of communication. Didn't know anyone really hand-wrote… er… hand- _typed_ letters anymore."

"She's not somewhere that the CCT system can reach," Roland bit the inside of his cheek. It was becoming harder and harder to speak through the knot growing in his stomach, "Gavin…" he let out a slow breath. Gavin wasn't the type to spread rumors, despite Roland's distaste of him, "I know that we have our differences, but can I tell you something and trust that you won't go telling anyone else? Not your own team, and especially not my team."

Gavin looked surprised, "Well, people have come to me before for advice, but I never would've imagined that _you_ would ever be one of those people!" He lowered his enthusiasm a bit and cleared his throat, "But, yeah, sure."

"I can't tell my team about..." Roland clutched his knees. If he said it, then it was real. CiCi Oscura was really dead, and he would admit that. That tore him apart, but he had to say it. Maybe this would make a talk with his team easier, "My mother passed away this past summer," he finally blurted out, "She was killed," he tucked his head down and tried to force back tears. Unfortunately, he wasn't strong enough to keep them in. He just gritted his teeth and let a few go, "She was mutilated, Gavin… Her tail was thrown across the room… blood was everywhere…" he couldn't stop the words coming out of his mouth. It was like someone opened up a faucet on full blast.

Gavin put an armored hand on Roland's shoulder reassuringly. "I'm sure people have said this, but Remnant is a dangerous place where people die all the time. I'm going to tell you that I've never believed that that should be a reason not to be sad… but it's not an excuse to deny it either, Roland. We all cope differently. Some leave flowers on graves, some drink, some do nothing," he looked to the boy next to him, "some write letters that never get sent." Gavin stood up and looked out over the cliff to the city of Vale below, "Everyone copes in their own way, but keeping it all bottled up won't help you. It alienates yourself from those around you, _especially_ those who care about you," Gavin went quiet for a moment, "Hiding it won't help you. In my family, hiding secrets like that is considered a major insult."

"If I tell them that she's… gone, then I have to admit that she is. I can't do that," Roland let out a sob and leaned forwards even more. His head throbbed as he tried to prevent himself from completely breaking down, "She was all that I had. Without her, I'm lost... No one to tell me where to go. No one to tell me that I'm worth something. She was the only one who ever told me that I could amount to something, but now she's gone!" he shouted and pounded his fist against his leg.

"The fact that she's no longer _physically_ with you doesn't make what she said suddenly false," Gavin leaned against another pillar, across from Roland, "What she said stuck with you, and you obviously don't believe it's false. She's gone but she's not… _gone_. That make sense?"

"I…" Roland could almost hear what his mother would be telling him.

"Get off your butt and get to work! Don't you dare keep moping over me! I raised you better!" she would have shouted.

"You know, she wouldn't be too happy that I'm acting like this over her," he finally said. He wasn't crying anymore, "You're right, though. She isn't entirely gone, but…" he stared at the cobblestones as he collected his thoughts, "I'm not ready to talk to my team about it. I feel like I'm going to go off on them if I see them. Timbre went through my things, and Arty seems fine with it, and Sepia… she's stuck in the middle. I'm pissed. Really pissed. Is it wrong of me to delay having this talk with them for at least another day or two so that I can collect my thoughts?"

Gavin shrugged, "I'm not going to tell you what to do, Roland. I will tell you to do what _you_ think is right. What's going to get _you_ through this?" He reached a hand out to him, offering to help him up, "Okay?"

Surprisingly enough, Roland reached up and latched onto Gavin's hand. He stood up and wiped his eyes, "Thanks… I guess," he let go and brushed himself off, "If you tell anyone that you saw me cry, I will end you."

A light smile curved at the ends of his mouth, "Don't worry, Roland. I won't breathe a word," as the pseudo-space-warrior made his way down the main walkway, he paused, "Oh, and Roland,"

Roland turned to him as his usual scowl returned to his face, "What?"

"We all cope differently," he repeated, "I'd go ahead and finish that letter if I were you."

And with that, Gavin was gone.

"Happily," Roland sat back down and began typing once again. The words came easier to him, and, more importantly, they were honest.

 _Sorry for that interruption, mom. I'm going to take a break and tell you about the way my team handled some strange Grimm last night._

* * *

Arty scanned over the articles on the computer screen in front of him, "Find anything, yet?"

"Nope," Timbre said from the console next to him, "It's sad seeing so much about people who've died…" she shook herself out of it and got back to the task at hand, "Arty, there's a big problem with this idea…"

"What's that?" he asked.

"How are we supposed to know who exactly Roland's upset about?"

Arty stared blankly into space for a few moments, "Oh…"

"Alabaster, Carmen, and that Huntsman guy never said a name, and all we know is that she _might_ have been from the city of Mistral."

"Which means we don't know if she was even family, or neighbor, or teacher or-"

Timbre's eyes lit up, "Arty! That's it!" she began to scroll and type furiously.

Arty leaned over to watch as she typed.

"I knew that sounded weird," she muttered to herself as she pulled up the front page of a newspaper. The photo showed a funeral procession. People in dark suits surrounded a gravestone covered in flowers. "A Huntress who taught at Sanctum, a combat school in Mistral, was found in her apartment… after a…" Timbre covered her mouth.

"Mass murder in an apartment complex within the capital city..." Arty finished reading the sentence.

"The complex was located within a lower-income neighborhood within the city and had predominantly Faunus inhabitants, leading police officials to believe that the crime was hate-inspired…" Timbre leaned back in her chair, taking in deep breaths to deal with what she was reading. "Why wasn't something like this in papers across Remnant?"

"Look here," Arty pointed to a list of names, "Among those lost in the attack was Chiara "CiCi" Oscura, a teacher of writing and aura control at Sanctum. Ms. Oscura was known as a very kind and giving woman in her community, going out of her way to help those less fortunate than herself…" Arty stopped reading for a moment, "Timbre… Roland mentioned her the first day we met, in the Emerald Forest. He told me to never bring her up."

Timbre scanned over the image for a minute until she found what she was expecting, "Arty… look," she zoomed in to one side of the small shrine that acted as her gravestone. There, holding a familiar hat in his hands as a group of other teens consoled him, was Roland. The two teens closest to him were a blonde girl with a long ponytail and a shorter boy with dark hair and glasses.

"Roland wasn't kidding when he said he actually had friends back in Mistral." Arty said in disbelief.

Timbre closed the tab and shut down the station, "Arty… did that not just click with you just now?" She received a blank stare, "Chiara Oscura was the _writing_ and _aura control_ teacher at the same combat school Roland went to before coming here for his Huntsman training. Roland's entire _identity_ relies on writing and Carmen mentioned to me one day that his aura's much stronger than most of the first-years she's ever taught. What if she was the one that helped him find all that?..."

Arty looked down solemnly, "And we've been bothering him about it non-stop for days. The whole semester even… She must have been a huge influence in his life."

"The sudden shock of her being taken away couldn't have helped," Timbre walked away towards the exit with Arty and Sepia chasing after her, "Arty… how are we going to bring this up…?"

"I don't know if we should be the ones to bring it up, Timbre."

"Well he's not going to talk to us on his own…"

"I know, I know… I… I don't know how we're going to get through this. If Roland decides to tell us before the end of the semester, then fine, but if he doesn't and we're forced to tell him that we know about Ms. Oscura…" Arty stopped to sit on a nearby bench, his head in his hands, "I don't know what to do, Timbre… the first option will more than likely _never_ happen in a million years, and the other would more than likely lead to disaster."

He and Timbre's scrolls dinged.

 **Sepia Hughes: Then we make a third route. Look, Timbre, I know you're scared of him right now. Arty, I know that you're at a loss as to what to do. It feels like I'm the only one saying it'll fix itself if we just love our teammate. Neither of you would throw your fathers in the gutter for being crappy people sometimes, so we can't do that to Roland. Even if he's being an irrational jerk, I still love and care about him. Don't you two?**

Sepia put her hand out, palm down.

Arty hesitantly put his hand down on top of hers.

"Well," Timbre paused, "I wouldn't say _love_."

Arty nudged her with his elbow.

"Okay, fine. Fine," she put her hand on the top of the pile.

With her free hand, Sepia did a series of hand motions. First, she held up four fingers. Second, she spun her pointer finger in a circle, moving between the three of them.

"For Team ARTS…" Timbre translated.

Arty nodded, "For Team ARTS... right... for Team ARTS."


	25. V1Ch21: ANTE Up

It was a quiet morning for Team ANTE. Alice stretched her arms as the alarm on her scroll began to ring. She reached over and pushed the center button to turn it off. With a double clap of her hands, the lights came on.

The three boys began to stir.

Navy, due to his soldier-like nature, jumped up immediately and began making his bed.

Ebon and Turf, on the other hand, were groaning as the light burned their still sensitive eyes.

"Get up," Alice demanded as she pulled her uniform out of her closet, "Professa Maple is goin' over new material an' she said that it _will_ be on tha final," She turned and folded her hands to her hips and frowned disapprovingly at Ebon and Turf, "an' I _refuse_ ta miss it because you two decided ta oversleep because you allowed yourselves ta get beaten so bad by your Grimm that your auras broke!" She turned to leave for the bathroom, "I mean, really, I expected more from ya, Ebon."

"At least I didn't almost mix up my weapon with a pack of regular playing cards," Ebon mumbled, "Hey, Turf, you with us?"

He received no response. Upon observation, he saw that Turf was curled up into a neat little ball atop his pillow and snoring away.

"Wanna go play catch?" Ebon asked.

Turf's dog ears perked up while his eyes were still closed, "Ball…?" he mumbled in his sleep.

"Ball." Ebon confirmed.

"BALL!" Turf shot up and darted off of his pillow. His foot caught the end of his bedframe, sending him face-first into the floor, "Don't mess around like that, man…" he groaned. He rolled onto his back, and he caught Navy's death glare, "What? Something wrong?" Seeing Roland and Yamuna handle Alice and Navy gave him renewed confidence as a Faunus. He couldn't change, so he wasn't going to let people tell him that he had to.

Navy rolled his eyes, "Whatever. Just hurry up and get ready," Navy went to his corner of the room, where he kept a set of weights. He began doing a few reps, keeping a watchful eye on Turf and Ebon to make sure they didn't go back to sleep. They liked to take advantage of the clapper lights to make the room dark again without leaving the comfort of their beds.

Turf ruffled his hair and threw on his uniform as quickly as possible. Since Navy already forced them to learn how to get ready in under a minute earlier in the semester, he decided that it would be best for him to use that lesson against him, "There. Ready. Happy? Need me to comb my hair, or should I just shave it off and look like an Atlesian soldier?" being like this wasn't usually in his nature, but Turf was still angry over Navy stealing his hat. He didn't feel like he needed it anymore, but it still had sentimental value.

"You're gonna piss him off again, man…" Ebon whispered.

Navy dropped the weight he was lifting and walked up to Turf. Though he was only a few inches taller than his teammate, his frame was definitely larger. "Excuse me?"

"Oh, I didn't make it clear that you'd have a better place over at Atlas instead of Beacon? I mean, hey, Arty left that gods forsaken school. They've got a place nice and warmed up for you!" Turf used the lesson that Roland gave him about getting under people's skin, but also Yamuna's lesson in staying positive. After all, if they couldn't wipe the smile off his face, then they couldn't win.

Navy looked aggravated, but also confused at Turf's newfound confidence, "I think I could tolerate you better when you still had the hat." His workout officially cut short, he quickly got dressed in his uniform with his usual blue camouflage hat on top of his head. He opened the door to the hall and stepped out, "I'm going to breakfast. Alice expects you to be there and done eating twenty minutes before class," and with that, he slammed the door.

"He didn't… he didn't beat the snot out of you…?" Ebon looked on in disbelief, "No freaking way…" he gawked and slowly sat back down on his bed. He had just followed Alice and Navy's orders, but Turf had just proved that he didn't have to as long as he put his foot down, "Here," he reached under his mattress and handed Turf his hat back, "Navy had me hide it. I-I didn't want to, but I didn't… have a choice…"

Turf gingerly took the hat back. He wasn't surprised by any means that it was Ebon who was forced to do the dirty work, but he didn't blame him, "Thanks, man. I appreciate it."

"Anytime," Ebon began getting dressed, "Now I wanna try out being sassy," he pulled up his pants and fastened the belt, "Hey! Alice!" he called towards the bathroom.

"Just a minute, Ebon!" Alice called out as she blow dried her hair.

"You know, I thought that Arty's shirts were really orange, but then I saw your hair! You don't even need a safety vest to go hunting!" Ebon called out, hoping that he was loud enough to be heard over the blow dryer.

Alice ignored the banter. It was too early to get annoyed. She recognized the fact she had a short temper during her time in the infirmary. Though she still sort of blamed Yamuna for everything, she couldn't help but feel like maybe her short fuse didn't help it, either. "Just shut your trap an' get dressed, Ebon. I want ta get ta breakfast."

"Turf, it isn't working…" Ebon whispered.

"You've got to mean it, buddy," Turf tossed him his jacket, "Finish getting rea… dy…" his ears perked up. He heard something that he thought was impossible. Footsteps from outside. Three pairs, "Team ARTS is already out of bed. Well, most of them, anyway…"

"No way…" Ebon ran to the door and poked his head out the door. Sure enough, Arty, Timbre, and Sepia were walking towards the stairwell, "They're up early…?"

Alice finally emerged from the bathroom, ready to go for the day. She found Turf and Ebon sitting around ready, but not out for breakfast, "Well? Get a move on!" That's when she noticed the green fabric in Turf's hands. She pointed to it, "Is that…? I thought I took that away from…" she paused, "You know what, just... take it back," she walked out the door into the hall, "Takin' your cap lost its charm a while ago." She sounded almost disheartened.

"Why are you telling me to take it back when I already took it back?" Turf followed her close behind. He pulled it back on and let out a sigh of relief. It felt good to have his hat back, "I mean, it kind of defeats the purpose. I wasn't planning on letting it out of my sight."

Alice turned her nose up, "I could easily take it back, but I think I've punished ya enough for being a F-..." she interrupted herself to fix her wording, "for hidin' things from me for so long."

The word 'Faunus' was about to pass her lips, Turf knew that much, but he was so taken back that she stopped herself that he didn't make a big deal of it, "Right, got it. Sorry for keeping it from you guys for so long. You know how y…" he caught himself as well, returning Alice's gesture, "You know how people can act towards Faunus. I didn't want to get beaten to a pulp."

Alice knew how much Turf wanted to include her specifically in that statement. It confused her. She had seen Turf as just a dirty rapscallion when she first met him, and the fact that she had to pass up being Timbre Forte's partner to get paired up with him didn't help her opinion of him. Things were fine for a time, but ever since his brothers revealed him as a Faunus, she didn't know what to think about him anymore other than the fact that he was still the same person he was before the beanie came off. "Yes. Well, you know Navy. He's a jarhead through and through, but he's a vital asset to have on our team and a… good… friend," she seemed to have trouble saying those last few words. She didn't know what to say or who she wanted to have by her side. On the one hand, Navy reflected her ideals towards people and desire to be the absolute best, and he was loyal and obeyed his leader without a second thought on top of that. Turf, despite being a Faunus, was a nice person. Though he lacked the same synchronicity as Navy, he was more… enjoyable to be around.

Alice pushed the thoughts away in order to focus on the day ahead. "After class, I'm going to study in the library. You two… go do whatever you want. Just make sure you review the material for finals."

"I was thinking about that, actually. How about we do some networking and exchange notes with Team ARTS and Team FREZ?" Ebon spoke up. He felt awkward just listening to Turf and Alice go back and forth, "I'm sure that FREZ has everything lined out so it's as simple as possible for Everest."

Alice put a hand to her chin and thought for a moment. Her relations with the two other first year teams from their orientation group weren't the best… "If you guys want to, you can ask. I think my notes will be fine enough for me."

"Let us know if you want us to make copies if you change your mind," Ebon looked hesitantly to Turf. It was strange to be having such a calm conversation with Alice.

They entered the dining hall where students crowded around long tables. The smell of bacon, pancakes, and eggs floated through the air, "Right, so, breakfast. I'll go on and catch up with Team ASHS," Turf had been eating with Team ASHS ever since his reveal as a Faunus so that Alice wouldn't bite his head off. That, and it was nice to be with his cousins, and even better when Yamuna decided to join in, "If… you two want to join in, then you guys can. They're a little wacky, but they do have some good advice for us first years. Well, Anubis and Hati do anyway."

Alice looked to one of the far corners of the hall. The four wolf Faunus brothers sat at the end of one of the tables, secluded from everyone else. All except for the one in the black leather jacket were jumping around and laughing.

For some reason, the usual sense of disgust and annoyance was absent in her mind. Instead, she felt uncomfortable. "No, that's okay. I want to get some reading in before class," she showed them the small, worn out textbook on the use of aura as a personal shield, "I don't want to be underprepared if Maple decides to give us another one of her _beautiful_ pop quizzes."

"Emphasis on beautiful. I swear, everything that she prints is in at least ten different colors of ink," Turf chuckled, "Beacon's one heck of a place, huh? It isn't just the students that are crazy, but the faculty too! You'd have to be at least a little insane to work here, wouldn't you?" Maybe small talk could provide some insight to what was going on in Alice's head. Crack a joke here, crack a joke there, and pray that she pulls the stick out of her butt just far enough to get a laugh in before Navy kicked it back in.

"Yeah," Alice said absent-mindedly, "I'm going to grab my food. I'll meet up with you two in class."

Beneath his hat, Turf's ears folded down. _Why do I care? She's been a jerk to me whole time we've been here,_ he thought. Still, he felt like she was showing a human side for once. She wasn't being… well, Alice, "We'll catch up with you in class. Early, as usual."

Alice nodded and they split up.

A few minutes later, Alice sat with her textbook and notes in front of her. As she scanned the pages, she occasionally took a sip of her tea or a bite from her breakfast plate laden with toast, sunny-side-up eggs, sausage, and baked beans. As she got to the chapter on training one's aura by using a Semblance in order to strengthen the potential barrier, someone laid their tray down next to hers.

"Hey," Navy said as he sat down, "Doing some last minute studying before class?" he asked in his usual expressionless glower and flat draw.

"Yeah, just in case Maple decides ta give us a pop quiz again."

Navy rolled his eyes, "Knowing her, I wouldn't be surprised." He noticed Alice was being quieter than usual, "Are you okay? You seem a bit… out of it." He looked across the room where Turf and Ebon were laughing with Team ASHS, "Did the Faunus say something to you?"

Alice looked up from her book and shook her head, "No, Navy, he didn't."

"I could push him around a bit to make sure it doesn't happen again."

"No, Navy. Just… just let it go. He's fine."

Navy's brow furrowed even further to show his confusion, "What?..."

"I said, it's fine."

"Just couple of weeks ago you were contemplating on giving him back his hat just so you didn't have to look at his _deformities_ any longer."

"Yeah, well, I've realized I'm not exactly tha most popular person around here, an' bein' mauled by a wolf made me think that I might need ta rethink how I present myself around othas."

"So you're going back on what you believe?" he sounded disappointed.

"No, I'm just reconsiderin' what I believe."

"If you ask me, it sounds like you just don't want to get mauled by a Faunus again."

"That wasn't Yamuna's faul-"

"Like hell it wasn't. I understand that what you went through was pretty scary, since, need I remind you, you almost _died_ because of her."

"I provoked her, Navy."

"Exactly. That's not changing your beliefs, that's hiding them because you feel like you have to."

"What has gotten inta you, Navy?"

"You said it yourself, all Faunus are the same. Violent backstabbing criminals. Yamuna's a monster, Team ASHS is just a bunch of good-for-nothing troublemakers, Roland is a walking temper tantrum, and Turf is-"

"Completely normal. I've been thinkin' about this Navy. The other Faunus 'ave their… problems, but that doesn't make them the people I always thought they were… an' Turf is the same person he was before I knew he was a Faunus."

"He lied to you about that though."

Alice shoved her book under her arm and grabbed her tray before standing up. "I need ta work this over on my own, Navy. I'm tellin' ya now, drop the subject," she turned and walked off to return her half-empty tray, "I'll see you in class."

Navy lifted a cup of coffee to his mouth, "You need more resolve, Alice. You're letting them get to you."

"I'm keepin' an open mind. You should take some notes," Alice glared at her lackie. She held her chin up and began trotting away. _What has gotten inta me…?_

.

The bell rang for class to begin, and, as usual, Team ANTE had been in the room for five minutes already and lined up along the front row.

Professor Maple paced the front of the room, waiting for the last team to arrive, Team ARTS. She was baffled by the fact that they weren't in class. After all, she had just seen them, minus Roland. She guessed that they were off trying to fix their problems as she suggested, but she didn't think they'd take it as her telling them to skip her class.

"Well then…" she took a final glance up at the doors before leveling her gaze to Team ANTE, "What was it…? Oh! Right! Team ARTS needs you four to take over as welcoming committee for the students from the other schools. Sorry for the short notice, but you guys were are next pick if Team ARTS wasn't available. Not to say that you all couldn't do the job, of course, but that the artists might add a certain flair to it," she bit her lip. She still wasn't fully composed after the little talk with Vincentas and Alabaster.

Alice perked up. She wasn't expecting to have to do something extra like this, but the opportunity was perfect to help get her mind off of the conversation she had had with Navy, along with everything else going on in her head. "Oh, yes. Of course Professa. We'd be happy ta do that."

"Great! So, onto today's lesson, but first…" She held up a stack of multicolored papers with a forced grin on her face, "Pop quiz!"

The students all groaned in response.

"I'm kidding, I'm kidding…" she put the papers down, "They're just the ones that I haven't graded anyways… Just a poor attempt at trying to lighten the stress of finals. So, today's lesson. Aura abnormalities, or I guess a more polite term would be _anomalies_."

The students now seemed to look interested for the most part. For Huntsmen in training, aura was a common thing to talk about and deal with. The possibility of there being something that set one person's aura apart from another besides color and strength piqued their curiosity.

"So, to start off, let's do a small exercise. We all know that when one's aura is depleted in battle, either through over-use or taking too much damage, you see a bright shimmer across their body. In layman's terms, your aura 'shatters', which leaves you open to be wounded. We're just going to talk about the point of the aura _breaking_ to keep today's lesson light and not depressing. When the aura breaks, the aura is actually visible. Now that's not to say that this is the only way aura can appear, but that's besides the point. Aura is a different color for everybody. You may remember your aura activating during your training at some point, but not everybody really remembers the color, whether it be from being super careful and having it never break, never manifesting it in battle as a shield, or getting it confused with your chosen color you get or choose later in life. With a show of hands, how many of you don't know the color of your aura?"

Only a few hands raised.

Alice noticed that among those, Rime raised her hand. Hesitantly, she raised hers too. The two teams looked at their respective members with confused looks.

"Alice?..." Ebon leaned forward to talk to her, "you don't know what color your aura is?"

"Why else would I be raisin' my hand?" She snapped back.

"Okay then," Professor Maple looked around the room nodding to herself, "A few of you. Don't worry, it's completely normal at this point in your lives. You're usually not even exposed to situations that would shatter your aura this early," she walked up to Alice. "Ms. Crims…" she focused on her for a moment, "it seems to me that your case comes from being given or receiving a color earlier in life and your…" she thought for the right word, "inner energy… developed to have a separate color."

Alice looked shocked, "Really?... You're saying my aura isn't-"

"Red? No." Professor Maple was in full teaching mode now. Her enthusiasm taking over, "Did you inherit your color? From your mom or your dad?"

Alice nodded, "I got it from my fatha. Came with the family name as well. Every Crims since the Great War has had red as their colour."

Professor Maple smiled, "Exactly! You see, some families here in Remnant pass down some aspects of their identities. Some have hereditary Semblances, some pass down their emblems in one way or another, some, like Ms. Crims' family, pass down their color."

"So what colour is my aura if not red?" Alice interrupted.

"Your aura is _white_ , dear."

Alice looked surprised. She never had any idea.

"Wait…" Rime of Team FREZ cut in, "How do you know that Professor?"

Carmen smirked, "Well Rime, you see, Semblances are a funny thing… Some people are able to move at extreme speeds, some can bend substances like water or rocks or even ink to their will, some can do more extreme things like change the force of gravity itself," she held her arms open, "I, on the other hand, am able to see aura even when it's not actively visible. I can't exactly use that _offensively_ except in some very particular situations, but it does come in handy when teaching."

"You're just now telling us this?..." Turf questioned.

Carmen scoffed and faked offense, "I can't go giving away _all_ of my teaching secrets in the first semester of school. So, moving on. Ms. Chione…" Carmen's eyes focused on the mouse of a girl.

"No, no, I'm not asking for me," Rime cut in. With the hand that wasn't preoccupied with twirling her necklace, she pointed to her leader, "Every time I've seen Frost's aura break or seen her use it as a shield, it's a different color. There were even a few times when it shifted color mid-use! She refuses to give me a clear explanation so could you please tell me what the heck's up with that?"

Professor Maple paused, her smile fading as she looked to Frost. "That is pretty weird, isn't it? You see, Ms. Aurora's aura has no defined color. Her aura actually looks like an aurora. Frost Aurora's aurora aura, if you will." In her eyes, she could see a glowing outline around Frost that was every color of the rainbow at once, swirling together in a shimmering array of light.

"So I'm not crazy…" Rime sat back in her chair and sighed in relief.

"So, I am one of those... anomalies then?" Frost asked, not sounding particularly surprised.

Carmen nodded, "Oh yes… definitely. Do you have any idea as to why your aura would have developed this way?"

Frost thought over the question, "Well… I did not inherit my color. My parents let me choose it. Growing up, I constantly changed my mind. One day I liked green, the next I liked red, and the next I would like blue. It never stayed constant. Then one day I found out that all colors exist in white light. That is when I found out white was the best pick for me, but I think my aura had other plans. I have stayed with white because I have thought of it as all of my favorite colors together."

Carmen kept her eyes locked on the rainbow haze around her student, "That certainly makes sense. As you grow up, your aura develops with your personality, which is why your Semblances often develop later. They're an extension of your aura…" she realized she was rambling a bit, "In short, your Semblance is part of aura, aura is based on personality, therefore Semblance is based on personality. Basic stuff you already know, right?"

The class nodded in silent agreement with the crazy lady.

"Okay, great. That's pretty much my lesson for today, or at least some of it. Just do the readings and you'll get most of it… hopefully. Finals are super soon, so I'm letting you kids out early to _study_!" Carmen looked up at the exits, "Don't tell Alabaster that I dismissed class an hour early. Just… avoid him at all costs, okay? I don't want to get in trouble for 'not conducting my classes in a professional manner' again."

As the class filed out, Alice turned to face her team, "Look chaps," she pulled the books she was carrying closer to her chest, "I'm… gonna go ta the library. You three just… go do whateva."

"Just as long as we don't go hanging out with ARTS or FREZ?" Turf finished what he thought Alice's orders were going to be.

"No. Just... whateva." Alice waved them off as she began to walk down the hall, her eyes to the tiles as her jumbled thoughts crashed around in her head.

Ebon watched on with horror and confusion in his eyes, "What is up with her today?"

"I don't know, but I'm not complaining." Turf shrugged and headed the opposite direction, "I'm gonna go find Team ASHS. I'll see you guys later…"

"Right, then I guess it's just me and you, Navy," Ebon clapped together his gloved hands. Even in Beacon uniform, he still donned his ski gloves, "Think we should go get some supplies to set up the ballroom to welcome the exchange students?"

Instead of saying "okay" or "I'll pass", Navy just turned and walked away to go the direction that Alice had gone.

"Cool…" Ebon waved meekly, "See ya later, buddy…"

.

Alice made her way down the hall, walking to the library as if on autopilot. Her eyes weren't even focused on where her boots stepped. The day before had sparked a string of thoughts that still hadn't stopped, and refused to stop anytime soon.

...

"Team ANTE!" Professor McGouran shouted from across the room as Alice and her team entered the Grimm Combat classroom, "So _glad_ you could join me!" He shifted some papers on his desk, "You four must be very eager to raise your grades since you signed up to go first. Are you worried your writing wasn't… satisfactory?"

Alice shook her head, "No, sir. We just wanted to guarantee our good grades an' get some more trainin' fightin' Grimm in a _controlled_ environment, which is what I think we," she glanced to Turf and huffed, "or at least a _few_ of us _desperately_ need."

Ebon noticed Turf's dog ears drooping a bit from Alice's comments. Granted, Turf didn't have the best luck with some of the faster Grimm, but his skills were nowhere near the level Alice seemed to be making them out to be. Ever since Turf was revealed to be a Faunus, Alice's prejudice only expanded the rift within Team ANTE. Navy only supported her in her questionable actions.

"I see…" McGouran looked up at the collection of writhing cages for a moment, "Who will be going first, then?" he asked with his eyes centered on one of the cages above the battlefield. There was one Grimm up there that he had to special order from Vacuo just for the chance that Team ANTE would sign up for the alternate assignment. Luckily for him, they did, and that meant that he could write off the expense on Beacon's pocketbook.

The three young men looked to their leader. They had learned quickly that if anyone was going to have first say between the four of them, it would be her. As expected, she raised a hand with a ruffle of her sleeve, "I will Professa."

"Oh, how nice!" McGouran slammed down a lever, making the cage that he was staring at come crashing down into the dirt. Sheet metal rattled and shuttered around the box. Inside, molten discs flashed and zipped around inside. Its plumage could be seen waving around just above its eyes.

"So…" Turf cringed and stepped back from the arena, as if the Grimm in the cage could lunge at him any second, " _that's_ a Ripper?..."

"Looks like it…" Ebon watched on not in fear, but what seemed like worry for Alice. Everyone in Beacon knew about her weaker-than-average aura. What made her think that taking on a Ripper was a good idea, he hadn't a clue. But here she was, triumphantly standing above it as it struggled in its cage.

"Ms. Crims," McGouran waved a hand towards the cage, "I'll only release it once you're down there. This Grimm is particularly vicious, so I want to make sure that you don't sustain a major injury."

Alice brushed off his comment and slid down into the battlefield, "I'll be _fine,_ Professa." She withdrew a few cards from her dress pockets. With three in each hand, she braced herself for her target to be released, "I can handle myself."

"Fair enough," McGouran put his thumb over the release button. Poor Alice didn't know what she was getting into, but he paid too much for this Grimm just to let it die in captivity. With his final concern thrown to the wind, he pressed the button, "Enjoy yourself!"

The first Grimm fight of the day didn't begin like the others that followed it. This Grimm didn't make a show of its release. No. The Ripper lunged at Alice as soon as it was free of its prison. Had she not jumped back, it's razor-filled maw would have closed around her neck. A pair of parallel talons ripped through the hem of her dress.

" _ **Oh bloody 'ell!"**_ Alice sidestepped another swipe, this one aimed at her eyes. That's what she got for choosing the most intelligent Grimm on McGouran's list. Of course she had to choose the smartest one. Of course she had to choose the most aggressive one. She had more in common with this Grimm than the majority of the student body at Beacon.

What did that mean that she was, though?

The Ripper pounced, and Alice snapped back into reality for just long enough to dodge. It growled in its displeasure. Its beady eyes glowed with primal fury behind its skull mask. Thin black feathers stood on end, making the already towering beast seem even bigger. Its forelimbs tucked close to its chest, and the hind legs that it stood on folded back into a crouching position.

"So, tell me what you know about the Ripper!" McGouran pulled down what seemed to be a magnifying lens from his goggles to get a better view on Alice's… situation.

"It's an odd Grimm discovered well afta the Great- _**BUGGA OFF!**_ " Alice threw down a Three of Diamonds to create a temporary ice barrier between her and the monster, "War. The Rippa is a Grimm simila in appearance to the fossils of raptas found in Vacuo. It's like a dinosaur ratha than just your average monsta!" she threw a razor-sharp Five of Clubs through the ice, managing to trim off a few feathers from the end of its tail, "Very cleva, deadly, and known ta gut entire teams of Huntsmen and Huntresses when they attack in packs!"

"You definitely know a bit about the history and deadly reputation, Ms. Crims, but how do you kill this variety of Grimm?" McGouran watched carefully as the Ripper whipped around the ice wall to snap at Alice again. It caught the edge of her sleeve, but she managed to yank away fast enough.

Alice held up a hand of glowing red cards, "In whateva way ya can!"

"That's about all you can do, so get to it!" McGouran leaned forward in his seat. He feared that he might have to intervene in this fight.

Alice launched her cards at the Ripper. With her aim, they were sure to hit. They could not miss, but a chill clutched her heart. No explosions came. No light burned her irises. That clever little bugga ducked and weaved around her cards, letting them explode harmlessly behind it.

The Ripper's talon dug in against her aura, sending her rocketing back into the curve of the pit. With its prey dazed and helpless, it waltzed towards her with predatory lust in its eyes. Its jaws opened up to take a chunk out of Alice's middle, but its teeth only glanced off the galvanized steel blade wedged into the hinge of its jaw.

Alice looked on in shock as her partner stood in front of her, holding the Grimm back with his shovel in its jaws. She watched as he struggled to hold the creature back. Despite its size, it was strong. Very strong.

" _Turf!_ What in Remnant are ya doin'? This is _my_ fight, not yo-"

"I'm not letting you get put back in the-" Turf gritted his teeth and pushed against the creature. Veins popped along his biceps from the strain the Ripper was putting on him, " _Get! OFF!"_

He yanked out his shovel blade and slammed the flat of the blade against the Ripper's nose. He swung again, digging the blade into its ribs. With a loud bang, a shotgun blast sent it rocketing into the other end of the pit.

"As I was saying…" Turf huffed, "I'm not letting you get put back in the infirmary."

Alice was dumbstruck. She wanted to call him a "stupid Faunus" or a "mangey mutt", but nothing came out. His voice snapped her back to reality.

"Are you just going to stand there or are you going to kill this thing?!"

Instinctively, she reached into her pockets and filled the spaces between her fingers with cards, all of them Spades. "Watch my back while I finish this?"

Turf nodded, "Yeah, I've got you."

Alice defiantly began her casual toe-to-heel walk towards the monster. The Ripper was shaking off the blow from Turf's shovel. It glared at her with its burning eyes and let out a loud shrill cry, echoing from its glowing insides. It clawed the dirt and charged.

Alice wasn't going to give it another chance. The Diamonds, Clubs, and Hearts all failed. Keeping space between herself and the Grimm and hitting it alone weren't good enough. Her only option was to do both with each attack. She focused, training the ability she'd honed over the years. She imagined time slowing down around her as the Ripper drew closer, now only about ten feet away from her. In a few seconds, it would have her in its jaws. She wasn't going to allow that.

With a swing of her arm, she released a card, hitting it square in its damaged rib cage. With a shower of shadowy bits and chunks of bone, it was sent backwards against the sloped wall again, but it wasn't enough to make it give up. It tried to charge again, but only found another card slam against it. Again and again, the cards slammed it backwards. Alice continued her dainty stroll up to the creature, now a mangled mess against the wall. She tilted her chin upwards and stared down at it, "I will _not_ be outdone by the likes of _you_."

As it reached a claw towards her, it let out one last shriek. Even in pieces, it was hell bent on killing her.

All it found was another card right between its eyes. Its skull imploded inwards before showering the wall behind it.

Alice let out a triumphant "hmph" before turning to Professor McGouran and curtsying, the creature fading away behind her.

...

That fight had nearly gotten her killed _yet again_ , ruined _yet another_ dress, and led to McGouran saying that her essay grade would remain the same due to Turf's interference. She wanted to be mad, but as she sat down at an empty table in the library, all she could think about was the fact that the dirty Faunus on her team had defended her… _saved_ her. That moment did something to her. The world she knew was gone.

She stared at a cluster of books. Each of their title shared a common word: Aura. After Carmen's description of how aura develops, she couldn't help but wonder how her personality had affected the one thing that kept her safe in a fight. Her aura was significantly weaker than the average student's, but it felt almost… weaker after her brush with death with Yamuna. Who was her bad attitude affecting more? The people around her, or her?

"I see that Professor Maple released you kids early today. I'll have to have a chat with her about that."

Alice jumped and clutched her heart, almost dropping the book she was looking at. "Professa Alabasta… You about gave me a heart attack!"

"Believe me, my students do that to me nearly every day," he chuckled, "Did Professor Maple not cover aura in enough depth for your tastes?" he asked with his cane angled at the books that Alice had been staring at.

Alice glanced at the book "How to Train Your Aura and Semblance" in the direction her headmaster's cane was pointed. "It's not that. Something she said just pushed me ta… do some extra research. For myself." She fidgeted. She didn't feel like herself, as if out of place in her own body.

"She told you all about her Semblance, didn't she?" he smiled warmly at the worn book. He knew it well, and so did Carmen.

Alice nodded. "She explained the basics again. Y'know, 'your Semblance is a direct extension of your aura, your aura's the physical manifestation of your personality, Semblance is based on personality,' but there was somethin' with the way she put it that… resonated with me, I guess."

"I'm not too surprised about that… resonance, as you put it. She didn't happen to tell the story of her Semblance, did she?" Professor Alabaster plucked the book out from the shelf and opened it to the front cover. Inside, the name 'Carmen Maple' was printed about thirty times in the top left corner, and dated twenty years back, "It's an odd one."

Alice cocked an eyebrow, "What do ya mean, Professa?"

"It's a little strange that someone would develop a Semblance with no practical use, isn't it? Seeing aura is quite… odd, but it suits her quirky personality," he handed the book off to Alice, "See, she had quite a rebellious side to her, and didn't quite understand the concept of teamwork. She loved to do everything on her own, including breaking the rules. It stunted her growth quite a bit."

"Stunted her growth?..." It took her a moment to realize what that meant, but when she did, her eyes widened in astonishment, "She came ta Beacon without a Semblance, too?..."

"That she did," he shut his eyes to think of the moment that Carmen's Semblance came to light, "Her team was training for the Vytal Tournament, and decided to run out into the Emerald Forest to use the Creatures of Grimm as training dummies. Things went downhill, and all of them managed to break their scrolls in a fight with a particularly nasty Minotaurus. With no way to get an aura reading, Carmen's Semblance developed out of necessity. It allowed her to take on a more defensive position for the injured members of her team."

Alice scanned the images and text in the book. It looked like it had been written for children… or idiots. Basic stuff. "Right… that would explain it…"

"She tried for three semesters to force out her Semblance," Professor Alabaster pulled back a series of twenty pages near the center of the book and began flipping them. He was showing Alice that all of them had lost their corners, "I watched as she read over those pages, dog-eared them, and then checked the book out everyday for a month. I swear that she had that section, the one about developing your Semblance, memorized. At the end of that month, I informed her that she could keep the book until her Semblance came about, and it came back to me in the middle of her second year here. She began changing into the woman that you know now after that night."

Alice looked up to him, "She went through all that? But she's so… so…"

"Before you say it, I would never use the word 'perfect' to describe Carmen Maple. She's the student and the instructor that has practically defined Beacon for years now, but she is by no means perfect. She is scatterbrained, lazy, forgetful, brash, overly-emotional, and outright ridiculous at times, but…" he turned the pages of the book that Alice held, stopping at some diagrams of an aura surrounding human and Faunus forms. All of them had been carefully colored in with an array of colors, "She is the most passionate person in everything that she does that I have met in all my many, many days. Those added colors are so that students can know exactly what aura looks like. She did that before she turned in the book for other students with similar difficulties as hers. Beautiful, wouldn't you say?"

Alice chuckled, "Looks like something Umba would do."

"You've always been one to compare, haven't you?"

"S'cuse me?"

"Arty to Carmen. You to your father. The Faunus students to…" he tapped his cane on the carpet as he chose his words, "animals?"

Alice closed the book and clutched it close to her chest, "I… I guess I do 'ave a knack for makin' comparisons between things… but I've never seen it as a problem!" she rose her voice, acting defensively.

"Did you ever consider that not seeing it as a problem might _be_ the problem?" Professor Alabaster waved towards the doors leading outside. He made his way out, knowing that Alice would follow. If she was going to start screaming, then it didn't need to be in the library.

Alice sneered, "How in Remnant would that be a problem?"

"You have a Dog Faunus on your team, Alice. Not a dog," he held open the door, "Would you join me for a stroll and talk about this?"

She humphed again, "Do I 'ave a choice?"

"Of course you do. You don't have to come along by any means, but I feel like you want to."

Alice didn't want to admit it, but he was right. With the book still in her arms, she followed the headmaster out the door.

Professor Alabaster drew a long breath of the crisp autumn air floating around Beacon. Hopefully that would calm Alice as much as him, "You see, Ms. Crims, I was aware of your family's outlook on Faunus long before you attended my academy. That was part of the reason that I placed Mr. Fescue on your team. I thought that he might eventually… bring about a period of growth in you."

She had heard this speech before. Every time she made a comment about Faunus, somebody would stand up and call her out on her beliefs. Normally, she'd defend herself, but after the fight with the Ripper, she honestly didn't want to anymore. "I'm… startin' ta think he did, Professa…"

"How did you see Turf before, and how do you see him now that you know his secret?" Professor Alabaster pressed further. Hopefully she was learning the lesson that he had intended her to.

The prejudices she had held to for years had spilled from her lips countless times before, but now, she felt dirty saying them. It was as if she were drinking rotten milk; it left a bad taste in her mouth. "I… I saw Turf as _normal_ before. You know, like _me_ … only a bit messy. When I found out he was a Faunus, I didn't want to believe it. I just wanted ta… _yank_ his ears off an' pretend like it was just a big joke. I felt betrayed… disgusted… humiliated…" She sighed, feeling her conflicting thoughts fighting it out within her, "After yesterday… I… I don't know. He was the same ol' dog-eared Faunus, but the same beanie-wearin' boy at the same time. He interrupted _my_ fight to save _me_ from bein' torn ta shreds." She shook her head, "I honestly didn't believe anyone here would _eva_ do that in a million years. Not even Navy. I don't get it Professa. Why am I feelin' this way? Has everythin' I've eva felt up ta this point been wrong?"

Perhaps choosing her as a leader wasn't a mistake, "That is a hard question to take on, but I can say that it's okay to be wrong. If you were never wrong, then you would never have the opportunity to grow. Your opinion, or perhaps former opinion of Faunus is what you're seeing as wrong. Personally, I can agree that it is, but it's just as important to acknowledge _why_ it is wrong. In addition, it is important to ask why you felt that way in the first place."

Alice's nose scrunched up, "I… I guess… Faunus always had something I didn't. I grew up thinkin' I was the best at everythin', that I _had_ everythin', but every time I saw someone with antlers or a tail or… dog ears, I felt… jealous. It meant that there was an advantage that they had that I knew I could neva possess. Papa neva corrected those feelings… Papa was actually where I got those views. I never saw them as wrong until I got here."

"I guess it didn't help that the Faunus students here all seem to have rather… unique Semblances. Taking on a wolf form, controlling words… changing elevation of the earth at will… I'm sure that makes things even more complicated for you."

"No kiddin'..."

Alabaster looked over at his student, "You don't need extra traits or a Semblance to be a good Huntress. You've trained so hard to compensate for your lack of both of those, and that has made you a formidable opponent. You can push yourself hard, but it is not a shortcoming if you can't attain what is unique to someone else."

"I realize that… now…" She rubbed her arms, "I'm tired of takin' tha hate I have for myself out on othas. I want ta work with everyone to get to where I want ta be, not… through forcing my worldview on everyone else.."

"From checker to bishop, I see."

"S'cuse me?"

"My speech from the beginning of the semester. I said that I saw pawns and maybe a rook or a knight. I honestly saw you as a checker. But I can now see that you've gone from playing the wrong game with the wrong rules to playing on the same board as everyone else. I say you are now a bishop because you aren't quite the queen that everyone calls you, but you are certainly one of the most valuable pieces. The question is, are you the black or the white bishop?"

"You're losin' me, Professa."

"While each team has two bishops, each bishop holds control of only half the board a piece. One bishop can only land on the white squares, the other only on the black, they cannot switch mid-way through the game just because their side is losing. They have rules, or a mantra they must follow through until the end. You may have gone back on your old way of thinking, but you're still stuck on the path you choose. Either way you go, you cannot switch in the midst of battle just because you're not winning," he put a hand on her shoulder, "I have no doubt that if you stick to your path, you'll end up where you need to go."

"If I'm followin' your chess metaphor, sir… you didn't say that I was guaranteed ta win."

Professor Alabaster removed his hand and turned to go back inside, "Ending up where you need to go doesn't always mean winning, Ms. Crims, but in some cases, that's not always a bad thing."


	26. V1Ch22: Torn Between Love and Hate

"An' these are the plans Team ARTS had so far for the welcome reception. The students from Shade, Haven, and Atlas Academy get here halfway through the winta break, a full week before next semester starts. Questions or comments?" Alice had the table in front of her littered with typed out pages, drawings, and samples of different fabrics.

Ebon held up a disc, "Did… did Sepia put together a film to welcome the students?"

"Oh yeah, I think she did! Remember when she went around with one of those little digital cameras and filmed students saying things? She would just hand you a piece of paper and pester you until you read it for the camera!" Turf pointed to the disc, "That must be it, or at least a rough cut. She must've done it right when they were put in charge of all this!"

"Kind of a waste just to throw it all on us like this…" Navy asked as he looked over one of Arty's sketches, "So how much of this are we scrapping?"

"Why would we throw any of this away?! We can use all of it as a jumping off point!" Ebon was taken back. Apparently Team ARTS did a lot of work for the welcoming committee when they found out that they got picked, and it made him feel bad that all of it might go to waste. It did explain why Team ARTS went missing a lot after the Yamuna incident. They probably wanted some time to themselves. With all the work they had done, it was still weird that they dropped it all out of nowhere.

Navy looked to Alice expecting to hear the usual 'it's from ARTS, just get rid of it' like she did when she cut through one of Arty's sketchbooks earlier in the semester.

"No," Alice flipped through a few pages of a schedule, "we can use most of this if not all of it."

The three boys looked shocked.

"Alice, did you hit your head on something?" Turf asked carefully. He knew how much she hated Team ARTS.

"No. I'm fine, Turf," she put down the papers and looked around the ballroom, where the majority of Team ARTS's planning had gone towards, "This is actually… good stuff ta build off of, like Ebon said. If we don't use it all, then we'll fall behind."

"Right, so let's see what we can do to…" Ebon trailed off as he saw someone come into the ballroom through one of the doors on the side, "Wait, what?"

Roland stood in the doorway. His eyes were red and puffy, but he kept his usual scowl in an attempt to mask it. He looked between the members of Team ANTE in confusion, "What are you guys doing here? Team ARTS is supposed to handle the welcoming party. I don't think we really need any more distractions."

"It got passed onto us when Arty decided that you guys couldn't do it for whatever reason. Didn't he tell you?" Turf set down the papers he was holding. He could feel that Roland wasn't feeling quite right, "You okay, man?"

Unlike Team ANTE, Roland knew exactly why these duties had gotten passed on. There was no doubt that his actions made Arty forget about their responsibilities as a team. He stepped inside and shut the door behind him. He couldn't do anything about the situation, but he could at least try to make up for it a little, "Yeah, yeah, I'm fine. I'm going to text Arty. Do you guys think that we could at least still help?"

Even though she was reconsidering her whole outlook on Faunus, Alice knew she still didn't like Roland, but she bit her tongue for the time being.

"Why should you?" Navy snapped, "Your team gave it up, and Maple asked _us_ to take over. Sounds pretty cut and dry to me."

"Look, I know we're on bad terms, but I'm trying to be civil here. This is a lot for just four people to do," Roland finished his message and sent it to his team, "You guys still have final say, but we could help a lot. You wanna keep being a dick, or can we actually help before you guys bite off more than you can chew?"

Navy shot to his feet and stood face to face with the otter Faunus. "What did you just say to me?"

"I said that you're being a dick, but I could say a lot worse," Roland shot back. Though he was still feeling down, there was always a small reserve of fury in him, "I could say that you're no better than cannon fodder, just like those mindless soldiers that you seem to love imitating so much."

It was at that moment Navy's fist connected with Roland's cheek. The heated argument had become an all-out fist fight with a single blow.

Roland rebounded from the strike, and didn't get his hands up in time to block the uppercut to his gut that came next. He stumbled back and nearly hacked up a lung. Stings of spit hung from his lips, "Navy, I'm warning you. Back off… this isn't the day to start cra-" Another blow crashed into his left ear.

Navy swiped low at Roland's feet, sending him to the ground before he could recover. "Don't tell me what to do, Faunus."

Alice watched as Turf shifted in his seat. She stood up and slammed her hands against the table, "Navy! That's enough!" but her interjection wasn't enough to stop the brawl.

The Faunus remark sent him over the edge, "I'll show you what a Faunus can do," Roland launched himself off the ground with his tail. The arm with Writer's Block attached rocketed into Navy's sternum. Having sufficiently knocked the wind out of his opponent, he dug his unburdened hand into Navy's ribs.

A knee slammed into Navy's middle while a weighted fist pounded into his face. Thinking this was enough, Roland threw Navy into a nearby column by the vest and huffed in a mixture of rage and exhaustion, "I said that this isn't the time, Navy…"

As the fight continued, the main door to the ballroom opened.

"Roland!" Arty yelled as he and the ARTS girls ran up to the brawl. Arty latched onto Roland's shoulders in an attempt to pry him away from Navy.

Alice saw what Arty was doing and ran up to do the same with Navy.

In a matter of moments, Team ARTS was trying to pull Roland away while Team ANTE was trying to to the same with Navy. It was a futile effort.

Roland yanked away from his teammates, using his tail to swat them away, "I told you to _back off_!" he flew at Navy again. He was going for blood. This time around, he drove a knee straight into Navy's crotch, then followed it up with a uppercut to the chin.

Navy reeled back and doubled over, but was quickly ready to get back into the fight. He charged towards the cowboy.

"Navy! Stop it!" Alice dove in front of him and tried to hold him back with her hands pushing against his chest. She felt her boots grind against backwards against the floor. No amount of ordering or bossing him around was going to calm him. Any control that she had over him was waning.

"Get… out… of… my… way… Alice!" He snarled as he pushed her towards Roland. His fingers curled around the grip of the knife on the shoulder of his combat vest. If Roland could bring a typewriter into the brawl, then he had an excuse.

Alice moved one arm the opposite direction, pushing against Roland. "Will you two _stop it!_ " she yelled as she tried to push them apart and not get crushed between the two raging monsters.

A fist slammed into Alice's ear, sending her sprawling. The fight was put on hold as the voice of reason crumpled to the ground.

In a fit of blind rage, Roland completely forgot about his fight with Navy. Team ANTE's leader entered the fray, and there was much more hate in Roland for Alice than there was for Navy. For a moment, he realized what was going on. He remembered that the blow that Alice took was meant for Navy.

"Oh crap…" Roland reeled back. Sure she had been awful towards him, but she didn't deserve to have her brain rocked around like that when she wasn't even part of the fight.

Alice reached up to her ear. She wasn't injured, but the shock and pain of the attack scared her and, more noticeably, angered her. "I go… out of my way… to try and make things betta… Ta stop this brawl before someone gets hurt..." She pushed herself to her feet.

"Alice?…" Arty said reaching out to her.

Alice threw her arm up, "Don't touch me, Painta-Boy! Just get your savage _creature_ out of here…" She began to gather the papers and other materials sprawled out on the table. _Was Papa actually right all along? No… he couldn't be, not every Faunus is bad… are they?..._ The conflicting thoughts went back and forth inside her head as she pushed her way past everyone to leave.

Navy snickered, "I guess you were right, Alice!" he called out, making his leader stop dead in her tracks, "Faunus like Roland can't hide their true instincts! They'll always be violent," he made sure to keep eye contact with his rival, "Maybe he really _did_ get it all from his dirty, mangy, piece of trash mother, just like you said. There's no way he could've gotten it from the trade magnate, Henry Wells! He is _human_ after all."

The room fell dead silent.

Alice's eyes widened. She had said that weeks ago when she put together that one of her father's' trading partners, Henry Wells, was Roland's father. That was long before she got attacked by Yamuna. Back before she began rethinking things… She turned to face Roland, "Roland… I…" she stuttered, unable to explain herself.

Before she could even attempt to defend herself, Roland dove on top of her and began wailing on her. He brought down fists into her stomach, threw elbows into her face, brought knees up into her side. Even his tail was thrown against her. Alice was going to physically experience every ounce of pain that her words had dredged up.

Everyone watched as a white shimmer of light traveled across Alice's body. Roland had broken her aura, but he wasn't letting up.

Navy tried to jump in, but Roland threw his fist back, launching Navy to the side.

Timbre didn't get along with Alice, but he couldn't watch Roland do this to someone. With a flick of her arms, her gloves slid out from under her sleeves and hooked themselves around her hands. "Roland! Stop it!" She flung wires towards him.

Cables wrapped themselves around Roland's waist. He tried to pry them off, but he found himself flying backwards. He slammed into the wall and slid limp to the ground.

Turf and Ebon ran up to help Alice up while Navy stayed back.

Turf put an arm under Alice's to help her up. "Alice! Are you okay?!"

Alice pushed her partner's hand away. "Get away from me!" she began sobbing, "I can't even _look_ at you right now…" She clutched the sleeve of Ebon's down jacket tightly, "Get me away from him! _Get me away from him!_ " She yelled.

Ebon lifted Alice in his arms and began heading for the door with Turf close behind. He couldn't help but watch the boy that had just tried to kill his leader as he tried to get up. He knew Roland's anger was bad, but he never imagined it could reach this level. He made sure to be out of the ballroom before Roland was back on his feet.

Navy began stomping his way towards Roland. After what he did to Alice, this soldier was ready for round two. How dare some dirty _Faunus_ lay hands on his leader.

Timbre drew more wire from her gloves and stood before Navy. "Back. Off."

Navy stopped in his tracks as he glared down at the girl. He was easily a full head taller than her, "Out of the way, girlie."

Timbre didn't falter, "Don't you have something better to do? Like go make sure Alice is okay?"

Navy afforded a glance to the door.

"Yeah? Let me say it again. Back. Off. And. Leave. Us. Alone." She commanded.

Navy sneered and stormed off, his boots slamming against the floor with every step.

With Navy gone, Timbre reeled in her wires and disengaged her weapons. She ran to the corner, where Arty and Sepia were tending to a dazed Roland.

Roland leaned back against the wall. Tears were still welled up in his eyes. Beneath all the flailing and screaming before, he was crying. When Navy told him that Alice talked about his mother, something inside his mind cracked. Every strike that he made was involuntary. His body just reacted.

"I… kind of lost it… huh…?" he mumbled and pulled his arms and legs close to him. A few tears streamed down his cheeks as he stared at the ceiling. He didn't know what else to say. There wasn't anything else to say.

Arty stood against the wall on Roland's right as Sepia sat against the wall on his left. They stayed silent for a few minutes as Timbre paced back and forth anxiously.

Arty pat Roland on the back, "Let's go back to the room," he held a hand out to him, "Come on."

For a moment, Roland didn't move. He just stared at his partner's hand. How could he be so calm?

Finally, he reached up and let Arty help him to his feet. When they stood eye-to-eye, Roland managed to speak, "I'm… I'm sorry. I didn't mean to… I just… I don't know…"

A pair of hands wrapped around his left hand. Sepia stood right next to him with concern in her eyes. He knew that she wanted to tell him that everything was okay this time, but she couldn't lie to him like that.

Timbre stepped in front of him and smiled weakly, "Let's go, we can talk things through back in the dorm."

With that, Roland was led out of the ballroom and back to the dorms, narrowly avoiding Professor Maple, Professor Alabaster, and Vincentas storming into the ballroom in their hunt for Team ARTS.

* * *

The dorm was lit only by the dots of sunlight streaming through the curtains, and Team ARTS sat in their own corners around the room in silence. No one knew where to begin.

"Can I just sleep this off for a while...?" Roland asked, but he already knew the answer.

Arty took a deep breath, "Roland… you've been pushing it off all semester. You need to talk about whatever's going on. It's getting out of hand."

"How many times have you gotten in fights over something Navy or Alice said?..." Timbre asked, "You could've killed her just now, Roland… This is getting too serious to just ignore."

This was the moment that he feared since the semester began. He clenched his fists against his knees, "I'm not ready to talk about what happened…"

"You haven't been ready to talk about what happened the whole semester…" Arty said calmly, trying to keep the situation from blowing up again.

"I told you guys that I lost something back in Mistral when we met. Why can't we just leave it at that?" Roland quivered. He could feel the uneasiness gathering in his stomach. The room felt like it was getting smaller and smaller, inch by inch.

Arty, Timbre, and Sepia looked to one another. Arty nodded to Timbre.

Timbre took a deep breath, "Roland… I think we know who you lost"

Shivers shot down his spine, "I don't think you d-"

Timbre couldn't look at Roland as she said the name, "Chiara Oscura…"

Gavin's word echoed through his head. She wasn't really gone, but she was. Chiara Oscura died, and her name had become the ultimate reminder of that. It seared his heart every time it was uttered. "How did you find out…?"

Arty held his hands together. He could feel the tension in the room intensifying with every word. "We… did some research. We found an article in a newspaper from Mistral… You were in the picture on the front page."

Even after he blew up at Timbre, they all still snooped on his personal business. _Stop shutting your friends out. I can't be there for you every step of the way. This is what a team is for,_ she would have said. Those words of hers kept him in line. Before she left, he might have brushed off a few of her words of wisdom, but now he clutched every single one as if they were his very soul. Out of all of the words that he knew, hers were the most important. The most essential.

"She was everything to me…" he held his head down. Tears already began wetting the carpet below, "She… she went by CiCi, you know… she would always correct people for getting her name wrong… she was funny like that…"

"Is she the one who got you into writing?" Timbre edged a little closer. Maybe she could do something. Anything. For the first time, she could see just how much pain was inside of him, and it shook her to the core. It was like looking into a mirror.

"She taught me everything that I know. She gave me all of my books, or at least the ones that I didn't end up buying myself. Always pushing me to do better and better... that was her…" he didn't lift up his head. The words were coming somewhat easier, but they were still caught in his throat like fishhooks.

"She must've been one heck of a teacher…" Arty tried to pry out a few more words from the depths of his partner's feelings. A tiny stream of rage was all that he knew flowed through Roland's head, but he was starting to see the black lake of sadness that it flowed into. How could he have missed something like that in his own teammate? He was supposed to be a leader. He was supposed to see his teammates for all that they were.

"She was a lot more than that, Arty…" Roland whispered.

Sepia slowly got up and sat next to him. She put an arm around his shoulders and leaned against him. There wasn't anything that she could say, even if she could have spoken. Her embrace was an attempt to pull him back together. The pain couldn't be taken away, but she wanted nothing more than to do just that.

The words began pouring out, "She was my teacher... she was my coach... she was my hero… she taught me to be proud to be a Faunus… how to read… how to write… how to be me… she was the only one that I could actually say was by my side… always fighting in my corner..." he looked up slowly, tears pouring from his eyes. After a shaky breath, he finally pushed the words out, "CiCi Oscura was my mother…"

The sudden realization that came across Arty and Timbre's face said it all. They kept prying and prying, but they never connected the dots enough to see that it was the death of his mother that turned him into what he was. Thinking about the pummeling he had just given Alice, no wonder her comment about Roland's mother was what threw him over the edge. The way he acted made much more sense now, but bottling it up for so long must have been killing him on the inside.

"That's why…" Arty tried to bite back the words that just wouldn't stop, "you told me not to bring her up when we first met in the Emerald Forest…"

"Oh my god…" Timbre covered her mouth. Tears rolled down her cheeks, "Roland…"

"I was the one who found her body…" he couldn't stop. Not now. Not when he was finally managing to talk about it, "I went over to her apartment to stay with her for the night, but… all of the residents of the complex were dead… all of their Faunus traits were…" he nearly choked at the thought, "gone… all of them were mutilated… then she was just face down… I…" his eyes were wide with fear. Roland wasn't in the dorm, but back in the apartment complex. He could still see every detail, every speck of blood. That damned wheel painted on the wall in her-, "I attracted a Nevermore by myself… it flew straight through Mistral just to meet up with me… and then I killed it. Every ounce of hate in my heart came out on that thing. I tried to hurt it as much as whoever hurt them… whoever took her from me..."

Arty and Timbre didn't know how to respond. Sepia on the other hand, just hugged Roland tighter.

"I'm here because I want to kill someone…" Roland held onto Sepia's arms. He hung his head down and let the tears go, "I want to kill whoever took my mother from me…"

"So that's why you want to be a Huntsman…" Arty nodded to himself.

"They said that only Huntsmen had the jurisdiction to investigate, so that's what I have to do. I'll track them down. I don't care about any bounty, or praise, or anything other than giving them the same treatment as they did her," his clenched fists threatened to rip the seams of Sepia's gloves, "That's all I want. I just want them dead…"

Timbre ran across the room and joined Sepia in hugging Roland.

Arty reluctantly did as well. After a few moments of silence, he finally pushed off, "Roland, I can't let you become that…"

"What does it matter if that monster dies?" Roland pushed the rest of them off, "They killed my mother, so they deserve to die."

"Because more killing isn't going to do anything. You said yourself that it's just because they killed your mother, not because they might kill again. I'm not going to let you become a murderer. I can't just sit here and watch you go on a rampage," Arty stood over Roland. He was ready for any kick or punch that might come his way. Being the leader of Team ARTS meant that he was responsible for all of them, even after they graduated. What they became was on him, "Your only motivation can't be hate."

Rage began making its way back into Roland's mind. How dare Arty try and lecture him. He didn't know the real world. He couldn't being from a cushy place like Atlas, "What other motivation is there, huh? We kill Grimm because we hate them. We stop criminals because we hate them. I'm going to kill that killer because I. Hate. Them."

"No… no we don't, Roland." Timbre watched on cautiously. She didn't like where this was going, "We kill Grimm because we love the people of Remnant enough to protect them. That's also why we stop criminals… It's about love, not hate."

That's what she would have said too… CiCi always preached to him about loving those around him. Back before she left, he believed that. Without her, there was no one to stop the haze of pain and hatred from clouding his thoughts. Her death wasn't doing this to him. He was. How much peace could actually be gained from taking someone's life? "I… I just don't want to hurt like this…"

' _Then lean on us a little. Let us take on a little bit of that pain. I never knew your mother, but it sounds like she would have wanted that. Tell us about her. Tell us how much you love her. Just… be you, Roland,'_ Sepia grasped his hands and leaned her head on his shoulder. Love is what he needed, like she had said from the beginning.

"Yeah, exactly. We want to listen. We want to be here for you," Timbre managed a smile, "That's what friends are here for."

"How can you call me a friend after hearing all of that…?" Roland looked over at Timbre, but then up at Arty. How could she forgive him for blowing up at her? How could Arty forgive him for the crap that he dragged him through?

Arty thought for a moment, "You know, at the beginning of the semester, I probably would've said something like 'because we're stuck together for the next four years' or 'Professor Alabaster, can I have a different team?' but… you know what? Because I actually consider you my friend and not just a teammate. We don't just put up with each others' problems. We want to actively help each other through them. When Timbre went through her issues earlier this week, we wanted to help her, too. You gotta face it, bud. At this point, there's not much you could do that would make us _not_ consider you our friend. We could get mad at you, yeah, but we'll still be with you."

"As much as I've wanted to at some points, we don't want to give up on you." Timbre finished his thought.

"I… I don't know what to say…" Roland took a deep breath. It was all out in the open. If they wanted to hear about who he actually was, then that was fine. He was their friend, and they were his, "Okay, I… I can work with this. We're actually friends. That's not just a figment of my imagination. You guys want to help me cope..."

He thought for a moment. What could he do to show them that he was willing to accept that they were there for him? Once the answer came, he finally began to smile, "Okay… so, I want to show you guys something. Think of it as a start in trying to be more… open with you guys about who I am… and who my mother was, I suppose."

Arty, Timbre, and Sepia all watched on as their teammate rummaged through his toolbox for something that seemed to be buried underneath a mess of wrenches, nails, and screwdrivers. Once the item was retrieved, the room began to fill with the faint aroma of fish. It came from the perfectly rounded stone in Roland's hands.

"If you've ever wondered why the room sometimes smells bad, it's because this is the rock that I use to bust open clams."

Timbre and Arty looked on in confusion.

"The what to do huh now?" Timbre asked.

"What she said." Arty continued.

"It's an Otter Faunus thing. Most of us have one special rock that we like to use to crack open shellfish, just like actual otters," Roland smiled sweetly at the stone. Being able to talk about her actually made him feel better. It was like a weight had been taken off his shoulders, "Mom gave it to me on my seventh birthday. It was a really big deal. We were at this really nice restaurant, and she ordered about five pounds of clams. When the waiter came around with the bucket of clams, he sat a plate in front of me with this rock on it. Before we came to the restaurant, Mom went in and told the staff to make sure that this rock was on my plate when our food came out. She picked it out of the river that she used to take me canoeing down. I've kept it with me-"

 _ **SLAM! SLAM! SLAM!**_ The door rattled on its hinges. Someone shouted from the other side, "Let go of me, Carmen! This kid needs a lesson!" That gruff tone could only have belonged to the one and only Vincentas Saurus.

"Roland?! Arty?! Is _anyone_ from Team ARTS in here?!" Carmen's yelled over him, but she sounded far more concerned than angry.

"Oh crap…" Arty feared that they would come for Roland. Sure, everything seemed to be worked out now, but that wouldn't mean much if Roland got expelled, "That isn't good…"

Timbre looked worried, "Oh no… Arty… what do we do?!"

"What else _can_ we do?" Arty held up his hands. They were out of options, "Come clean."

Timbre and Sepia looked at him as if he'd just ratted them out for cheating on a homework assignment.

"Arty!" Timbre's eyes darted between the door and her leader, "How can you even think abou-"

"Kid, I'm about done with you being a thorn in my side!" Vincentas shouted from the other side, "I'm sick of these temper tantrums! I've had enough!" he kicked the door, sending a cracking sound through the frame.

Roland sighed in defeat, "We can't run from this for four years. I made this problem, so I'm going to face this. Just open the door, Arty."

"Right," Arty slowly walked over to the door and looked to his team. Timbre seemed wholly against the idea of turning the knob, but Sepia seemed… relieved? Arty reached for the doorknob, but hesitated when he heard another crack in the frame. Seeing as it hadn't flown off its hinges yet, he clasped the doorknob, and-

Splinters exploded into the dorm. Fissures traveled up the door. It finally failed, and sent a flying rectangle of wood careening into Arty. He sprawled on the floor, the door flopping down on top of him in a blizzard of sawdust and shards of wood.

Timbre shrieked as pieces of the door and light from the hallway came flying into the room. Sepia just clapped at the spectacle.

Vincentas shot towards Roland with a hand ready to close around his throat, "I'm going to-"

"Stand down," Professor Alabaster ordered. He was happy with the immediate response that he received. When looking over his students, he noticed drying tears on Roland, Timbre, and Sepia's cheeks, "How are you all feeling?"

Arty, wanting to be an effective leader, spoke up first from underneath the door, "We finally managed to get everything out in the open," he pushed the door off. Splinters and sawdust puffed out with every ensuing cough.

"I told them about my mother," Roland refused to even look at Vincentas. Getting into it with a man that skilled wasn't going to help matters, "Everything. I told them everything, sir."

"I see…" Alabaster scratched his chin. He was surprised to say the least. Seeing as Roland assaulted another student with seeming intent to kill, he was half expecting to have to lock him up for a little while. It was a relief to see that this was not the case.

"I will take whatever punishment that I must. I understand that what I did was wrong," Roland stood to ready himself for whatever his consequences were. Without so much eating away at him, it was far easier to not get defensive. The pain inside him didn't have to be hidden anymore, so there wasn't much to defend.

Silence fell around the room. No one expected him, of all people, to react so calmly. Roland was the one that was always dragged away kicking and screaming.

"His aura is… actually…" Carmen stood behind Alabaster. She couldn't believe what she was seeing, "It isn't acting up. He's telling the truth..."

"Well then," Alabaster took a few steps forwards, "This has been a strange turn of events. I wasn't prepared for this, to be completely honest," Team ARTS had just made a serious bound in team development. With that in mind, separating them might have been the worst possible option, but finding a way to ensure that Roland would continue to be open could work, "Roland, I want you to go to the CCT and open a video line between you and your father. I know for a fact that you two haven't spoken since CiCi's passing. In addition, you will be going to the infirmary immediately after to speak with Ms. Crims. You owe her an apology, and you both have some things to talk about. If you have another outburst during any of this, then-"

"I won't. May I be on my way, then?" Roland looked between the adults.

"You're just gonna let him off the hook after that?" Vincentas growled.

"Under normal circumstances, I would not, but there is a lesson for my students to learn through all of this about how an adult handles a situation like this," Alabaster cast his gaze over to the door that had been blown off its hinges before returning it to the Huntsman, "Mr. Wells assaulted Ms. Crims. We're a school for young adults, not children, so I will treat them as such. They can handle this themselves, but I will decide the appropriate punishment for Mr. Wells if they cannot."

"Stupid old man…" Vincentas grumbled and stomped out of the room.

"Mr. Wells, you may go on to the CCT. Take as long as you need." Alabaster nodded.

Roland left without another word.

A few moments were given to ensure that Roland was out of earshot, and then Carmen focused her attention on the remaining members of Team ARTS, "Is everything okay? Did he lash out on any of you?"

The three of them shook their heads.

"Roland didn't," Arty spoke up, "but… _he_ kinda did…" he said, gesturing to the direction the man in the red cloak had walked.

"Who is he anyways?" Timbre asked curtly. She had seen him a few times now, some at the beginning of the semester, and again only recently. His presence at the school was a mystery to her and her team. He was obviously a Huntsmen, but she hadn't heard about him teaching classes and he wasn't introduced in the orientation meeting when all of the teachers welcomed the new and returning students.

' _Vincentas Saurus. He's a Huntsman from Vacuo, and a good one at that. He's a loner, so it really surprised me that he was here. I tried to tell you guys earlier today, but we kind of got… preoccupied,'_ Sepia signed to her teammate, ' _He uses a double bladed scythe that's super cool! It uses Fire and Ice Dust, and… well, I don't know all that it can do. We talked about it a lot in class back home because it was a great example of a good Dust-based weapon.'_

"He was on a mission in Mistral when Roland's incident happened," Carmen explained, "He was the one who brought Roland to Beacon, and we kept giving him money as long as he kept a watch on him. See, we knew that Roland would be suffering from some sort of psychological damage, and that it might lead to a breakdown or worse. It was a precaution."

Timbre shook her head and looked to her teacher and close friend in disbelief, "Carmen… why couldn't you have told us that Roland could be a threat? What if he actually _did_ kill Alice? What if it was one of us and not her?" Timbre was hurt. Carmen had never been one to keep secrets from her.

Arty sat on his bed, "After all of the fights he's gotten in… and you guys didn't even warn us?"

"We debated it when you all became a team, but Vincentas's observations told us something promising," Alabaster explained, "You see, Roland acted more and more like his old self as he got closer with all of you. We tracked his fights, and noticed that they became less violent and less frequent as time went on. It was our understanding that he and Ms. Hughes began dating after the incident in the library, which coincided with a massive drop off in his… tendencies. Would you all like to know what his disciplinary record from Sanctum looks like?"

"Horrible, I'm guessing?" Timbre said bluntly.

"Completely clean," Carmen told them, "When we were looking through his records, we communicated with some of his instructors. He was sociable and even had some close friends. He was the ideal student."

"I…" Arty paused. Roland did mention some friends back in Mistral, but he just brushed it off as one of Roland's deflections, "I honestly don't know how to respond to that."

"That's what I said," Carmen sighed, "I was just as surprised."

Timbre just couldn't shake a question she'd had since the day Team ARTS was formed, "Carmen? Why was Roland brought to Beacon of all places? I mean, Alabaster asked Arty to come here after what happened at Atlas Academy… I came here because I live in Vale and wanted to be a Huntress, and Sepia…" she looked to her partner, "actually… I don't know why exactly you're here either…"

' _I just wanted to come here.'_ Sepia signed.

"Because the headmistress of Haven made it clear that she did not want Roland coming to her school after what happened," Carmen looked to Alabaster for him to further explain.

Alabaster nodded, "After hearing this and meeting with young Roland, I knew that it would be more dangerous for him to go out into the world and begin his hunt for CiCi's killer on his own than it would be for him to be disciplined as a Huntsman. Whereas you three are here for pure…" his voice trailed off as he looked at Arty, "for the reason that you would like to fight for the innocent people of Remnant, young Roland is here to learn how to become the most dangerous person in Remnant to those who harm its occupants. He wants to bring about justice, or at least what he sees as justice, to a murderer. His goal is focused on causing pain, while you three are focused on preventing it."

"That's… kind of the conclusion we came to before that Vincentas guy kicked in our door… but wait, so you're saying he was sent here because he had nowhere else to go without being…" Timbre thought about the wording for a moment, "a menace to society?"

"That's the nicer way of putting it, yes," Alabaster nodded.

Arty raised an eyebrow, "How is that the nicer way of putting it?"

"We could have said that we were concerned that he would go off the deep end if he went out on his own, or that we really didn't want to have to watch a bounty get put on him…" Carmen's voice trailed off. The thought of Vincentas tracking down a feral Roland wasn't a pretty picture.

The rest of Team ARTS were trying to process everything. They'd spent half a year together and felt as if they were just now learning who one of them were. It felt unreal.

"Well…" Arty began, "I guess all we can hope for now is that having all of our stories out in the open will help us… cause less trouble for you teachers?"

"Mostly yourselves and the other students," Carmen corrected. She tugged on Alabaster's sleeve and nodded to the door, "We need to call in a repair for the door. We can take it out of Vincentas's pay."

"Yes, yes," Alabaster stepped out with Carmen, "Well, have a nice day you all. I will send Roland back to you when we have figured out what exactly is going to happen with him. I am hopeful that we do not have to go any further than detention, but we cannot be sure until all is said and done," and with that, they were gone.

* * *

Calling home was never easy, which was precisely why Roland never did so. For one of the first times in his life, he couldn't bring himself to type something. He sat at a blank screen in the CCT with a cursor flashing in a text box labeled 'name', "Henry Edgar Wells. Henry Edgar Wells," he repeated to himself.

He stared at the exchange of texts that he and his father had.

Roland Wells: Hey dad, catch a ride to the CCT. I want to talk. Bring Dante. Don't tell Shirley.

Henry Wells: We will be there in twenty minutes. Don't go anywhere.

Roland Wells: I won't. Promise.

Twenty minutes had come and gone, and knowing his father, Henry was sitting at a monitor in the CCT in Mistral. Right on time.

"Come on, just type it," he commanded himself. His fingers finally complied, but became stuck once again when it came time to hit 'call'. Butterflies slammed against the walls of his stomach, but he finally managed to do it. He pressed 'call'.

They were connected almost instantaneously. His father had clearly been waiting for the instant the call came through.

"Roland!" a disheveled man appeared on the screen. The mass of untamed black hair on his head was glistening with sweat, as was his mustache. He wore the same black suit and white cravat as he did when Roland left for Beacon, "It is so good to see you! I am so sorry that I missed family day!"

Roland was silent for a few moments, "That's because I didn't tell you about it, dad…"

Henry bit the inside of his lip, "Right… well, um… you look strapping in your Beacon uniform! I see that you have been training a lot. You've gained a lot of muscle since I saw you last! I'm glad that you're keeping healthy!"

His father was as awkward as always, but it was comforting. It was normal, "I guess you could say that I have someone to look good for."

"Really?! That is wonderful!" Henry exclaimed. He leaned forward, "Tell me about her!"

"She's nothing like Saffron, thankfully," Roland laughed, "She's really great. Her name is Sepia. Short, brunette, a bundle of energy, mute…"

"Mute?"

"Yeah, but I've been learning a lot of sign language so that I can communicate with her. She's… well, amazing," he grinned, "She's an indie filmmaker, and probably one of the best fighters that I've ever seen! You should see her on the battlefield, Dad. She has the coolest Semblance. She's super nice, too. Like, really nice. I'm lucky, and I'm thankful that my teammate finally made us stop beating around the bush. You might know that teammate's name, by the way. She's Timbre Forté."

Though Henry showed no recognition of the name, something hit the ground with a thud off camera.

"Are you alright, Dante?" Henry asked while looking down and back, "Do you need help?"

"I'm alright…" a young woman pulled herself up next to Henry. Her skin was olive, her tightly curled hair as black as obsidian. The resemblance to Roland was relatively apparent, being just enough to lead someone to believe that they were brother and sister. Still, she gave off a feeling of authority.

She straightened the crimson robe that had begun falling off of her shoulders and greeted her brother, "Roland. It's good to see you again."

"Dante, good to see you as well," Roland shifted in his seat.

"Timbre Forté. _The_ Timbre Forté is on your team?" she raised an eyebrow.

In his mind, Timbre had become just another teammate. Her being a celebrity never crossed his mind unless he was telling someone else about her, "Yeah, but we don't think much of it. She's just a crazy emotional mess to us, but she cares. As much as I want to punch her in the face sometimes, I'm glad that we have someone who can actually spark some disagreement between us. If we agreed on everything, then we would be a lot less effective as a team. It also helps that Arty makes sure that we talk almost everything out."

"That must be your leader. What is he like?" Henry cut in.

"He is, and my partner. He's alright… awesome, actually. He's a little clueless when it comes to emotional stuff, but he's certainly fun to be around. Always working on some drawing, that guy," Roland thought back on he and Arty's friendship over the semester, "I'd say that he's the best partner that I could ask for. We really balance each other out, and… I guess I can't really compare him to anyone but Epazote. He's really becoming a great friend to me."

"I see," his father nodded, "That's all great, but we did become... worried with the disciplinary notes that kept coming in. Using your Semblance to throw around a student…"

"Navy, yeah. He was being a jerk, but he threw the first punch," Roland explained.

"Cheating on tests…"

"Helping people cheat on tests, actually," he corrected, "My buddy, Turf, was a fish out of water on a history exam. I changed all of the tests and the answer key while the instructor had his back turned."

"What about the destruction of… most of the Beacon Library…?"

"Fought a werewolf. Her name is Yamuna. She's like a Faunus Sepia, but can speak. She also has a bigger appetite. We made the repairs, but Arty sat on his butt and redrew the illustrations. Long story."

"How about the other ninety-seven disciplinary notes for other fights…"

Roland was silent for a few moments, "I was… still torn up over Mom," he looked down. It didn't hurt nearly as much to say it after the talk that he had with his team, "I still am, but… my team is helping me through it now. I had to nearly kill another student to get them to force it out of me, which will be the ninety-eighth disciplinary note, but I'm okay."

"What about the student?" Henry asked. If his son really managed to hurt another student badly…

Roland shook his head, "I'm going to talk to her after this. I broke her aura, but she's okay. Just in recovery."

They all sat in silence for a while. No one knew what to say.

Finally, someone spoke, "What did you need me here for?" Dante asked.

Not wanting to anger his already impatient sister, Roland began, "I'm going to send a binder full of notes. They're… to my mother. Would you make a visit to her grave for me, please?" he twiddled his thumbs, "And read them to her. I trust you enough to do that. She always liked you more than Ahab or Shirley. You can leave the notes at her shrine. It would mean the world to me if you did that."

Dante was taken back. She didn't expect something so… emotional from Roland. After Chiara's death, he totally shut down. To see that he could talk about it meant that he was getting better. This made her smile, but barely enough to be visible, "I will do so when Mother is not around. I will be sure to bring some of the foods that you said that she enjoyed. I'm sure that she would see it as a kind gesture to have some clams while she listens to what you have to say."

"Yeah, she would love that during the four hours that you're going to be reading. Thanks, Dante," Roland smiled, "Anyway… I hate to cut this short, but I have a classmate to apologize to," he held up a bright red book, "This is my ice breaker. Hope it works."

"Make things right, and keep in touch more if you can. I miss my son," Henry clenched his jaw. He couldn't just bust out crying in the middle of the CCT, "Eat more than clams and macaroni. Make more friends. Keep those grades up!"

"I'll give all that a shot," Roland put a finger over the 'end call' button, "I'm glad that we had the chance to talk. I will keep in touch more. I lo…"

"We love you too, Roland. Don't forget it," Dante allowed herself to relax enough to say that much.

"Right. See you two," he finally ended the call.

* * *

"Ms. Crims?" the nurse asked as she came up to the end of the bed, "You have a… visitor…"

Alice held her hands to her sides. The bandages surrounding her body showed how much damage Roland had done to her after her aura broke. Her healing was slow, despite her aura levels returning to normal. She hadn't had time to test what she had been reading on strengthening aura before Roland had attacked her. She hated the fact that her aura was so weak compared to others. She wouldn't be in the infirmary if it wasn't for that. "Who is it?"

"It's Roland Wells."

Alice felt the color drain from her face and her heart raced. She had to keep her composure, "What does he want?"

"He says that he wants to apologize for what he did," the nurse watched the door carefully, "He made it clear that he has no intentions of harming you."

Alice considered her options carefully, "Fine… let him in. But have Alabasta and any willing Huntsmen in this academy on call in case he tries anythin'…"

"They already are," Roland's voice came from behind the door. He opened the door and gingerly stepped through, "How are you feeling?" he asked. His eyes followed the nurse as she left the room and closed the door behind her, "That's a bad question, sorry… I mean, are you feeling any better at all?"

"What do you care?" she turned away from him, avoiding any and all eye contact, "You're the one who put me in 'ere. You think I wasn't in 'ere long enough afta Yamuna attacked me?"

"May I take a seat?" he asked, avoiding the question. He motioned towards the chair beside her bed, "I… well… sorry, I'm awkward about this. I got that bit from my father. Saying that you're sorry is a little nerve wracking, you know?"

Alice stayed silent. "How do you think it felt, Roland?" She rubbed her arms nervously, "I was beginnin' to rethink things. The way I thought… the way I act towards people… then Navy brought up one thing I said before all that when I was angry…" she knew how the rest of the sentence would go. "I'm… I'm actively tryin' to work against my prejudices, but with people like you an' Yamuna sendin' me to tha infirmary every otha week… I can't help but think that there's somethin' to those prejudices… you know?" She looked up to him with her one unbandaged eye, "I'm _scared_ of you, Roland."

"She was killed, Alice," Roland slowly sat down. For the fourth time in the same day, he was going to talk about what happened. No, not what happened. He wanted to tell her who CiCi Oscura was, "My mother, that is. That's why I lost it, and I am sorry for that. I truly am, and I understand why you're scared. I just… that's a fresh wound. I lost her about six months ago, and I haven't been able to cope. Navy said that you spoke about her like that, and I just saw red."

Alice covered her mouth in shock. "R-Roland… I… I never..." her words faltered as tears fell down her cheeks, a sight Roland thought he'd never see. She thought of how she would have felt if her mother had passed, and someone spoke about her like she had to him. It would have torn her apart, "I had no idea… I… I can't believe… I'm… I'm really… I'm really awful…"

"No, you aren't," those were words that he never thought that he would say to Alice, "I'm the one that attacked you. I put you here. I let my anger get the best of me, and you were just trying to break up the fight. I'm sorry that I hurt you, Alice. You didn't deserve it," more words that he thought that he would never say.

No matter how much Roland sincerely tried to make her feel better, Alice still felt a painful tugging sensation in her chest. The tears slowed to a stop. There was no need for all of the hate between them. It would just lead to more incidents like this one, "I don't want ta live with this much hate..."

Maybe they didn't have to. Roland held up the book that he brought. The red of the cover was identical to Alice's own color, and read 'Wonderland' on the front, "I brought this to tell you that I don't want to go on hating each other anymore. This book made me think of you, so I thought I'd bring it by to say that… I want to start again."

Alice held the book in her hands gingerly as she flipped through the pages, "Roland… you didn't 'ave ta-"

"Mom always said to pass books on when you're done with them, but I'm a bit of a hoarder…" Roland scratched the back of his head, "Do you read, or…?"

"I do. I do. I just… haven't read for fun in a while. Thank you, Roland…" _I guess I was right about not all Faunus being bad…_ "Listen, it's very kind of you ta be so… apologetic. It's something that I never thought I would see in you. I'm just not sure if it's as simple as startin' again... I mean, you did beat me to a pulp, but I did… say some truly awful things. We can call that much even for now."

"Or we could blame it all on Navy. Let's be honest here, I tried being civil," Roland suggested. Jokes aside, he still had things that he wanted to tell her, "We're both really hateful people, Alice, but hate poisons the heart, as Mom always said. Be it towards yourself or others," he couldn't help but grin as he remembered her scolding him. Sure, he felt bad, but that was when he knew that his mother truly cared.

"Hate is a terrible thing, huh…?" Alice stared at the book. After so long of forcing herself to hating them, it was the Faunus around her that were changing her worldview, "But it's so hard to get rid of, isn't it? It likes to linger…"

"But I think that we only really hate other people when we hate who we are," Roland slowly removed his hat and set it in his lap, "That's been the case for me for a while now."

Alice felt a bit uncomfortable talking about something like this with someone she normally considered a mortal enemy, but she had been thinking the same thing to herself for a while, "I've always been… sheltered. Now that I'm actually _experiencin'_ otha people and things, I feel like the viewpoints I've been raised with aren't exactly… correct," she sighed, "So the big question for me is, do I fight ta change the way I am an' go through the pain of actually changin', or do I just stay the way I've always been an'… be hated by everyone?..." she shook her head, "I guess you can say I hate tha fact that I'm so… indecisive."

"I don't hate you, so I guess you already made that decision," he thought about what happened earlier in the day, how she tried to stop the fight, "But you're scared to admit it, aren't you?"

She couldn't respond. Deep down, she didn't know if she could let go of what she'd been taught and told all her life. "I don't know, Roland," she nodded to him, "What about you, then?"

"I could say a lot, yeah?" he looked down at the tiled floor, "I guess it's that I let her down. She was a Huntress turned instructor. Everyone she came across… they admired her. I had to live up to that, and I nearly did. When she… left, I was left with a hole. I kept trying to fill it with hate. Maybe then I could go out and kill whoever killed her, and I honestly do want to do that. I know that those feelings would disappoint her, though. The last thing that she said to me was to be a Huntsman for myself just as much as others, but I'm failing that miserably. I suppose that I hate myself because I feel as though I am letting her down," he looked back up at Alice, "but it also gets less painful as I talk about it. Yeah, I still have someone on my hit list, but I'm learning that I can rely on my team and my classmates. It's cheesy, but friends really make a world of difference when it comes to that brand of pain that doesn't just pass on its own."

Alice looked down to the red book on her lap, "I…" she looked back up at him, "Can we work togetha on this, then? It's clear that I can't do this on my own, an' you understan' what havin' so much hate feels like, an'…"

"I think that'd be best for both of us," Roland put his hat back on when he heard the nurse walking back up to the door, "Things like these are too much to deal with alone."

The nurse slowly opened the door, "Roland, Alice needs some rest. You should be on your way."

"Right…" Roland stood from his seat, "I'll come check on you again tomorrow morning if that's okay. Alabaster only wanted me to come by now, but…" he tried to hide his smile, "I have to keep tabs on my friends when they're recovering. I'll even bring a bran muffin or some cla… sorry, biscuits or something. If you would like, that is."

Alice couldn't help but sit there with her mouth agape. Less than a few months ago, she'd rather eat dirt than eat anything given to her by Roland. "Yeah… that'd be nice, Roland." As Roland went to leave, she stopped him, "Oh, an' Roland. The next time you want ta beat the eva-livin' crud out of me, just make sure it's in the Vytal Coliseum if Teams ANTE and ARTS miraculously happen ta get in the tournament and be matched up, okay?"

"After I beat the living crud out of Navy first. I choose my battles," he stepped out of the door, "and I always save the best ones for last."


	27. V1Ch23: Rise to the Challenge

" _Oh my god I'm so happy classes are done holy crap I'm so happy but I'm so tired somebody kill me_." Arty rattled off as he fell face first into the grass outside the lecture hall.

Timbre giggled, "C'mon Arty, the tests weren't _that_ bad."

"If it makes you feel any better, I'm pretty certain that I made McGouran regret not putting a word maximum on the essay portion. I filled every page he gave us with really _really_ fine print," Roland yawned. He sat down next to Arty, "I hope that will suffice as vengeance for the bits of your brain that sloughed out your ears."

"A fittin' punishment if ya ask me," the group turned to find Team ANTE walking up to them with Alice at the lead. "One-sided or front an' back?"

"Front and back. Three-hundred lines on each side. I hope he cries," Roland tossed a bran muffin wrapped in saran wrap over to Alice in an arc, "I made sure to grab you one. You seem to like them," he tossed a plastic bag full of beef jerky to Turf, and an apple to Ebon, "And don't worry, I didn't forget about you guys. Not even Navy," he tossed the soldier a can of potted meat.

Navy sneered at the can. Ever since Alice had gotten out of the infirmary again, she had made him act nicer towards Team ARTS and Turf. "Thanks…"

"Oh yeah, no problem," Roland grinned, "So, Alice, have you gotten any further into that book? I might have neglected to tell you that three quarters of that book is basically a drug trip."

Alice sat down on a nearby bench, "I didn't see it that way actually. I mean, ya, it was a bit… odd… but every scene was still beautifully described."

The other six students looked perplexed as the two carried on in their pleasant two-man book club. It was weird to see all, or at least most, of Team ARTS and Team ANTE getting along.

"At least he's not talking about smut with her…" Timbre joked to Arty and Sepia.

"Oh yes, Melidus! Please! Make me sore like I was after killing those Grimm to save you! _Nights of Our Days_ , page 427, lines 3 and 4," Roland quoted, "I hated that book so much, but it stuck. I can recite all of the most graphic scenes if you would like. It would spoil the ending, though."

Sepia plopped down beside him and shook her head, ' _Let's not and say that we did,'_ she signed. Seeing him in such a good mood made her happy, but what made her more happy was that Team ARTS seemed better than ever.

"Yeah, please don't..." Arty sounding queasy as he reclined on the grass, "My day was starting to get good and you kinda ruined it just now by making me remember the fact you know all of that by heart," his face scrunched up as if he smelled something bad, "It's kinda creepy."

"It comes with Inkheart. I can't help it, and knowing every book that I can touch is helpful in battle," Roland laid back in the grass, "By the way, I know exactly how many pictures that you drew back into the books. Do you want me to share the details of the illustrations that you made in those same romance novels?" he asked.

"Roland. No. Stop," Arty covered his face with his arms, "No no no no no no no no no no no no no please don't remind me."

' _Can you give me a figure on that?'_ Sepia signed.

"He drew about fifty lewd women, as well as men," Roland informed her, "By the way, who keeps sneaking those books into the library?"

"Enough with the raunch!" Turf laughed. He fell down into the grass, and he used his Semblance to ensure that he landed softly, raising the cushioning grass up to catch him before returning to its place, "Man, I'm glad we all aren't at each other's throats anymore. It was draining to be in constant conflict with one another," he popped a bit of beef jerky into his mouth.

"Got that right," Ebon knelt and fell face first onto the ground. He let out a slow sigh of relief, "It's a heck of a lot less stressful now that we can actually be… well, real with each other."

Alice glanced to Navy. His expressionless face was turned off toward the cliffside, away from everyone else. "Yeah. Right," she began kicking her feet back and forth.

"So…" Timbre began, "now that we have a couple of weeks until the students from the other schools show up, what're we gonna do?"

"Well, we're getting close to done with the welcoming preparations," Ebon said, "gotta say, the charts and sketches and stuff you guys did really helped out."

Timbre shrunk back, remembering that those were originally her team's duties. "Well, that's great you guys! I'm sure it'll be a lot of fun."

"Oh crap!" Arty jumped up, "I completely forgot that I was gonna talk to Midas and Curie before they got here!"

"Who's that?..." Rime asked as she ran up to the group.

"Hey, Rime." Timbre threw in quickly.

"Midas and Curie. They're my best friends from back home in Atlas. They're on one of the teams participating in Vytal." Arty explained.

Rime tilted her head to the side, "You're from Atlas?..."

"Yeah…" Timbre said, "Each member of Team ARTS is from a different kingdom. I thought we told you that before?"

"You all will have to forgive her for her total reliance on short-term memory along with her short attention span," Frost said as she walked up with Zero and Everest behind her. She found it strange that Teams ANTE and ARTS were in arm's reach of one another and weren't trying to kill, maim, or strangle one another. _Guess things actually did work out between them. I never would have thought that it would extend to Alice and her team…_ Frost thought to herself.

"Hey!" Rime protested, "I'm not _that_ easily distracted, Frost!"

Zero crossed his arms, "Rime… I caught you staring at a spider in the corner of the room during the exam. Twenty minutes later, you were still looking at it."

Rime huffed, "It could have killed me… leave me alone…"

"Everest. Think. He. Passed." Everest gave a meaty thumbs up in approval of himself, "Frost. Help. Everest. Relax. And. Study. Hard."

"It was a struggle, but he is actually a pretty quick learner when he puts his mind to it. His language skills are lacking, but he has his shining moments," Frost smiled up at her teammate.

"Well, I'm sure we all did good enough to move on to next semester!" Turf grinned stupidly.

"Guys, I'm sorry!" Arty jumped up quickly, eyes glued to his scroll, "My friends are already waiting at the CCT in Atlas!" He began running to the tower, "I'll catch up with you guys later!"

"Hey! Wait!" Roland bolted up, "Cool if I jump in? We're partners!" he shouted after him.

Arty turned back, "Sure. Fine. You guys can all come if you want. I just can't miss this call. Atlas is _super_ strict about wasting time at the CCT terminals. They won't let me live it down if I miss them. And Roland," he pointed at his partner sternly, " _don't_ traumatize them. We only have like two weeks until they get here and I don't want them deciding to opt out of the tournament because of you."

"Hey, chill. I'm cool now," Roland caught up and pat Arty on the shoulder, "I haven't gotten in a fight since… you know."

Close behind was Sepia, who was positively beaming. Making new friends was something that she always wanted to seek out, and Arty's friends were practically 50% of the way to being her friend by default. She just hoped that one of them might know sign language.

Timbre turned to FREZ and ANTE, "Sorry to cut our post-finals party short, but do you mind if I go, too?"

"Arty's your boyfriend. Go on ahead," Ebon waved a hand.

"She's not dating him!" Turf yelled out in what seemed to be defense.

Timbre blushed and waved, quickening her step, "Okay. See you all later!" she ran to catch up with her team.

After Team ARTS had disappeared across the courtyard, Rime glanced to Turf with a sly smile curling at her lips, "What was _that_ about, Ace of Spades?"

"Nothing. It was nothing," Turf turned onto his stomach and buried his face into the ground to hide the fact he was blushing, "Absolutely nothing."

An awkward silence fell between the two teams. Despite Alice and Roland actively trying to be nicer to others, the understanding that existed between ARTS and ANTE didn't exist between ANTE and FREZ.

"Well…" Frost said, "we were on our way to grab some lunch," her and her team turned around to walk off, "See you four around."

"Tata, Frost." Alice said cheerfully, which surprised everyone, even herself. "C'mon you guys. Let's get back to plannin'."

Turf and Ebon groaned.

"Do we _have_ to?" Turf complained, "we _just_ got out of finals…"

* * *

Arty shifted in the chair nervously as the screen loaded up "Oh man…" He logged into the console with sweaty hands, "Oh man oh man oh man…"

"Arty, why are you so nervous?" Timbre asked as she leaned on her elbows against the table next to him, "They're your friends, right?"

"Yeah, but… I mean... The last time I talked to them it was when I told them I got kicked out of Atlas Academy… and that I wouldn't be on a team with them," he turned to look at Roland and Sepia on the other side of him, "and here I am with a new team…"

"Your super cool, artsy-fartsy team, that is," Roland said while watching Sepia's hands, "Sepia's words, not mine."

Arty was still apprehensive. "I guess I'm just scared that they'll feel like I'm replacing them…"

Timbre rolled her eyes, "Arty, you didn't replace your friends, you just made new ones. I think you're more scared that _they_ replaced _you_ ," Just then, the screen showed an incoming call, "and just from the fact that we're here right now shows that they haven't. So shut up and answer the call."

"Timbre, I-" Arty tried to hold off as long as possible, but Roland shot his hand out and touched the screen. After he did so, two teens their age appeared on the screen. One was a well-tanned boy with bright golden hair tied into a ponytail on the side of his head wearing a yellow suit. The other was a pale girl in glasses with dull green hair tied back with what appeared to be a mess of electrical wires. The neon green streaks running through her hair were jarring and reminded them of the bright colors of Lurida and Xannie's hair. She wore a dark green hoodie and was reclined back in her chair lazily.

"Whazzup Umber?!" the boy held out his arms as if to give Arty a long distance bro-hug, "You still blowin' the roof off places?!"

The girl gave a small half-wave. She appeared almost unenthusiastic. "Hey, Burne."

Arty smiled, "Midas! Curie! Man you have no idea how happy I am to talk to you guys," his smile faltered a little bit, "How are things going back home?"

Curie rolled her eyes, "As boring as ever… I have to say, you're lucky you got out of here. But I don't think anybody in Team MTLC would be willing to go to the same… _lengths_ as you."

Arty's heart dropped a little at the mention of the new team name. "Metallic? Who joined you guys?"

"This super cool chick, Titian! Fights like no one we've ever seen, you know? Laser blade, energy pistols, super agile in a full suit of armor. She's _crazy_." Midas clapped his hands, "I've gotta say, we did end up lucky! What about you? Tell us about Team ARTS!"

Arty looked around him, "Well…" as Timbre, Roland, and Sepia entered the frame, "the gang's all here."

The three of them all waved and greeted Arty's friends.

"This is Roland, Sepia, and-"

"TIMBRE FORTE!" Curie yelled out as she leaned forward, but as she did so, she fell out of her chair. The sudden burst of energy scared all of Team ARTS and even startled Midas.

Roland looked between the screen and his partner, "Is she alright…?" he asked slowly.

 **Sepia Hughes: Or stable…?**

Arty rolled his eyes and smiled, "Yeah, she's fine."

"Oh my god! Oh my god!" Curie said as she crawled her way back up, her head and arms resting on the table as she sat on the floor. Her glasses cocked to the side crookedly, "I am _such_ a big fan!"

Timbre chuckled, "Haven't heard anyone gush over me like that in a while…"

"Curie, knock it off with the drooling. You can fangirl later," Midas nudged his teammate, "Sorry man. Cool if we restart that intro to your teammates, and then explain the whole superstar being on your team thing?"

Arty laughed, "Alright." One by one, Arty introduced his teammates, telling Midas and Curie where each of them came from and what they did before coming to Beacon. When it came time for the more sensitive details, he decided it was best to leave them out at least until they were actually there in person and could have a conversation in private.

"Yeah, you shoulda seen our teacher take out those Kokonatsu! Laser swords flying around _everywhere_!" Arty finished a story enthusiastically as his team beamed beside him. They had never seen him get caught up so much in telling a story before.

' _And me and Roland also almost died!'_ Sepia signed with an unusual smile across her face.

Roland sighed, "Let's leave that detail out," he looked back over to the screen, "You know, I'll be straight with you two. I expected a techie like Curie from Atlas, but I guess I expected her to be a little more…" he decided against a jab at her appearance and moved on, "I didn't expect a laid back guy like you from Atlas either, Midas."

Curie's eyes narrowed as she pushed her glasses up. Arty knew this was a sign that something was bugging her. If she had been there in person, he had no doubt that she would have hurt Roland in one way or another.

"Yeah, well," Midas rubbed the back of his neck, "We like to keep it real over here at Atlas. We're about the only ones who do."

"Trust me," Curie sat back in her chair, "he loves to boast about that."

Arty leaned back away from the monitor and whispered to his team, "Midas is about as anti-authority as you can get without being put on a watchlist. When I blew the hole in the school last summer, he actually _congratulated_ me."

"You better _believe_ I congratulated you!" Midas exclaimed, "That was too freakin' cool, man! Way to stick it to General Leo-"

Curie quickly punched Midas in the arm with a surprising amount of strength before motioning to somewhere off-screen, "Do you want to get reprimanded again?"

"Think I care?! I'll keep fighting back against our dear general until the day I die! She's a humongous bit-"

Curie quickly grabbed Midas' ponytail and yanked it downwards. She held him in place for a bit while he squirmed, "Listen here, Goldilocks. If I have to sit through detention now that finals are over, I will kill you. I'm not going to have you cutting into my gaming time with that fat mouth of yours."

Sepia perked up, ' _I want to play Remnant Invaders with her. I will crush her for days.'_

Roland looked to Timbre to translate. After all, he didn't want to get even further on Curie's bad side. Since he was beginning to make friends with his enemies, he had no desire to create another setback for himself.

Timbre thought about how to reword Sepia's statement, "Uhh… Sepia says that she'd love to play a game or two with you when you guys get here! She's… kind of a gamer herself?" In the half year she had known her, Timbre had never once seen her playing a game of any kind other than keep away with Arty's sketchbook or Roland's hat.

Curie managed a small mischievous smile, "Haven't played splitscreen with anybody but Titian in a while. I accept your offer."

Deciding to cut out the middleman, Sepia typed out a message on her scroll and held it up to the screen.

 **Sepia Hughes: I will destroy you.**

Timbre slapped Sepia's scroll out of her hand.

Sepia responded to her by flipping the bird.

"I like this one! She's feisty!" Midas laughed. He leaned in, "Cool if I get your contact info?"

"Watch it," Roland growled. The notion of making new friends went flying out the window, "She's taken."

"Oh, dang," Midas snapped his fingers, "Lucky guy. Might have to chat with him, if you know what I mean," though he wished for laughter, he received none.

"Taken by me," Roland leaned up a bit, "Take a hint, numbskull."

Midas fell silent. He didn't quite have a response to that.

"And with that…" Curie stood up, "We should get going. They're doing a special end-of-semester lunch, and I'm starving," she pulled Midas up out of his chair, "Come on before you make things any more awkward with Burne's new friends."

Arty waved to his childhood friends, "'Kay. See you guys in a couple of weeks!"

"Right, see you guys!" Midas clicked off in a hurry.

As the screen turned black, Timbre noticed as Arty's smile faded.

"What's wrong, Painter-Boy?" she asked as they got up to leave the CCT.

"Nothing... just… it's kind of weird seeing them so happy. Like I never left," Arty loosened his striped tie as they stepped back out into the afternoon sun, "or like they don't even miss me."

Timbre frowned and pushed Arty by the shoulder, "Now don't start that, Umber! Did you even see the look on their faces when the call went through? They were _more_ than happy to see you again, so don't go on your pity-party. You have friends. More friends than you would if you never left Atlas, even," she crossed her arms and huffed, "Don't make us feel like you wish you'd never met us."

"I'm not! At least… It's unintentional if I am..." Arty held his hands up defensively, fearing another punch from the singer of their team, "It's just weird… you know? I wake up one day and think I'm going to be on a team with them for four years, and later I wake up again and I find out I'm banned from the Academy. Yeah, Midas was stoked, but the fact I had to leave the kingdom… that ended up upsetting him and Curie. They seemed all happy just now."

"They're still hurting over that, Arty. They just don't want to show it to your face," Roland scowled at his partner, "Look, at least you've made an effort to contact them. You haven't the faintest idea how great that makes them feel. My friends back in Mistral and Sepia's friends back in Vacuo are always happy to get a call from us."

Arty and Timbre both turned to look at Roland with blank stares. Then it dawned on them, Roland did have friends back in Mistral. Even after he told them about the events that brought him to Beacon, he hadn't gone into much detail on his friends.

"You guys never ask where Sepia and I go when we leave you guys. It's the CCT, in case you were wondering," Roland pointed to the girl holding his hand, "I've already had the pleasure of meeting Sepia's closest friend, Opal. She's a breath of fresh air, if you ask me," he smiled over at Sepia. He had been on his best behavior when he met Opal for her sake, "She's met Cayenne and Epazote, my two closest friends. They're participating in the tournament, too. Can't wait to see them again, or for you guys to meet them."

Arty's mood seemed to lighten as Timbre's dropped further.

"Yeah!" Arty grinned, "How awkward would it be if we ended up in the tournament and had to fight any of our friends at Vytal? I mean, with _our_ track record, that's not very likely, but in the event that it does, would you two be willing to beat up your friends in front of all of Remnant?"

"Did you really just ask me that?" Roland raised an eyebrow at him, "I'm Roland Solferino Wells. Heck yeah I'll beat the snot out of Epazote and Cayenne! I'm totally cool with beating the snot out of all my friends! I'll even beat the snot out of you!" he pat Arty on the shoulder as they walked along, "You had better believe that I'll beat the snot out of your friends too, and Sepia's!"

' _That's a lot of snot. Might want to bring a mop to the fights!'_ Sepia signed through a fit of laughter.

As the rest of her team laughed as they talked about pummeling their friends back home, Timbre couldn't help but feel lonely. She felt like, once the students from the other three kingdoms arrived, she'd be on her own when the rest of Team ARTS disbanded to get that sense of "home" they might be missing. _Well… Vale_ is _my home…_ she thought to herself as she followed along.

* * *

Three female voices rang out through a mess of shouting and yelling. Team ARTS ran across the courtyard towards the lecture halls where they finished their final exams earlier that day. As they came up to the half-wall, Teams ANTE and FREZ were there. They had changed into their casual outfits, but if Team ARTS didn't know any better, then they'd think that the two teams had been there all day.

Alice, Rime, and Frost were all arguing with each other. Oddly enough, it seemed that it was split three ways as Rime and Frost would occasionally shout at each other instead of working together to win whatever debate they were in with Alice.

"Woah, woah, woah!" Arty waved his arms back and forth to motion the three girls to stop yelling, "What's going on here?!"

"Alice has let her pride go to her head again," Frost said coldly, but still worked up a bit, "She keeps trying to argue with me that her team could wipe out more Grimm than mine, and I keep trying to tell her that I am not going to play her childish game."

"I'm not sayin' we _could_ ," Alice corrected her, "I'm sayin' we _would_ , but she's too scared to try an' prove it."

Arty scrunched his nose in disbelief, "H-how did this even get brought up?"

"There's been a huge influx of common Grimm in the Emerald Forest," Zero piped up from a tree branch overhead.

"Yeah!" Rime yelled, "and Alice brought up something about Professor Alabaster telling her that Carmen went out there with her team to hunt Grimm when there was a similar influx twenty years ago. Then she just _had_ to open up her mouth and say 'Oi! Team ANTE coul' kill all them Grimm wifout any 'elp I tell you wot!'"

"Oi, I do _not_ sound like that!" Alice shot back, which only sparked the entire argument again.

"I'd say ya do, Queen o' 'earts!" Roland chimed in. Since he had become "friends" with Alice, he felt that he could make the jab at her accent, "B'sides, we all know that Team ARTS 'ould totally kick ya arses if it came ta that!"

Arty snapped his head towards Roland, "No. Roland. Don't. Stop that. I know what you're doing!"

Timbre stepped into the fray, "Hey! Guys, cut it out for a sec."

The quarrel died down and everyone turned their attention to the pop star.

"This is going to sound sappy, but," she cleared her throat, "the twelve of us were all in the same orientation group. We were all in the Emerald Forest together on our first day and it was because of what happened in that forest that put us into the teams we're in today. Well, it's the last day of the semester, so why don't we go out and have a little fun to celebrate how far we've come?" she looked to Turf, "Who's up for a little friendly competition?"

Turf jumped up enthusiastically and ran to Timbre's side, his arm raised, "I'm down."

' _Oh yes! Oh yes! Oh_ _ **yes,**_ ' Sepia held her hands up as if she were holding her guns at the ready. If she had her guns, she would have been providing the surrounding students with a nice serving of lead rain.

"I'm cool with that," Zero glanced at Rime. He was grinning underneath his scarf, "Just don't… FREZ up."

"Nice one!" Roland went for a high-five, but merely slapped the air, "Right, so…" he slowly lowered his hand, "Yeah, I'm game. I've got a little surprise that I've been dying to try out, but it's a little too dangerous to do it on campus."

As Frost watched Everest, of course, walk up to join Rime, she knew she didn't have a choice. She was about to refuse, until she remembered what Rime had said about being 'fun'. When she suggested something, it wasn't 'fun', but now that Rime was gung-ho about doing something… "Alright. Me too…"

Arty watched as Ebon and Navy went to join Alice and Turf.

"C'mon, Painter-Boy!" Alice taunted, "Can't leave ya team hanging three against two teams of four!"

Arty was nervous, "Guys… won't we get in trouble… again?..."

"Well, class isn't in session… so they can't really do anything unless we get hurt. It isn't like the Emerald Forest is roped off," Ebon pointed out.

"We're only in trouble if we die!" Rime jumped up and down.

 _You'd think after the countless times people have done this to me this semester, I'd learn how to say no..._ Arty thought to himself as he groaned. Hesitantly, he walked over and joined the group of first-years. He pumped his fist half-heartedly into the air, "Woo-hoo…"

The whole group cheered.

"Okay," Frost decided to help set the ground rules, "everyone go rest up. We will meet at the cliff at sunset," she looked to Alice, "Sound fair?"

Alice nodded before turning to her team, "We'll get our weapons ready. Make sure ta bring your scrolls! We'll need 'em ta keep score."

"So." Everest pushed up from his divot in the grass, "We. Kill. Grimm." He was slowly processing everything, but he could feel everyone's eyes falling on him. The pressure was on, "We. Kill. Grimm. And. Count. Kill," that seemed to be right, but his mind was growing tired, "That. Mean. That. Team. Kill. Most," he paused to think of the last few words, "Is. Warrior. Master."

As the others looked on in confusion, Rime nodded encouragingly, "Yes. That's right big guy. Don't overexert yourself. I don't want a repeat of that time I tried to get you to do a crossword puzzle…"

Frost and Zero cringed as they remembered the destruction.

"Soooo…." Arty took a step back from the short-circuiting mountain, "meet at the cliff with our scrolls and weapons at sundown. Got it."

Sepia stared up at the frustrated wall of muscle. She could have sworn that his head was smoking a little but, but her eyes had to have been deceiving her, ' _That was incredible.'_

"Let us prepare for the fighting, then, but I think we can go ahead and say who the victor will be," Frost curtsied and wagged a finger to tell her team to follow, "May the best team win."

"You're on Ice Princess." Alice said as she turned on her heel and walked away, her team close behind.

As he followed, Turf turned around and shrugged to Timbre.

She giggled as Team ARTS were left standing alone in the courtyard.

"So," Roland rummaged in his back pocket, "I was gonna save this for later, but I want you to have a little time to strategize. Now that those guys are out of earshot…" he held up five glass vials full of swirled red and neon yellow paintballs, "I present you with my greatest creation."

"The heck is this, Roland?" Arty asked, "Did you use my paintball casings?!"

"Almost blew up our dorm in the process," Roland held them closer to Arty, "I call it Nova Dust. It's incredibly unstable. I picked it up from _Bite the Dust_ that night that I spent in Vale," he thought about tossing the vials to Arty, but he didn't want to nuke the courtyard, "It creates an explosion of white hot plasma, and I haven't found anything that can withstand the explosion yet. This stuff is why Timbre couldn't find her notes from McGouran's class. They disintegrated when some of it fell on them."

Timbre gasped and turned to Roland with an accusatory look, "Roland! Really?!"

"I lent you mine because of that. Didn't you think it was weird that I just handed you a copy of my notes when you were flipping out over yours suddenly going missing?"

Timbre went to say something else, but decided to just stay quiet.

Arty looked up to the sky. Although it was still early in the afternoon, the sun was much further along its path across the sky due to it being winter time. "Well, if we're gonna make it to the cliff at sundown, we better hurry up and get ready."

A monstrous gurgle came from within Sepia. She typed out a quick message to alert her team of the situation.

 **Sepia Hughes: My stomach's making the rumblies. We should get food first.**

"I second that," Timbre said as she walked towards the dining hall with her partner.

"I third." Arty jogged after them, "Then we go back to the dorm so I can get out of this stupid uniform…"

"I fourth. I hope they've got the boiled clams out today. They ran out last week…" Roland caught up with Arty, "That was my fault, but whatever," he pointed out while loosening his tie.

* * *

As the sun was setting, students milled around the locker-room used for weapon and supply storage. Arty reached into his locker and began counting out paintballs, making sure that he had an equal number of all of them, minus the red ones considering what happened the last time he was in the Emerald Forest. He looked at the vials of Roland's 'Nova Dust'.

"Hey, Roland," he held the tube out gingerly to his teammate, "considering how much trouble me plus Fire Dust plus Emerald Forest results in, are you _sure_ this Nova stuff is a good idea?"

"It's an absolutely terrible idea, but it's a great idea if you want to win," Roland tightened the straps on Writer's Block, "Check this out," he held three ink grenades out to Arty. One was tinted blue, another violet, and the third was tinted red and yellow, "I messed around with Dust and my ink. I might have stolen a bit of your water Dust, but I did it as a precaution for the Nova Dust going… haywire. Then I used some of my Gravity Dust to make a few of these purple ones. I even made a Nova Dust grenade… a few, actually."

Arty began to pout, "But… Water Dust is hard to find…"

"I can separate it back out if you want to take the chance of burning the Emerald Forest to the ground," Roland suggested, "Or I can ship some over from one of my dad's warehouses in Mistral to make up for the IOU. My sister, Dante, wouldn't mind bringing it over with her."

"No, no, that's fine." _But I really would like more Water Dust…_ he thought to himself.

"Hey, Arty."

Arty turned to Timbre. She had taken her detachable red sleeves off, showing the spools of wire she wore high up on her arms. The end of the strands traveled down black tubes to each glove. In her hand was another such spool.

"I would rather be safe than sorry in case we end up fighting more than just Grimm out there. You know how the three teams act towards one another, and you're the only one with a backpack so… would you mind?"

Arty took the spool, "Not at all, I'm honestly surprised we haven't taken advantage of this more," he shoved the spool into the large pocket of his bag, "You two want me to carry anything?"

"Here," Roland held up a cloth bag of various types of ink grenades and other samples of the ink pouches that he used, "It'd be good for you to keep these," he also brought out two sample bags of ink pellets and gave them to Timbre and Sepia, "You guys should keep these too. It's a quick way to give your location."

Sepia handed Arty a plastic bag full of snacks from the vending machines. She also passed him a few reels of film/ammo. Both would come in handy, but the snacks would prove to be the best addition to the backpack in her opinion.

With his bag fully stocked, Arty threw the strap over his head and almost buckled over from the weight. "Well then… this is going to take some getting used to."

"Havin' trouble, Umba?" Alice smirked as she leaned against the end of Team ARTS' row of lockers.

Arty groaned, "Not now, Alice…"

"I'm kiddin'. I'm… kiddin'…" she sounded unsure of the wording. She had never been one to joke with others.

"So do you guys have your scrolls ready?" Turf asked.

"Ready?..." Timbre pulled out her scroll, "What do you mean?"

Alice rolled her eyes, "Here," she took Timbre's scroll and began typing out search terms, tapping buttons, and swiping through different menus. After a few seconds, she handed it back, "It's an app some Huntsmen use ta keep track of Grimm when on search an' destroy missions. It can keep track of what kind of Grimm you kill an' how many of each," she glanced to the rest of Team ARTS as she one by one downloaded the app on the rest of their scrolls, "If you 'ave a team linked up, you can keep totals an' see how they're doin' as well, simila' to how you keep up with their aura levels," she handed Arty back his scroll. "At tha cliff, we'll all link ours up so we can see 'ow all twelve of us are doin'."

"Wow," Arty looked amazed as he scrolled through the menus, "This is really extensive! How come the school's never told us about this thing?"

Alice smirked, "Ta prevent the kind of thing we're doin' tonight. They believe it would cause… reckless competition that could end up in preventable injuries. I mean, just imagine if the likes of Team Asses got a hold of it! But I believe we're responsible enough, right Navy?"

He grunted in agreement before walking out of the locker-room.

"Right. See you four at tha cliff," she turned to follow Navy, "Tata."

"Hey Navy! There's some brown on your nose!" Roland called out with a big, cheesy grin.

Navy stopped and went to go back and pummel the Faunus.

Alice held her arm out to stop him, "Navy, if you want ta pummel him that badly, do it by helpin' Team ANTE win this little contest, okay?"

He glared down at her. She wasn't the same leader she was when they first came to Beacon. "Fine."

"Good."

' _You're going to get yourself killed,'_ Sepia signed to Roland. She grabbed onto his arm and pulled him along behind team ANTE. She wanted to get a move on, and hoped that Arty and Timbre caught her drift.

"I'll take my chances," Roland laughed. Being so upbeat made him feel strange, but good, "Arty! Timbre! Let's go kick some butt and have a good time!" he called to his team. Even his tail swung from side-to-side from his mood.

Arty, Timbre, and Turf were the only ones left.

"He's gotten weird since he beat up Alice," Turf said to nobody in particular, "Did he bang his head on something?"

"He's just finally starting to learn how to be a bit more _human_ ," Timbre's eyes widened when she realized what she said, "I mean… uh… oh gods…" she fumbled and stuttered over her words as her face turned a deep red.

"What? It's a figure of speech. That's not racist," Turf looked at Timbre in confusion, "But yeah, you're right. He's a heck of a lot more likable. So is Alice. It's just… it's refreshing, but unnerving," he thought about the last few days that he had shared with Alice, "I mean, Alice started pulling out a deck of cards… a _regular_ set I mean, and having us play and chat after dinner. It's a lot of fun, but it's weird to see that side of her."

"You know, Roland started doing something like that. He apparently had some boardgames stored away, and breaks them out so that we can all play and talk. We joke around and actually have a good time. Like you said, it's fun but weird," Arty shifted the weight of his newly filled bag. The weight bore down on his shoulders pretty bad, but loosening the strap helped to alleviate that a little bit, "Then he made outlines of the information for all of our classes for finals for all of us, and individualized them. He used art terms in mine, music terms in Timbre's, and movie terms in Sepia's. It's like he cares now," he held up one of the Nova Dust vials, "He even made these for me. What strange universe did we fall into?"

"I don't know, man, but it's apparently one where even Navy doesn't fly off the chain all the time," Turf hooked his weapon onto his belt, "It's great, but just straight up backwards. He still follows her like a dog on a leash… you guys can laugh at that... but you can tell he doesn't like it as much as he used to."

"Fun," Arty said as he looked out the nearby window, "Oh man. Sun's almost down. We better go."

"Right," Timbre said. She nudged Turf's shoulder, "Ready to get a beat-down Digger?"

"Bring it, Singer."

* * *

All twelve students stood atop the cliff overlooking the Emerald Forest. It was a long way down, but it wasn't anything that they couldn't handle if need be. The launch pads had been deactivated, but that wasn't a problem for the Huntsmen and Huntresses in training. When they last stood here, hardly any of them knew each other. Standing on that cliff that night reminded them that they had all grown tremendously.

"Man, the moon's seriously weird. Like, what happened to it?" Turf asked while staring up at the night sky, the parts of Remnant's shattered moon glowing a bright white in the cloudless sky. He wasn't paying much attention to the looks of pure joy on everyone else's faces, "I've seriously never heard anyone breath a word about the story behind it. Did something hit it?"

"No idea," Rime said as she looked down off of the sheer rock face, "Ask the Rhea's. They might know. They dig space stuff."

"Okay!" Alice called out, "Now that everyone is ready, we know tha rules, right?"

"Yeah," Arty grinned his toothy grin, "Kill Grimm, keep score, and keeping the other teams from scoring is perfectly fine, just as long as we don't kill or maim one another."

Alice glowered, "In layman's terms I suppose…"

"Dang. Navy doesn't have any pens on him…" Roland mumbled.

Frost ignored him and raised a hand to get the attention of the others, "I would like to impose another rule. If a team takes out something like that Minotaurus this time around, then I think that should count for ten Grimm at least. Also, if your aura gets to regulation loss levels or breaks in a fight, come back here immediately with a teammate for safety."

Alice huffed, "That will all be taken inta account afta tha game is ova. The app allows you ta keep track of what kinds of Grimm you kill, so we'll see everythin'. I 'ave no objections to tha second point."

Ebon raised a gloved hand, "So, one more question. How long we got to fight these things? An hour? Two hours? Until sunrise? Until one of us gets torn to shreds? What?"

"Let us just go until sunrise," Frost suggested, "We can sleep all day tomorrow if we want, or just ask Lurida for that liquid methamphetamine that she calls coffee."

The students looked to the horizon in front of them. The sun was already halfway below the trees.

"As soon as tha last light of tha sun is gone, we go." Alice spoke up as she held a few cards between her fingers.

"Fine by me." Arty said as the dim red light began to darken all around them.

Everest popped his knuckles, "Ready. To. Kill."

Rime summoned two curved ice blades, each poised to fight, "Bring it on."

Without any signal, Zero held his katana steady and at the ready.

"I hope that we don't end up regretting this…" Ebon groaned, but stood at the edge of the cliff anyway.

"Just don't expect Grimm to be the only things you fight tonight…" Navy mumbled under his breath.

Alice glanced over to him, "Just keep inta-team quarrels ta a non-lethal level."

"Ready," Turf held his shotgun in both hands and pointed at the ground, ready to form a pillar of rock to get him a better start into the forest.

Paper and ink formed a sickle shape on Roland's arm, "Don't blow up the entire forest, Arty. You might startle the visiting Atlas students before they even get here."

Arty scoffed, "C'mon, Roland… they're already scared of me…"

Their scrolls all dinged.

 **Sepia Hughes: Yeah, for good reason ya terrorist.**

She grinned and held her guns out in front of her.

"Play nice, you guys." Timbre said as she watched the sun become just a sliver of bright light through the treetops.

"Ten… nine… eight… seven…" most of the group began to count down in unison.

"Get ready Umber, Crims." Frost felt the fire of competition burning in her belly.

"You're tha one that should watch out," Alice shot back.

"I'm staying out of this one… but I won't stay out of leading my team to beat you two," Arty said grinning cockily.

"Three… two…"

The students inched closer to the edge of the cliff, all of their hearts racing.

"One!" most of them shouted in unision. All of them jumped into the night air and descended into the tree canopies far below. The fight was on. The hunt began.

* * *

Deep into the forest, hooded figures surrounded a large steel cage. A dark shape with molten eyes thrashed about within.

"Echo, we're in position." Oro said into a jet black scroll, "What are they doing now?"

Over the phone, a distorted voice came back, "They're just now entering the forest. Speeder and Shaka did a good job. Now we get to have a bit of fun with them. Just don't damage the targets too much. Make sure you actually use the devices. Need I remind you, we want them _alive_ , Oro. "

"I know I _know_. You don't have to be such a broken record. I know what I'm doing," Oro pulled up a black mass of metal wreathed in steam with one arm. A mechanical hiss sputtered out as the machine deactivated. "Can't promise they won't get hurt, though."

"That's fine, just keep the _others_ in check. I don't want them getting too violent."

Oro looked around at the other dozen hooded figures around them. All of them wore similar kangaroo skull masks, but theirs were red instead of while. A hum of synchronous giggles came from them, "They're under control, Echo. Now please, it's snack time for our little pet project." They hung up the scroll before Echo could retort.

The beast inside the cage let out a low growl as Oro sprinted out into the trees, a few of the other figures running closely behind.

"I've been waiting for this night…" Oro grinned underneath their mask, "Begin Phase Three of testing…"


	28. V1Ch24: Prehistoric Disaster

While Arty shot at a charging Beowolf, Roland wrestled with an Ursa, and Timbre whipped at a reasonably large Nevermore, Sepia was making her way from tree to tree. At each tree, she would run a circle around it, climb up and down, and give it a good kick before moving onto the next one.

When Timbre finally managed to slice her enemy in half, a dinging noise came from her scroll to indicate the kill. When the fight was over, she turned to see Sepia going along with whatever it was that she was doing.

"Sepia! We've barely killed anything so far! ANTE has 28, and FREZ has 34! We only have 15… You need to, you know, _help_!" Timbre shouted, but Sepia just kept on with her strange game of "I Spy".

She held up a finger to shut Timbre up. She was on a mission. After a few more minutes, she managed to find what she was looking for. A small hollow could barely be seen near the lower limbs of a tree.

Sepia shimmied up the tree trunk and looked inside. Dozens of little molten dots could be seen scuttling around. A bunch of tiny Scuttlepods hid in a tree hollow, all of them awaiting the day that they would be big enough to pose a threat to the people of Remnant.

As the opportunity had finally been found, she shoved the barrel of one of her guns into the hollow and held down the trigger. The Scuttlepods were met with swift, yet incredibly painful, deaths as her reels of film ammo spun bullets into their home. Black smoke billowed out of the hole, then her scroll began dinging in rapid succession.

Arty shot a paintball and a burst of electricity fried the head of the Beowolf. He took out his scroll as it chimed. His eyes widened as he saw the stats on the screen, "Sepia! That's just dirty," he scolded.

Timbre turned to her partner, "That shouldn't count!"

"It should," Roland cut in with his hands clutched against the sprawling claws of an Ursa. He gave the Ursa a quick headbutt, then threw it to the ground and decapitated it with a fresh blade of paper and ink, "She tracked them down and killed them fair and square. That's what I thought she was doing, but didn't tell you guys because you'd have this reaction, which is what she probably wanted."

Sepia nodded while hanging from the branch above the hollow.

Arty and Timbre stopped and looked to Roland. Their synchronicity since they'd started dating was always a strange sight to behold when it reared its ugly head.

* * *

"How in the _bloody_ hell did ARTS get up ta 84 points?!" Alice yelled as she dashed through the woods, a rogue Venice-gone-Wendigo chasing after her and Turf.

"Knowing them, I'm gonna guess Arty blew a group of Grimm up," Turf huffed as he ran alongside her. He could still hear the Wendigo a ways off, but he didn't know quite how far away. Unlike his cousins, he had a little harder time telling distance by sound, "Maybe we can find a bunch of Tuu or something."

Alice glanced back to the rampaging beast behind them as it clawed right through trees to gain ground on them. "Bigga is betta, Ace. We can argue for more points. Now, if you would be so kind, do ya mind _doin' somethin' ta stop this thing for a bloody second so I can kill it!?_ "

"These are dog ears, not wolf ears! I can't tell… where exactly… it is… to shoot at it..." Turf's voice trailed off, "Alice, please slap me for being an idiot."

" _Afta_ this thing is _dead,_ Turf!"

"Right," he shut his eyes and focused on the ground beneath them. The footsteps of the Wendigo were heavy and shook the earth, and told a guy with a Semblance that allowed him displace land exactly where it was.

He raised a hand up into the air quickly, and looked into the sky. Only a second later, the Wendigo could be seen flying high into the sky in front of the shattered moon, a pillar of rock obstructing the path behind them, "Think you can take it out now?"

"With my Semblance... I can do anythin'…" Alice reeled her arm back. Hearts dotted the face-side of the card in her hand. Time seemed to slow as the dark howling figure flew between her and the moon. She didn't need a real Semblance to kill a monster. A fake one would do just fine. With the shot lined up, she launched the card through the air. The airborn Grimm disappeared in a fiery explosion. "Oi, fireworks."

"Nice, but I don't feel like doing the whole kiss that ends scenes like this" Turf made a gagging noise. He realized what he said and chuckled, "Wow, now I'm starting to sound like Sepia. Treating real-life like one of her movies."

Alice turned and walked further into the forest, "With _your_ doggy breath? No way, but on your second point, I _do_ wish you'd be as quiet as her sometimes," she held up some more cards, "No one _sounds_ like Sepia, by the by."

"By the by? You mean 'by the way', don't you?"

Alice stomped in frustration, "'By the by' is _just_ as correct as 'by the way', Turf! Why does _nobody_ else around here know that except for me?"

"Frost probably says weird things like that," he looked up at the whisp of smoke that was left in the Wendigo's place as if to make sure it was dead, "and I bet Rime questions it as much as I do sometimes."

* * *

"Great, Everest and Zero are off doing their thing and we're stuck here with these _stupid spiders_!" Rime stomped her foot down on a Raach as big as her head, "How are our scores doing, by the by?

"One, ARTS is up at 85 now and ANTE is up at 30, and two, it is 'by the way', Rime," Frost huffed as her bladed ribbons fell to her sides. About seven Raach began fading into nonexistence around her.

"Why does everyone think they need to correct me when I say tha- STUPID SPIDERS WHY WON'T YOU ALL JUST DIIIIIIE!" Rime continued stomping around as smaller Raach tried to climb up her legs. In her panic, she looked almost like a child throwing a temper tantrum. She summoned a staff of ice and began stabbing it into the ground. Bone plates cracked and shadowy dust filled the air as she continued flailing and screaming. Despite their size, the white-hot venom that dripped from their mouths still hurt. She had to keep a block of ice on hand to wipe away the liquid before it completely ate away at her aura.

When she was done, the Raach that were previously clamoring around her feet were gone and she was panting heavily, sweat pouring down her face and her hair wildly matted. Her socks were drenched from constantly rubbing ice on her shins.

"Are you okay?" Frost asked with an eyebrow raised.

"I… _hate_ … spiders…" Rime managed to get out between breaths, "Almost as much as I hate Grimm. Together they form my biggest nightmare."

"Yeah, I noticed…" Frost began retracting her weapons, "I am curious about why ARTS got a big point boost. I am going to check the killfeed and see what I can find. Are you alright with keeping an eye out on the area while I do? Maybe call Zero and Everest to come group up with us for some… backup?" she opened her scroll and began scrolling through the recent kills. She certainly wasn't too concerned about the Raach hiding out in the trees around them.

Rime created small icicle throwing knives and held them between her fingers as she looked around in a panic. "Make it quick? I can't go long without somebody watching my back. I don't want these eight-legged, acid-spewing _freaks_ getting the jump on us in case there are any bigger ones!"

"If you keep holding onto those negative emotions, then they will just swarm you even more. If I am being honest, I am horrified of spiders, too, but I learned to repress those fears when I fight. If I refuse to do that, then I may die one day as a result of my fear," Frost noted while scrolling through the killfeed. She noticed something peculiar. Apparently, the boost in points for Team ARTS came from Sepia killing 65 Scuttlepods, "Those little…" she pursed her lips, "Rime, Sepia took out 65 Scuttlepods. I bet she found a nest of really tiny ones or something…"

"Are we not doing the same sorta thing?!" Rime yelled as she kept throwing icicle after icicle at the swarm of creatures.

"It is not proving to be that effective…" Frost mumbled.

" _Because they won't stop moving, Frost!_ " Rime shouted.

"That is not hindering Zero or Everest," Frost held up her scroll to show a killfeed constantly updating with kill after kill by the two young men, "Why not just freeze them and then shatter them once they are immobile?"

Rime stopped in her tracks and blinked, "Oh… good point." Rime stood and faced the creatures, now with a defiant grin on her face, "You guys need to _chill out_." She summoned a freezing vortex of wind from the blue crystal around her neck. Grass turned white with frost and the wind whipped through the air in twinkling sparkles of ice. The arachnoid Grimm tried to fight back, but eventually succumbed to their frigid demise, "Dammit… now _I'm_ doing the puns..." she turned to her team leader, "Care to finish them off? Your… ribbony… thingies… would probably do better than anything I could think up."

"The collective name of my weapon is Borealis, Rime. I worked very hard on developing them, and will put you on their receiving end if you do not address them with the respect that they deserve," Frost re-released her weapons, "Think you could back up a bit? It would be a shame to accidentally decapitate you while taking out a bunch of Raach." she asked and then began whipping her weapons in a wide circle around herself.

"Yeah, yeah. Whatever, Frost." Rime leaned back against a tree, outside the circle of frozen spiders. "Let 'em have it, Frost!" she called out from her safe spot.

Frost, still twirling, lowered her hands to the ground. Turning on her heels, she allowed her ribbons sweep across the frozen horde. The Raach burst into sparkling dust when struck, their scattered shards reflected the moonlight like shattered glass. When the smoke and ice faded, she retracted her weapons, "What does that bring us up to?"

* * *

"Woah! FREZ just shot up to 76 points, dude!" Ebon yelled to his partner as he circled a trio of three large Ursa on his skis. A circular wall of ice and snow corralled them to the center of the clearing, "And it just keeps going up! We're falling behind _everyone_ now!"

Navy didn't care. "Just keep them close together so I can finish them." Navy dashed and lept into the group. He planted a boot firmly on one bear-Grimm's head, bending down to hold the barrel of his pistol against its temple. With a few quick shots, it was down.

"Yo! Navy! Watch out!"

Navy turned just in time to see a black paw barreling towards him.

With a heavy swat, Navy was thrown off of the dissipating body of the downed Ursa and slammed into the dirt, knocking the air out of him.

"Man, looks like you don't just get your butt handed to you by other students!" Ebon laughed and dived into the fray, his skis retracting into his boots. The Ice Dust points of his ski poles were driven into the foreheads of the two Ursa. From the stab wounds, ice crystals burst out and skewered the heads of the Ursa from every angle as he pumped freezing projectiles into their skulls, "I've got you covered, though."

Navy scoffed, "pff… whatever," he winced as he pulled himself to his feet.

Ebon jumped down and landed with a _thud_ as his heavy ski boots hit the ground."You could say thank you." His cocky smile quickly faded as he found himself face to face with the barrel of Navy's glock. "Woah! Woah! Navy! I know we never said anything about _inner-_ team battles, but I'm pretty sure the same rules apply! I take back what I said!" He held his hands up as the gunshot rang out. He shut his eyes, but didn't feel any bullet hit him or even reflect off of his aura.

Navy stood with the end of his gun smoking slightly. He wasn't looking at Ebon. He was looking _behind_ him.

Ebon turned just as one of the injured Ursa began teetering over, blotting out the light of the moon as it began to fall over him. He rolled away just in time to avoid getting crushed by the thing's body.

"I think _I'm_ the one that needs thanking. Or you could call us even and shut up about it." He holstered his gun and began walking away, "Come on. Let's find more so we can finish this stupid game."

"Fine, fine, thanks," Ebon kicked some ice out of his way and trudged along ahead. His boots crunched the snow while he walked, but this didn't distract him from what was eating at him, "Wait a second, I thought that you of all people would be stoked to kill a bunch of Grimm, or kill anything for that matter."

"When it's for a mission or class, it's fine," Navy's brow furrowed even deeper as he continued ahead, "The twelve of us out here right now are treating this like a _game_. What people need to learn is that what we do isn't a game. The Huntsmen Academies were put in place to protect people from Grimm. Wouldn't the logical thing to think be that Grimm are more than just playthings?"

"If we can bring them down to the level of playthings, doesn't that mean that we're good enough to take them on? I mean, us being able to play a game with Grimm successfully could be an indication that we're effective Grimm killers," Ebon pointed out.

"That's an ignorant way of thinking of things, Ebon." Navy said bluntly. "Toys don't actively try and kill people. You treat them as such, your guard goes down, and if your guard goes down," another loud bang suddenly rang out.

Ebon heard a loud thud behind him. He turned back to find a dead Beowolf at his heels.

"You die."

* * *

"And ARTS takes the lead by a long shot!" Arty chanted as he dashed through a shallow stream.

Timbre stayed close behind, "Literally twenty minutes ago you scolded Sepia for her little bug-hunt method…"

"Yeah, well," Arty snickered, "I thought about it a bit, and I realized it'll be funny to see Frost and Alice's faces when we win, won't it?"

"Got that right," Roland glanced around the area as they ran. After all, he didn't want any Grimm coming around. He slowed down, "Hold up, guys. You see that?"

Everyone stopped.

"See what, Roland?" Timbre asked, her wires at the ready.

"Another big-point target?" Arty sounded hopeful as he aimed his gun towards the thicket of trees where Roland was looking.

"No…" he tried to peer into the trees, but they were too thick to see very far. Something didn't quite feel right, "Call it Faunus intuition, but I think we're being watched."

Sepia stood beside Roland and shut her eyes. In a few moments, she opened them again and shook her head. If she hadn't seen anything with her Semblance, then there was probably nothing to worry about.

Timbre shrugged "I'm sure it was nothing then, Ro-"

A line of explosions cut Timbre and Roland away from Arty and Sepia. Smoke filled the air. The four of them coughed until the air finally cleared.

Arty wiped at his eyes and blinked them back open. All he could see was a flash of red before something heavy hit him square in the chest, launching him back into a tree. He slid down to the ground. "Oww…" he groaned as he pulled himself to his feet.

"Haha! That's what you get for cheatin'!" Alice taunted as she flipped a card between her fingers.

Sepia whistled at Timbre and nodded. Knowing that Timbre would catch her drift, Sepia sprinted at Alice with her guns in front of her. If she could have, she would have been screaming like a banshee. Sadly, she had to settle for sliding on the ground between Alice's legs and firing a few shots towards her back as she came out the other side.

"Why you little…" Alice grimaced.

Sepia giggled to herself as she continued the barrage. That is, until she found a boot on her stomach, stopping her mid-slide.

"Well hello there." Navy grabbed Sepia by the hem of her skirt and threw her backwards. She fell into the water of the stream with a loud splash.

"Hey, jarhead!"

Navy turned and suddenly found a thick wire wrapped around his waist.

In one quick jerk, Timbre had Navy flying towards her. She stepped back, preparing her foot for a devastating kick. As Navy came close enough, she swung and threw her foot outwards. The heel of her boot connected with the side of his face and sent him sprawling around twenty feet away.

"Dammit, Navy! Ya let her catch you off-guard!" Alice yelled.

"Aww…" Timbre mocked sympathy, "did I break your boy-toy, Alice?"

All was fun and games when it came to beating the living hell out of one another, which was quite a step up to their previous quarrels earlier in the semester.

Talking crap about Faunus was something that could be ignored within reason. Grabbing Sepia by the skirt was completely unforgivable, "Navy…" Roland glowered down at the jerk in blue, "you grabbed my girlfriend's skirt and threw her. Do you have any idea what you just got yourself into?"

Navy was still recovering from his sudden back-breaking trip across the clearing and the boot to the face, so he just spit at Roland in response.

"Hey Alice, your boyfriend is a dick, and he touches other girls. Do with that as you will," he crouched next to him and wiped the spit back off onto Navy's face. "You can get pissy at me all day Navy, but you do _not_ touch Sepia. Got it?"

Arty saw that Turf and Ebon were distracted by the continuing battle between Navy, Alice, Roland, and Sepia. He decided that if Team ANTE wanted to fight, then he'd fight back too. He aimed his gun at the boy in the green beanie. "No hard feelings, right Turf?"

"Nah," Turf raised his shovel like a baseball bat, "No hard feelings when I kick your butt, right Arty?"

Arty grinned and began firing paintball after paintball. Shades of blue, green, yellow, and white flew through the air before being batted away as if they weren't full of highly potent elemental energy.

Turf held up the end of his shovel to show Arty. It was coated in an icy haze, bursts of electricity, and bits of stone, "You… you really didn't think this one through, did you?" he asked while examining his newly Dust infused weapon, "I mean, it's a flat end. It was like playing table tennis…"

Arty stood a bit stunned. "Well… I guess I really didn't think that through," he shifted his hold on his weapon, forcing it to fold open and straighten out into the bat-shaped form he seldom used, but he found it to be the best option given the circumstances. He pointed it at Turf, "What do you say we even the odds, eh?"

"I mean, you kind of… already put the odds on my side in the first place… but alright," Turf stepped forwards and took a swing at Arty's head, but missed when Arty had the forethought to duck. The electricity pulsating through the weapon made their hairs stand on end. He gritted his teeth to get over it, "Do you always feel like this with Lightning Dust?"

"Oh, most definitely," Arty leapt up, holding the handle of his bat with both hands. They exchanged a few blows, Dust energy jolting through the air with every clash. Arty ducked back away from Turf.

"Aw, no need to give up now, Arty." Turf grinned as he rushed his opponent.

"Oh, you have the wrong idea, my good friend." Arty knew the type of Dust he wanted to use was somewhere in his weapon, he just had to get through enough paintballs to finally get to it. As Turf drew closer, he lifted Palette above his head before slamming it down hard on the ground in front of Turf's feet. A dark purple and black burst of shadow spread out beneath him.

"Great…" Turf sighed. Purple Dust meant Gravity, that much he knew. Arty put a lot of force behind that downward slam, and that force had to be let out somehow. As a result, Turf was launched into the sky above.

"Impressive…" Timbre lowered her wires and watched as Turf ascended into the cold night air, screaming the whole way up.

Arty looked to her in disbelief as he pointed to the Faunus now flying through the sky, "I just launched your boyfriend into the sky and you're perfectly okay with that?..."

Timbre blushed, "He's not… I… he…"

" _Bloody_ hell, Painta-Boy! Did you have ta launch him inta the _stratosphere_?!" Alice said in disbelief as she watched her partner do his best impression of the Wendigo they had taken out earlier that night. She turned to Ebon, "You haven't done anythin' this whole fight except stand there and gawk! Go catch Turf before he splats on the ground!"

Ebon couldn't help but laugh, "Honestly, it's more fun just to watch you guys slap-fight each other like little kids. Turf's a big boy. He can handle himself."

As Alice continued to bicker at Ebon, a black figure shot across the sky and slammed into Turf. Underneath the whipping cloth of what seemed to be a cloak was a dull, blood red glow. It carried him with it into the trees on the other side of the clearing.

Silence fell over Team ARTS and Team ANTE. All of them froze at once. All of them counted those around them. No one but Turf was missing. Whatever that thing was was the ninth one to join the fray and they were fairly certain that the eerily glowing silhouette wasn't a member of Team FREZ.

"Who the hell was that?..." Timbre stumbled back in shock. Her brain finally caught up with what had just happened. " _Turf!_ " Panic fell over her as she dashed towards the trees in the direction the mysterious figure had fallen with him.

"Timbre, wait!" Arty yelled after her, "We don't know who or… what that was!"

She snapped around, "So you're fine with Turf being alone with them?!" She continued running, shaking her head as she dashed away, "Nuh-uh. No way!"

"Alice! He's your partner! Come on!" Ebon grabbed Alice by the arm and started making a run for the trees.

"Everyone just hold on!" Roland shouted. He was already helping Navy up, "Alice, Ebon, stay put. We don't need to take any chances by splitting up any further. Thought Timbre would have learned by now at least…" he watched the edge of the clearing, "I thought I saw someone earlier. At first I thought it was just you guys, but it was whatever just took Turf. I'm sure of it."

"Oh no… oh no…" Arty dropped his weapon and began pacing wildly, "This is bad… this is _very very_ bad!... We need to get Timbre and Turf and get out of this forest!"

"Team FREZ is still out there," Ebon said quickly, "They might have no idea that we're not alone out here."

Roland clenched his fists, "That thing can't be friendly. If it's just Timbre and Turf out there, then they'll definitely get hurt… or worse..." he didn't know what to do. If they all ran after Turf, then they could be ambushed in the trees. If they separated, then they might get picked off one by one, "Arty, do we all go or do we all stay?"

Despite being one of the only two team leaders there, Arty didn't know what to say. What if he made the wrong choice? They had no idea what was going on or what they were up against. How could he make a decision based upon little to no information?

"We all go. Strength in numbas," After a short glare at Arty, Alice was taking charge. "We don't know if there are more of them out there. It's best if we all stay togetha ta look for FREZ, Turf, and Timbre. We also need to start making our way back ta the cliff. The fartha we get from the school, the more trouble we'll be in. Good thing is, Turf and Timbre are over that way, so we don't 'ave ta go any fartha in the wrong direction."

"Shouldn't one of us head back and get the teachers?!" Arty tried to reason.

"There's no time, Umber!" Navy snapped as he walked up to Arty, "Like Alice said, it's best if we all stay together. We don't have time for you to assign jobs and split everyone up!" he began jabbing his finger repeatedly into Arty's chest, "There's still Grimm out here, and being alone and scared will be like painting a big red target on your back!"

"If you didn't want a target on your back, then you should have just stayed in your little dorms playing cards and board games," a voice came from behind the group, "Maybe gone over to the CCT and chatted up your friends back in the other kingdoms."

The students all turned to see a figure in a black cloak with red fractures pulsing across the fabric. Underneath the hood was a mask made from white bone. It took on the traits of some kind of twisted kangaroo, a Grimm. A tenth person had joined in.

"What? Is my cloak dirty? Did I step in some mud or something?" the figure asked while seemingly looking over itself. Its voice echoed through the mask, but seemed to be female, though it was hard to tell for sure.

The remaining six students stood their ground with their weapons at the ready, all aimed at the uninvited contestant to their game.

"Who are you!?" Arty demanded, his fearful tone gone as he tried to regain his position of leader, "What did you do with our friends?!"

"Who am I? As if I'd tell you!" the cloaked figure swayed from side to side, "You all can call me Oro, though! You know, like those creatures you kill for _fun_. As for your friends, that wasn't exactly me, but it was, but it wasn't. A lackie of mine if you will. It's simple, really."

Roland readied his weapon, "Alice, take Ebon and Navy to help the others," the paper and ink trailing off of his arm formed the blade of an axe, "Arty, get your head in the game. You, me, and Sepia can take this freak."

Arty's mind was racing. Who was this person? Why were they here? His knees began to buckle when he remembered something Timbre had said a couple of weeks prior, "Are you one of those people that attacked Korus Stadium last summer?"

"Oh, you mean the Grimm Brotherhood, right?" Oro laughed, "I thought that much was obvious. You're the painter, so I would have thought that you knew about symbolism," she tapped the Grimm mask and cocked her head to the side.

Ignoring her, Roland turned and glared at Alice and her teammates, "Damnit, I said go! There could be more waiting nearby! Go help-"

"Oh yeah, there are definitely more. Not just my little helpers either! You'd better get a move on before my precious little angel gets hungry and comes looking for a snack!" Oro cackled behind her mask.

Hesitantly, Alice led Ebon and Navy away to find Turf and Timbre.

Oro didn't break her gaze with the remainder of Team ARTS. "Have fun, Team ANTE!" she jumped in malicious joy, "Like I said, I'm not the scariest thing in this forest! Not. Even. Close!" she ceased her childish show of excitement and examined the three teens standing before her, "My, my, I've gotta say. You guys have grown!"

"What's that supposed to mean?" Arty asked.

Sick of the needless talking, Roland rushed the figure with his axe raised. He was just about to bring it down on the enemy, but then something peculiar happened. All of the air was knocked out of him at once. He was sent rocketing back.

He slid against the dirt and grass, finally coming to a stop behind Arty and Sepia. The pain of the impact surged through his middle. A purple shimmer shattered over him, and a trickle of blood made its way out of the corner of his mouth. Whatever that _thing_ that she hit him with was, it shattered his aura instantly.

Seeing the shimmer of Roland's aura, Sepia ran to his side and held her guns up to defend him. _This isn't good. We have to figure out a way to contact the professors._ If she could have spoken, then maybe she could have gotten a plan together with Arty.

"We don't really focus on killing Grimm like you guys do, so we like to make sure our weapons hit hard enough to make quick work of aura, you know?!" Oro held what looked to be a black battering ram attached to her left arm, but the head of it slowly retracted back into the body of the weapon. The hiss of hydraulics radiated from the beast of a machine, "People are more resilient than Grimm, so we do _lots_ of testing to ensure that aura won't be a problem."

Arty looked to Sepia. The fear in her eyes told him that they were both thinking the same thing: This wasn't an enemy they could take on by themselves. With Roland's aura gone, he was useless in a fight. Inkheart couldn't work without aura, and judging from what Oro had already said she more than likely already knew that. This was a fight they couldn't win. "Roland. Get behind us," he commanded firmly.

"No, I'm fine…" Roland pushed off the ground, but fell back in the dirt immediately. A large blotch of blood formed on his stomach. He looked up at Sepia and Arty, "I'm not fine…" he muttered and coughed. More blood. Whatever that weapon did to him wasn't good, "You got this…?"

Sepia was horrified. Here Roland was, and he was helpless even with her there. She was useless. This monster crossed the line. She stood with her guns readied. _Please last long enough to get help… Please…_ she thought.

"As much as we can have this, bud," Arty held Palette's muzzle level to Oro's Grimm mask, "Your move."

"Oh, goodie!" Oro held her brutal weapon to her side and took a running leap with it ready to slam down on Arty's head.

* * *

"Guys, what is going on?! What was that thing?! Was it a Grimm?! Was it a person?!" Ebon was shocked. He held his head in confusion as him, Alice, and Navy ran after their teammate and Timbre, "Why did we go?! They're gonna kill Arty, Sepia, and Roland! How could we just leave them?!" he was panicking. This whole challenge went from fun to a fight for their lives in a matter of seconds.

"They'll be fine!" Alice yelled back, "They're good fighters, they can handle themselves against that maniac."

"You so sure about that?" Navy retorted.

"Now's not the time for your negativity, Navy!" Alice shouted back. Like Ebon, she began to feel the panic sinking in. "It's somethin' we're being trained ta do!"

A group of bushes began rustling behind them.

Alice threw an explosive card into the shrubbery.

"Haha! Nice try Queen of Hearts!" a somewhat squeaky voice rang out farther back in the underbrush.

Team ANTE turned to find Rime riding on Everest's shoulder.

"Go get em' Everest! We're winning this for Team FREZ!" she cheered as she held a hand against Everest's arm. Ice crystals slowly coated his upper arm.

"Dammit! No! Rime! You need ta stop!" Alice shouted at her frantically.

" _ **RAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAHHHHHHHHHHHH!"**_ Everest screamed and ran towards Alice, Ebon, and Navy with his club raised. He brought it around in an arc. The club slapped Alice in the side and sent her flying into a nearby tree.

Alice screamed as she hit the tree. The impact wasn't as painful as when the sudden stop hit her. It felt like her eyes were going to pop out of her head, and like her organs were being stomped on. Her already weak aura was nearly fully depleted.

"You're not looking so hot there Alice!" Rime pulled a ball of solid ice from her necklace. She held it up, ready to lob it at the stunned girl's head, "Looks like you guys already took out Roland, so If I take you guys out you gotta go back, and Team FREZ will take the gold!" she laughed triumphantly as she hurled the ball with a surprising amount of force for someone her size.

The ice ball struck Alice directly in the abdomen. That was all that it took for her aura to completely shatter. She fell from her impact crater in the tree and face first into the dirt. Once again, she was going to need another trip to the infirmary. Her stupid weak aura did a shabby job of protecting her. For the third time, she was completely incapacitated by another student, but this time it was when they were in real danger.

"Haha! Now one of you have to take her back to the cliff! Now it's truly just ARTS against FREZ now, and we're catching up quick! Isn't that right, Everest? Frost was right! You and me taking on the other students _was_ a good idea!" Rime said as the icy patch on Everest's arm began to fade, his rage and power lessening.

"Rime! Do you have any idea what you just did?!" Ebon ran to Alice's side, "Some crazy person is out in the clearing attacking Arty, Roland, and Sepia! Turf and Timbre are out there alone and now we're down a man if more of them show up!" he shouted at the girl perched atop Everest.

Rime rolled her eyes, "Please, Ebon. You honestly expect me to believe _that_ crazy story?" She leapt down to the ground, "You should just be glad _I_ was the one to take her out. Frost wouldn't let her live it down if she was in my place-" Rime felt firm hands shove her. She fell to the ground, landing on top of Everest's fur boots. Shocked, she looked up to see Navy towering above her.

"You _idiot_!" he fumed, "We could all die out here! What part of that do you not understand?!"

Everest, still hopped up on the effects of his Semblance, snarled at Navy, his fists clenched and ready to punch his face in.

Ebon helped Alice to her feet. She couldn't walk on her own. "Hey hey hey. Everest, Navy. Calm down," Ebon said calmly, trying to get Navy to stop screaming, "All that anger's only gonna drag more Grimm to us. We all need to stay calm."

"Calm?! How can we be _calm_?!" Navy snapped back, "Because of this brat we're virtually down two team members, and we don't know how many more of the Grimm Brotherhood are out here!"

Rime snapped to attention as an angry Everest helped her up. "Did… did you say Grimm Brotherhood?"

"Some crazy person calling themselves Oro started attacking us! We had to leave Arty, Roland, and Sepia to go help Turf, who got snatched out of the sky and into the forest! Timbre is out there on her own trying to find him! We came to find Team FREZ, too to warn you guys." Ebon tried to pull back his emotions. He was starting to freak out again, but he had to control himself, "We need to get out of here. We're down two people now, maybe more depending on how Frost and Zero are doing."

Rime was still skeptical, but it was very unlike a Huntsman-in-training to freak out this bad unless something really was going wrong. She ran over to Alice and took her off of Ebon's shoulder, "I messed up, I'll carry her."

"B-but you're the only one that can make the walking mountain stronger," Ebon replied.

"Not true. You may actually be able to do it more controlled than I can, Ebon." Rime explained, "You can shoot ice from a range, right? Everest just needs _cold_ , not specifically _my_ cold. Capiche?"

"Right, I've got it…" Ebon stepped back and looked up at Everest.

Everest placed a hand on Ebon's shoulder, "Everest. See. Fear," he told Ebon, "You. Warrior. Like. Me. So. Be. Strong," he looked Ebon in the eyes as he spoke. Though Everest wasn't the brightest, he knew what it meant to be on a dangerous hunt. Though he didn't find them often, this situation was a situation that he could understand.

* * *

Craters dotted the clearing from the missed impacts of Oro's weapon. She stood between Arty and Sepia with her weapon lowered. Her opponents huffed and coughed in exhaustion, but she was still ready to go another round.

"You two might want to wrap this up before the Faunus boy bleeds out," she giggled beneath her mask. The burning, unblinking eyes of the mask made her seem more like a hyper-intelligent Grimm than a human, and she might have been just that as far as Arty and Sepia knew.

 _She's right. This has been going on too long, but how could we speed things up?_ Sepia thought as she analyzed Oro's movements. Every motion was fluid. There weren't any obvious weak points. That had to be wrong, though. No one could skirt by in a fight without having some kind of weak point.

Arty held up Palette. His aim was thrown off by his trembling hand. He was terrified of this opponent. For the first time, he witnessed someone who actually wanted to kill him, and had a weapon that could do that no problem. The fight could have been over quick if he could use the Nova Dust that Roland had given him, but he didn't have the slightest clue as to what kind of explosion that might produce. With Roland in his injured state, any kind of explosion that was too close might kill him.

Oro heaved up her weapon and activated the impact drive. The head of the device rocked in and out, faster and faster. Just a second of direct contact, and anyone's aura would shatter. This was bad, "I'm still feeling feisty! Let's keep this fight going guys! It's just too much fun to finally have the chance to duke it out with you!"

That's when Sepia saw it. Every oscillation of the weapon caused Oro's arms to shift a little bit. She was trying to keep it from moving too much and was doing well, but she still moved back ever so slightly when the hammer retracted and before it extended.

" _I have an idea! Trust me!"_ Sepia mouthed to Arty in hopes that he would see in the bright moonlight.

 _Do it quick, then,_ Arty thought to himself. It seemed that Oro was focused on taking Arty out after Roland, so maybe he could serve as a distraction while Sepia did… whatever she was planning to do.

"Your move, Painter-Boy," Oro held her weapon back. She crouched to get better leverage on the piece of heavy machinery that she held.

 _So I was right, huh?_ Sepia watched for the right moment. She knew that Oro had to be waiting for her to strike just as much as Arty. When Arty fired off an Ice Dust paintball, Sepia flew into action.

Oro's hammer knocked away the paintball, but the hammer was on the retreat when she tried to bring it back to strike. A whip of bullets and film wrapped around Oro's upper arm and pulled tight, cutting off the blood to the muscles used to brace the souped up battering ram. Her fingers uncurled, releasing it from her grasp.

The weapon was flung across the battlefield. It landed with a thud just a few feet from Roland, who was still laying in the grass with his arms over his stomach.

"You disarmed me?!" Oro shouted in surprise. She was yanked back by her arm, and felt her shoulder jerk and pop in its socket. When the whip was reeled in completely, Sepia bashed Oro across the back of the head with the butt of her other pistol.

Pain echoed in Oro's head for a few moments. Her ears rang and her sinuses felt like they might collapse. She tried to pull away, but had no such luck in her disoriented state. She began cackling. "You're _much_ better than I thought you'd be." She rushed towards Sepia.

Sepia tried to get some bullets off on Oro, but was taken back by the sudden onslaught of punches and kicks. She tried to fight back, but every now and then, she'd feel a fist or a foot connect with her aura, slowly breaking it down.

Despite his concern for Sepia, Arty saw the chance and made a mad dash for Oro's weapon. His fingers curled around the handles, but he hardly had the strength to pull it up. Grunt and strain as he did, he still couldn't lift it off the ground.

"Hold on," Roland pushed himself up off the ground. His face was devoid of any color. His movements were sluggish, but this a fight for their lives. He had to push through to help get them out of this situation.

"No, stay on the groun-"

Roland grabbed the other side of the weapon and ground his teeth together as the pain hit him like a truck. Still, he helped Arty pull it up, "Sepia can't hold her for much longer. I can face the consequences of this later." He pulled the lever that activated the weapon and braced for the impact of the moving hydraulics. Every oscillation sent another rocket of pain through him, but he had to keep going. He refused to lose anyone else.

Arty took as much of the weight of Oro's weapon as he could. Roland wasn't dying on his watch. He and his partner ran towards Oro and Sepia with the weapon ready to strike.

Oro was tired of dealing with the film whips of Sepia's weapons, which Sepia had figured out how to use as if by some miracle in the middle of their duel. She tore away from Sepia's guns and ripped the bullets and film off of her arm. One swift punch into Sepia's face sent her sprawling to the ground. Oro couldn't celebrate for long as she learned that this was exactly what Sepia had wanted to happen.

The hammer pounded into Oro's unguarded back and sent her flying across the clearing. She tumbled over and over across the ground before finally sliding to a stop. She laid motionless in the dirt and dead grass only a hundred or so feet away.

* * *

"Run! _RUN!_ " Timbre yelled as hard as she could. Turf was halfway on her shoulder, and halfway on Frost's.

"What _is_ that thing?!" Frost yelled, uncharacteristically frightened.

Behind them, Zero fired shotgun blasts blindly at the large mass running after them. In the darkness, only it's burning red eyes could be seen as its massive feet shook the earth with a loud thud each time it stomped.

"Doesn't matter! Get Turf the hell out of here!" Zero shouted from behind. He jumped from tree to tree away from whatever kind of Grimm was on their tail, occasionally firing his shotgun backwards. Stealth wasn't important anymore, so he had no qualms about using this form of his weapon, "How long until we're back with the others, Timbre?!"

"I… I don't know! I just ran away!" Timbre yelled. She almost tripped over a root and began to stumble.

Frost yelled as she grabbed onto Timbre's arm before she could fall completely into the dirt and take Turf with her. " _Please_ , refrain from tripping on us now, Forté!" If any of them stopped running, they were dead.

Zero narrowly avoided the snap of a set of jaws that could tear through steel like tissue paper. He fired a round into the thick hide of the Grimm's snout and kicked off of it, "It's closing in! Frost! Daze it!"

"Is now _really_ the time?!" Frost yelled back.

Zero leapt towards the girls and Turf and took Frost's place. He hoisted Turf up by the hip so that he could take some of his weight off of Timbre, "Damnit Frost, just do it!"

Frost ran to keep up with the group. The miniature quakes were growing closer. She needed the shot to count. She took a quick glance back at the monster chasing them. The burning ember eyes were only a matter of feet away from her, and its sharp ivory teeth were even closer as they protruded from the darkness towards her. She reached her right arm straight back behind her. She could feel and smell the putrid warm breath of the creature. A bright rainbow of light began circling her arm as she focused. After a few moments of intensifying, the light shot outwards in the direction her fingers were pointing, right at the beast.

A brilliant explosion of color doused the path in bright streamers of blues, greens, and reds. In the moments she could see through her Semblance's effects, she could make out the massive silhouette of the monster. The large spikes, the massive head, the thick body and tail, the angled legs ending in large clawed feet. It stopped, dazed, and reared back. A blood-curdling roar echoed through the night as it screamed into the sky.

Frost had never been more scared in her entire life. In one last ditch effort to call for help from the others, she raised her arm straight up above her, "Please… please… help…" another stream of light fired from her hand.

The explosion of color that lit up the sky could be seen for miles around.

* * *

With Oro knocked out, Arty and Sepia could finally take a short break.

"Nice…" Roland groaned and let go of Oro's weapon. His legs buckled as the adrenaline rush left him, and he collapsed with a thud. By helping Arty ram Oro, he used up what little strength that he had left.

Sepia knelt at his side and turned him onto his back. _Rest you reckless jerk,_ she thought to herself while checking over his injuries. When she opened up his shirt and took a look at his abdomen, she gasped. His entire middle was squishy and dark purple. He was bleeding internally, and some of it seeped through the pores of his skin. Streams of blood trickled down his side.

She began signing to Arty with the few words that she knew that he had picked up, ' _He may die if we don't get help. He's losing blood. Fast.'_ Dread was beginning to fall on her heart, partly from seeing Roland in this state, partly from not being able to do anything about it.

Arty knew she was right, but he still had no clue how to get them out in time. From fighting her, he'd learned that Oro was fast. _Very_ fast. He had hoped that the blow from her own weapon would take her out of commision, but he could see that she was already stirring, and he hadn't seen the shimmer of a broken aura. The fight obviously was nowhere near over.

His attention was suddenly torn away from his opponent as the entire forest was bathed in bright colorful light. Above them, red, green, and blue ribbons began fluttering among the stars in the inky black sky. An aurora had formed.

"Wow! That's so pretty!" a figure that looked identical to Oro sat beside her. Her mask was a vibrant red color instead of the white that Oro had. It stared up at the sky and giggled, "Hey! Girls! The head honcho is down!" it shouted.

From the trees at the edge of the clearing came five identical figures in black with the same red masks. They had to be the "lackies" that Oro had mentioned.

"Yoink!" A seventh one of them darted past Arty, Roland, and Sepia from behind and snatched up Oro's weapon. It returned to its master and gently placed the machine in front of her, "I bet you want this back. Would you like us to start round two?"

"Yeah…" Oro growled and pushed herself up using her weapon. She was obviously battered, but her aura hadn't broken from the impact of her own weapon. A question pried at Arty and Sepia due to Oro's ability to even properly stand: _What is she?_

"Oh, how wonderful! Come on girls!" the minion that delivered the weapon shot up and darted off in the direction that Timbre had originally ran. Four of the other minions followed, but two stayed with Oro.

Sepia clenched her fists around the grips of her guns. Her heart began to race as she stared down Oro and her goons. _I can't just play around this time,_ she reminded herself. A nod from her told Arty that she was ready, _If she doesn't close the distance too fast…_ she looked to Arty and mouthed, " _Nova!"_

There wasn't any other choice left. With enemies like these, risks had to be taken if they were going to get out alive.

"Roland," Arty said as he activated the shifting mechanism within his weapon, "Have you actually managed to test your suicidal plasma Dust yet?" He reached to his belt, where the swirling yellow and red paintballs glowed vibrantly in their glass vials.

Roland nodded slowly, "Not at all…" he managed to get out, "A few specks of it can vaporize paper, though… but you already know about that."

"Well…" Arty dumped the contents of the vials into the hopper at the end of his bat. He threw the empty vials to the side, where they shattered against the nearby rocks. "I guess now's a better time than never!" Without thinking about the consequences, he dashed towards the three hooded people standing across the clearing from him. His boots crunched against the grass and leaves. His heart felt like it was racing at a million beats a minute. He wasn't going to let his team get hurt any more than they already were.

"Oh, this is too good…" Oro laughed and held her weapon to her side. Her minions revealed what looked to be fold-out batons and readied them, "What's a little Magma Dust gonna do, huh?" she asked. From her distance, the paintballs that Arty loaded just looked orange, "You gonna try to blow us up like you did Atlas Academy?!"

Arty ducked as one of the minions took a swing at him. He gripped his bat tightly and tried to ready himself for whatever would come next as he returned the swing.

Intense orange light exploded outwards as the bat connected with the cloaked figure's chest. Jagged streaks of white hot plasma shot out, launching Arty and the Grimm Brotherhood lackey away from each other at incredible speeds.

"What the hell?!" Oro shouted as her minion shot back into the trees. From somewhere in the forest, a explosive crack could be heard. Soon after, a tree fell and boomed as it slammed into the earth. She watched as Arty shot across the clearing before slamming hard into a tree, "What are you waiting for?! After him!" she shouted at her remaining minion.

Arty tumbled to the ground, bouncing hard as he rolled into the nearby creek. He pushed himself up, sopping wet and still dizzy from the impact. That one hit definitely took a good chunk of his aura. He looked down to the glowing paintballs in his weapon, "Oh yeah… I can definitely get used to this stuff… if it doesn't kill me first..."

Oro's minion lunged at Arty with its baton raised high in the air, "This is for Oro!" it screamed and thrust it downwards.

Arty held his bat horizontally in front of him to block the blow, but the maniac had a different plan.

With a quick spin, Oro's lackey ducked low and sideswiped Arty's legs, sending him back into the creek.

Arty tried to push himself back up, but found his face being pushed into the water. It wasn't too deep, but it was enough to get the job done. He couldn't breathe. She was trying to drown him. He tried to struggle back and save his own life, but the psycho in the glowing mask was far too strong.

"Not so tough now, huh?!" the minion shouted and used her full weight to push Arty's face further into the water, "You hurt my sister! How dare you! I'll make you pay!"

Sepia shot to her feet and sprinted over to the minion. She tackled it, sending them both tumbling into the creek. She fired rounds wildly, most of them just flying aimlessly into the open air. A few of them managed to hit their target, but she couldn't land enough to do any real damage in the fray.

Arty fell to his back on the edge of the creek, gasping for air. He saw Palette a few feet away. Still coughing, he began to crawl towards it.

As they slowed down, Sepia latched onto the cloak of the minion and dug her heels into the rocks and mud in the creekbed. With the minion in her grasp, she lifted her up for Arty to give her a taste of Nova Dust.

Arty's fingers finally curled around Palette's handle. He saw Sepia holding the minion. Had he not been a few more seconds from drowning, he would have found it funny how strong Sepia was in order to hold the Grimm Brotherhood grunt in place. He just hoped his teammate knew to jump out of the way. He ran up and brought his bat down on the minion, similar to the move he used to launch Turf before Oro had shown up. The explosion launched Arty backwards. After a few flailing flips, he managed to find his feet connect with a tree, stopping his flight path into the underbrush. The impact to his aura was nowhere near as bad as the first use of the Nova paintballs. He saw Oro standing at the edge of the clearing. He was tired of fighting. With the two minions out of the way, he saw the opportunity to end it. He flipped the bat around, holding it upside down in his hand. "Sorry Roland, but I need to move fast." Feeling as if he was wasting the paintball on something reckless, he jabbed the tip of the bat against the bark of the tree.

The tree immediately blew in half. In another explosion of plasma that made his hair stand on end, Arty rocketed towards Oro. The rush of air made his eyes water, but he didn't care. He held his bat back ready to slam it into the middle of her back.

Oro turned around just in time to show that she was clutching Roland by the throat. Her weapon was already placed against his injured abdomen, ready to deliver a finishing blow. He tried to struggle against her, but didn't have near enough strength left in him to even squirm. All he could do was look to Arty pleadingly.

"Do you want him to die?!" she shouted.

Arty panicked and tried to stop. He moved his boot down, but the friction sent him face-first into the dirt. He slid a good twenty feet before coming to a stop at Oro's feet. Palette had fallen out of his hand in the tumble. He reached for it, but found the heel of Oro's boot stomping his hand into the ground. He yelled out in pain as she ground her heel into his hand, scraping his palm against the dirt and rocks.

With two of Sepia's teammates incapacitated, Oro turned her head to get a good look at her, "Lower your weapons, Moviemaker," she ordered.

Sepia's eyes were red and puffy from crying. She left Roland's side, and now his life was in peril. How could she have been so stupid? She slowly lowered her weapons and dropped them into the creek.

"Good girl…" Oro squeezed on Roland's neck harder, "You two haven't gotten to fight my little angel yet. That's why I'm here, you idiots," she giggled as her victim choked and gasped for air, "Now, are we going to play nice and wait patiently, or do I have to make sure that you regret coming out here? I don't know any color words that you could make from A, T, and S alone…"

* * *

"Turf! Please! Wake up!" Timbre cried out as she shook Turf's shoulders. She, Zero, and Frost had all helped lift the bruised and battered Faunus up into a large tree after gaining some distance between them and… whatever that thing was that was chasing them.

"Wake up, dammit!" She ordered while slapping his cheek.

"That is… not… going… to help him…" Frost panted as she clutched at her chest. She felt as if her legs were going to fall off and her lungs were collapsing. "His aura was broken and it looks like he got a decent beating afterwards.

Timbre kept a hand on Turf's shoulder, gripping him tightly, "Frost…" with her other hand, she held her scroll out to her, "please… call Arty. Make sure they're okay."

"We are in no position to be worrying about oth-"

"I said _call Arty_!" she demanded.

Reluctantly, Frost took Timbre's scroll and began to dial Arty, "I am scared that the signal will not be strong enough to-"

"It has to be!" Timbre cried, "It has to be…"

"Timbre, stop," Frost glared at her, "We have a huge Grimm out looking to kill anyone in this forest, and I am _not_ dying because you are sitting here crying. Suck it up, and focus or else you'll draw it straight to us," she ordered. Though these kinds of orders were unlike her, this was an emergency situation. They didn't have time to discuss feelings.

Before Timbre could respond, someone picked up on Arty's end. Frost cautiously held the scroll to her ear, "Umber, it is Frost. Timbre, Zero, and I have Turf. We found him beaten up pretty bad, but in a relatively stable condition. There is a massive Grimm searching for us, but we are safe for the time being. Give me a status report on your end," she demanded.

"Frost Aurora! It's so good to finally hear from you! Glad to know that my pet's gonna have plenty of students to snack on!" a hollow, feminine voice came from the other end, "I cannot wait to see all of you!"

Frost's eyes widened. That voice didn't belong to anyone that she knew, "Who is this?" she asked slowly. She looked to Timbre with terror in her eyes.

"The name's Oro, and I'm going to kill your friends if you all don't hurry over here! Isn't that just _great?!_ " from Oro's end came the sporadic and wet coughs of her hostage, "Oh come on Wells! From what I've been told, I thought you'd be tougher than this!"

Timbre snatched her scroll back from Frost, "Who the hell is this?! What did you do to my friends?!"

"Oh! Ms. Forté!" Oro laughed upon hearing Timbre's voice, "You can call me Oro. You know, like the Grimm? That's O for octopus, R for rabbit, and O for octopus once again. Oro. As for your friends, I've got Arty looking at me with more horror than disgust and, to my surprise, Sepia looking for my blindside while I… oh, yeah! I've got Roland by the throat, and am currently choking him to death while he bleeds _a lot_! It's a heck of a lot of fun!"

Timbre felt like screaming, but she felt like her throat was full of cotton as tears rolled down her face. "I'm only going to say this once. Let. My friends-"

"Let me stop you right there," Oro interrupted, "Let's continue this in person, shall we? I look forward to meeting you Ms. Forté."

Before Timbre could shout back into the phone, Oro hung up. Timbre could only stare at the picture of Arty displayed on the holographic screen of her scroll in disbelief. Her hands began to shake. In a loud shriek of frustration and despair, Timbre began to cry uncontrollably.

"Timbre! Stop it!" Frost yelled as she grabbed Timbre by the shoulders, "Pull yourself together! We are going to get your team back, just stop crying!"

Timbre wailed and grabbed at her hair, the tears streaming down her red face in torrents.

Zero watched the forest below, "Frost! Shut her up! That thing's gonna come back!"

"Nope!" a thin figure in a black hooded jacket jumped down from the branch above, the glowing red skull-mask under their hood glared at them with empty black eyes, "Well, you're kinda right. We're gonna just start leading the angel over to the clearing now! Your friends are gonna have a _lot_ more fun!" they laughed and dove off the branch. In their hand was a baton, but seemed to be a metal antenna upon closer examination. It even had a bright red tip.

"Zero! After them!" Frost shouted.

Zero nodded and began jumping from tree to tree in hot pursuit of the person in the mask. He disappeared into the trees.

Frost took a shaky breath, "Timbre… I think that was…"

"The Grimm Brotherhood…" Timbre said weakly. She recognized that look. The black and red. The fissures. The cloak. The mask. Everything. "I… I can't let them hurt my friends!" Timbre launched herself out of the tree, using her wires to rappel through the trees in the direction Zero was chasing the girl in the hood.

"Timbre! Get back here!" Frost shouted, but Timbre had already disappeared into the dense forest below. Frost was stuck alone with someone who couldn't be of any help. She was stuck in a tree with no hope of getting out unless someone either came back, or saw her first aurora. Frost looked down to Turf. Scratches and bruises coated his exposed skin and his clothing had gotten pretty torn up. Somehow, his beanie had managed to stay on. He was a pitiful sight to behold. Frost knew she couldn't protect anyone in the conditions she was stuck in, but she refused to give up. She aimed her arm through the canopy above her again. Another beacon of light shot from her arm, ripping through the leaves above her before exploding in the night sky.

* * *

Zero weaved in and out of tree branches to catch up with his new target. He kept them in his sight, but slowed down when they landed. The person in the mask stood atop the thick, black hide of the Grimm that chased them earlier. He had a little bit of a better view this time, and could make out white bone protrusions running down the length of its back.

Timbre tore past Zero, nearly slamming him off of his perch.

"Timbre! Stop!" He yelled after her.

Timbre landed on top of the hooded figure, pinning her down against the bony spine of the monster. "Who _are_ you people and what do you want with us?!" She screamed with tears still streaming down her face.

"I thought you were smarter than this, Ms. Forté!" they looked up at at her, "You've seen us before. You've seen what we can do," they dug their feet into Timbre's stomach and kicked her away like a kangaroo, "Now, back to what we were doing…" they stood, "Girls! Time to get the little angel to Oro!"

The Grimm shifted and growled. It stood up all of the way, and the top of its head brushed the highest branches of the surrounding trees. Whatever it was, it was hunched forwards and stood on two massive, tree trunk-like legs.

A few identical people in masks held batons and formed a line heading towards the clearing. They all waved batons with flashing red lights atop them. The Grimm seemed lulled by them, and slowly began following the lights.

Zero jumped down the branches and to the ground below. He found Timbre crumpled against the trunk of one of the trees, "Timbre! Are you okay? Did your aura break?"

"No. I'm fine!" Timbre stood and dashed in the direction of the monstrous Grimm, careful not to trip in the three-toed pits left behind by its massive feet.

Zero ran ahead to follow the Grimm, but it was moving too fast. They were nearing the clearing up ahead quicker and quicker, until he was in an all-out sprint to keep up with the monster.

Timbre had run away from her friends too many times already. Her rash decision-making had already gotten them hurt before, but on that night, she was going to make sure it kept them alive. She shot wires from both hands, latching onto trees on either side of the path created by the Grimm as it was led by the cloaked people on its controlled rampage. She began reeling them in and launched herself into the clearing.

* * *

Oro saw the ripples in the puddles of water near the creek as her project neared. She took one last long look at her hostage before dropping him on the ground, "Looks like mama's little angel is finally here! It has been so good to meet all of you!" she darted off back across the clearing. Apparently, even she didn't want to see the monster that was coming after them.

Roland held his throat and rolled onto his side. He couldn't even scream from the white hot pain in his throat and stomach. Every muscle felt like it was on fire. His vision had narrowed into one little patch of sight surrounded by darkness. All that he could think about was that this was what he imagined death to feel like.

 _Roland!_ Sepia ran to join back up with him. She fell to her knees and silently sobbed with her forehead against his arm. Oro ran away, but she didn't care. Roland's life was more important than chasing Oro.

Arty rubbed his crushed hand, luckily nothing was broken thanks to his remaining aura. He watched as a few of the hooded figures ran into the clearing. He turned towards the creek and grabbed his weapon, shifting it back into a paintball gun. If they thought that he and his friends would go down easy, they had another thing coming. He whipped his gun around, ready to fire at the Grimm Brotherhood members, but found all but one of them running back into the forest, away from Beacon.

He felt the color drain from his face as he watched a depraved version of something he had had to draw in one of the books he had ruined in the fight with Yamuna. Something like no one had ever seen alive in the modern day. A living fossil, only now it was a Grimm. He could only sit and watch with fear as one of Oro's minions stuck around in the clearing a bit too long. The huge Grimm slammed its jaws shut around them before thrashing them about violently. When it was done, it threw their mangled body back into the forest.

The giant lizard Grimm then raised its titanic head high into the air. Its gargantuan maw opened bit-by-bit as if it were on some kind of biological wench. The spear-like teeth gleamed in the light of the broken moon, and the top row was connected to the bone mask that covered its face. Molten eyes blazed in their sunken sockets. The tail alone whipped trees from their roots and sent them careening deep into the forest. Bone spikes littered the entirety, and so did the plates of bleached white bone that protected its joints. Its roar echoed through the trees, rattling the very foundation of the earth beneath the students' feet. This was the closest thing to Death himself that any of the students had ever seen.

Sepia gazed up at the beast in horror. She knew this Grimm, but had prayed to the Gods of Light and Dark to never place her in a position to fight one of these wretched creatures. " _Trex…"_ she mouthed. This was one of the most dangerous of a recently discovered batch of Grimm species. This eldritch _thing_ was not supposed to exist. She held onto Roland's arm tightly and looked on helplessly.

Arty's entire body went numb with fear as he watched the towering colossus roar into the night. Palette fell to the dirt as he fell to his knees. "Wha-wha… what is that thing?..." he stuttered helplessly. He thought he was scared of Oro, but this Grimm was a whole new level of fear.

Timbre made a mad dash from behind the beast, narrowly missing its massive jaws as they snapped in on her. She knelt down and grabbed Arty, looking him in the eyes. "Arty! Arty! Listen to me!" she shook him lightly to regain his attention as his eyes kept turning towards the Trex. "Snap out of it!" she slapped him across the face. "You can't do this, Arty! You can't just sit here and lose to this thing! I thought Oro had gotten to you… and Sepia… and Roland! But she didn't! You stood up to her, so you can stand up to this thing, too!"

Arty just shook his head, "Timbre… how can we take this thing on by ourselves?... We're dead!..."

She slapped him again, "No we're not, Umber! _We_ are going to take this thing down because we don't have any other choice! Now get up off of your ass and _fight!_ "

Arty seemed to snap back to attention. His mind cleared as he thought about all Team ARTS had already been through together. They'd fought through so many struggles, both internal and external. Sure, none of their adversaries had been this terrifying or deadly, but it was still just a Grimm.

They were being trained to kill Grimm.

Sepia's eyes burned with hate as she gazed up at the Trex. She finally understood how Roland felt when he was this angry, and Timbre gave her the courage to act on that. She held up her guns and pulled the triggers, but no shots were fired. Her guns just clicked. They were soaked from the creek, and so were waterlogged.

She looked down at Roland. No one but him could use his weapons without Inkheart, but that changed when he made ink grenades infused with Dust. After a soft kiss to his forehead, she removed the Dust grenades from his belt. Three gravity and two Nova. _I've got your back this time. You rest,_ she thought as she slowly stood, ' _I'm ready,'_ she signed to Arty and Timbre.

Timbre looked to Arty, "You got a plan, Painter-Boy?"

Arty knew his and Sepia's auras were still intact. A bit depleted, but intact, but that wouldn't save them if this thing got its teeth on them, but he had an idea. He nodded as he looked to the grenades in Sepia's hands. He grinned his signature grin, showing off the gap where his tooth was missing, "I think so. Timbre, remember how you helped take down the Minotaurus during our initiation?"

She nodded, an eyebrow raised, "You honestly think Klavier can do _damage_ to this thing?!"

Arty shook his head, "Not at all. But I need you to keep it distracted while Sepia gets in position in the trees over there. When Sepia signals you, shoot a wire near her, and figure out a way to launch her over it. Got it?"

Timbre looked surprised and confused, "And then what?!"

The Trex was done eyeing them from across the clearing. It charged, roaring with its jaws open as it ran towards them. The glowing cavity inside of its body visible through its razor-sharp teeth.

"Sepia, I think you know what to do once you two are in the air, right?!" Arty yelled as he aimed his gun at the rampaging monster, the three of them stepping back and away from it.

Sepia smiled and nodded.

"Can you two at least fill me in first?!" Timbre yelled as she ran to the left, while the other two ran to the right.

"No time! Just trust us, Timbre!" Arty yelled.

' _Watch him,'_ Sepia signed and then pointed to Roland, ' _I don't want him getting up again like earlier, understand?'_

Arty didn't catch every word due to how fast they were having to run, but he understood the seriousness in Sepia's hand-motions. He nodded. "Timbre'll keep it distracted. If things go wrong, I still have some Nova Dust in Palette. We'll keep Roland safe, okay?"

She nodded and dashed towards a nearby tree. She scurried up its trunk and crouched on one of the branches. For once in her life, she was serious. This wasn't a game. This wasn't fun. This was life and death, but that had a certain excitement to it on its own. Was this what a real Huntress felt like?

Timbre ran around the Trex's legs, slashing and whipping at its ankles. Her wires merely glanced off of the bone plates. The monster didn't so much as flinch. In fact, it seemed more annoyed with her than anything, but it only needed to be annoyed to shift some of its attention onto Timbre. She leapt to dodge its snapping jaws and stomping feet, "Sepia! You ready?!" she shouted.

An ear-piercing whistle told Timbre that Sepia was in position, and so she shot a wire towards her and began reeling herself in. She zoomed right between the jaws of the Trex, and narrowly avoided the spear-sized razors that made up the teeth of the Grimm.

When Timbre neared, Sepia tugged on the wire to tell Timbre to swing around the tree. The message was well-received, and Timbre swung around the tree trunk with her feet out in front of her.

Sepia jumped and kicked off of the soles of Timbre's boots and forced a Gravity Dust grenade into her partner's hand. When Timbre kicked back, Sepia was sent rocketing over the head of the Trex. She bit down on the pin of Roland's Nova grenade and aimed up the shot.

The Trex let out earthshaking roar at her, sending globs of spittle onto her clothes and exposed skin. Gross as it was, this gave her a chance to chunk Roland's grenade down into the Grimm's throat. It closed its jaws, then began coughing, or at least as much as a dinosaur could cough. Since Sepia's aura didn't come in contact with the Dust, the grenade exploded within the mouth of the Trex and left a sticky web of swirled, yellow and red ink.

Sepia ducked and rolled when she hit the ground. When she got to her feet and began running a wide arc around the confused Grimm, she looked up to see Timbre still in the tree and holding onto a bright purple ink grenade in her hands.

 _This all better work,_ she thought while pulling the pin of the other Nova grenade and throwing it between the stubby arms of the Trex. It exploded and coated its chest with the same red and yellow ink.

Timbre began to understand what was going on and jumped down from the tree. She saw Sepia make another loop around their target and raise one of the Gravity Dust grenades. They sprinted towards one another in front of the beast, and simultaneously pulled the pins on their grenades. They tossed them where they would collide. The grenades exploded on impact and left a haze of purple ink hanging in the air.

"Here we go!" Timbre shouted as they both jumped feet first into the haze. The force of the concentrated shift in gravity rocketed the girls up the sides of the Trex's face. Timbre shot a wire to Sepia as they rose, catching under the Grimm's bottom jaw.

Sepia latched on and pulled tight while Timbre reeled in, bringing them to a stop with the wire bent in a V shape. The Grimm's jaws were slammed shut. _This is for working with that bit-_ her thought was cut short when she felt her heels dig into the left eye of the Grimm. Timbre did the same to its right eye, causing it to let out a roar of pain before trying to shake them off.

Seeing as the trap was set, Sepia grabbed Timbre by the arm and pulled the pin on the third Gravity Dust grenade. She threw it down at their feet, and the explosion of force caused them both to be propelled high above the Grimm.

Timbre angled Klavier and shot a wire at the ground behind Arty. She began reeling in with Sepia in her arms, and they were quickly met with a face full of dirt behind their leader. Still, it was better than being caught in the jaws of a Grimm.

The Trex followed Timbre and Sepia as they flew through the sky, only to come face to face with Arty. It roared again, though garbled with the huge amount of sticky ink coating the inside of its mouth. Despite its front being coated in the same substance, it could still run. It charged.

Arty leveled his gun upwards at the beast's face.

"Arty! You're cutting it kind of close!" Timbre yelled as the Grimm got within twenty yards.

"Just making sure I hit my mark. I only have one paintball left," he grabbed his shooting arm with his free hand, steadying his nervous shakes.

"What?! I thought you said you had some Nova left!" Timbre shouted.

"One _is_ some, Timbre. Oro kinda emptied out Palette's hopper when she had Roland and I out of commission. Psycho left me with one paintball to fight this thing with. That's why I stayed back while you guys set everything up."

"You could've mentioned that sooner!"

"Yeah, sorry 'bout that." He shut his eye, keeping the sight lined up. Though his target was pretty big, he didn't want to leave any room for error.

Ten yards.

"Dammit, Arty! Shoot!" Timbre yelled as she began scooting backwards with Sepia.

Arty could feel the warmth from the monster's breath as its gaping maw readied to swallow the three of them whole. "Bye bye, ugly." Arty pulled the trigger, releasing his last Nova Dust paintball.

The paintball collided with the rest of the Nova Dust infused ink, causing a chain reaction through the Trex's body. All of the Dust suddenly burst into bright light, searing the dead grass in the immediate area. Its head was the first part to be vaporized, then the chest. An explosion of bright white and orange plasma exploded into spindles of burning gas and light. When the miniature supernova ceased, the Trex was gone. All that was left was a bare crater where the explosion took place.

The shockwave of heat and gas launched the three fighters backwards, back into the creek. Had they not just gotten the most difficult victory of their short educational careers, they would have been complaining about being thrown into the water for what felt like the twentieth time that night. Instead, they wrapped their arms around each other's shoulders, jumping and cheering in victory, despite their soaking wet clothes and singed hair.

"All for the cheers… but could I get some help…?" Roland groaned from nearby. He still laid in the grass where they had left him, "Please…?"

"Oh my god!" Timbre shouted and began running to their injured teammate with Arty and Sepia close behind, "It's okay, Roland. We're gonna get yo-" She suddenly found herself shoved to the side as Sepia threw herself onto her boyfriend.

Roland yelped in pain as Sepia hugged him. It felt like his organs were going to explode, but having Sepia so close again felt good. At least he knew that she was safe, even if he wasn't, "It's good to see that you're sa-"

She cut him off with a kiss, the first one that they had shared. After a few moments, she pulled away and smiled with tears in her eyes. Just being able to know that he was okay enough to be his normal self was enough for her to be overjoyed after what they had been through.

"Well… I… uh…" the color instantly came back into Roland's face, "Well… you'll be glad to know that my aura is starting to heal. I'll be bedridden for a while, but I'll live…" he winced after his status report. He fell back with Sepia still holding on and sighed in relief, "You guys kicked some serious butt, huh…?"

Arty looked back at the crater and the nearly knocked-over trees, leaning away from the blast zone, "Yeah… I guess you can say that. We couldn't have done it without you honestly, Roland."

"Oh yeah, the Nova Dust…" Roland chuckled, "Funny thing about that. Do you know why I was so suddenly interested in Dust, and specifically making a really unstable mix?"

"Uhh…" Arty thought for a moment, "planning to one up me by blowing an even bigger hole in Beacon than I did in Atlas?"

"I thought the best way to ask Sepia out was with a bang, so I wanted to use some Dust to get the effect. I was nervous, but I wanted to play into the chaos that runs through our heads," Roland leaned up and began laughing, "So you guys should really thank Sepia, and I suppose you, Arty. Your Dust inspired the grenades, and Timbre made sure that you guys positioned yourself accordingly to win that fight. Thank yourselves, not me."

Timbre's shoulders slumped, "Can we at least get out of the forest and thank all four of us when we get back to the school?..."

Arty pointed his thumb to Timbre, "I'm all for that. Mega-lizard may be gone, but there are still Grimm out here."

Timbre's eyes widened, "Oh crap! Zero!" She turned and ran across the clearing looking for the mysterious hoodie-ninja, "He was right with me before the Trex and I got here!"

All around the edge of the clearing were the fading corpses of dead Grimm. Dozens of bodies lied in pieces against the leaning trees. Zero yanked his katana out of the head of an Ursa and looked up at the group, "I took a few Grimm out. They were attracted to the whole… situation," he explained.

"Dude…" Arty said as he walked up behind Timbre to see the dissolving carnage.

"Well… that's…" Roland searched for his words, "Yeah, I don't know what I can say to that. That's impressive," based on how far the bodies were scattered, the guy must have been on the move constantly, "I take back everything that I said behind your back, Zero."

"Good to hear…" Zero sheathed his sword and walked past Arty and Timbre, "We should get back to the others."

Timbre's eyes widened in panic again, "Oh god! Oh no oh no oh no!" Timbre began running into the woods again. "Turf! Frost! I'm soorryyyyyyyy!"

"Calm down," he hooked his fingers around the back of her metal corset, "They're back at Beacon. I got a text from Frost. Professor Maple and Professor Alabaster are on their way in an airship to pick us up," he explained, "Rime was going to call them, but then Ebon tried to boost Everest. It ended with Everest knocking Ebon out, and then Navy knocked Everest out, and then Rime had to knock Navy out because he kept trying to pick fights. Alice was already knocked out during all of that…" he pointed back at Beacon, "But then the professors saw Frost's… well, beacon, and came to pick all of them up. That's the short version of the story that Rime is going to take an hour to tell when she sees us."

Timbre let out a sigh of relief, "At least they all made it back okay…"

Arty looked up to the sky. Despite it being in the early morning, it was still dark out. "Well… I guess auroras _can_ be helpful after all. How 'bout that?"

"You owe me quite a bit of Lien." Roland laughed.

"Oh… you almost die and you remember that bet we made about Frost's Semblance?" Arty shook his head, "Awesome."

Roland weakly reached a hand out and repeatedly clenched and unclenched his fist. "Pay up, Burne."

"You have to admit, auroras are a bit more functional than bringing drawings to life," Timbre giggled.

"Hey!" Arty looked offended, "I've already saved our lives with that before, Timbre…"

She playfully punched him on the shoulder, "I'm kidding, Umber."

They all turned their attention to the sky as the bright searchlights of one of the Beacon airships soared above them.

Arty raised his hands to defend his eyes from the wind and light, "Who's ready for the new punishment that will be bestowed upon us by our elders!?" he shouted with mock excitement.

* * *

Roland stared up at the white tiled ceiling of the infirmary. This was his punishment, after all. He was to stay in the infirmary for the next week at least. He had gotten off easy though. The rest of the relatively uninjured students were stuck doing chores around the school on their break. In the beds to either side of him were Turf and Alice, the other two who received the worst injuries during the whole event.

There was suddenly a loud ruckus as Arty, Timbre, Sepia, and Ebon came into the room.

"How are you guys feelin' today!" Arty said cheerfully, struggling to carry a huge stack of books, "We come bearing goodies!"

As usual, Sepia bolted through the door and sat up on the edge of Roland's bed. After the Emerald Forest, she had only left his side if she absolutely needed to, and she guessed that he didn't mind that too much.

Timbre and Ebon ran over to Turf, who sat there without his favorite beanie. The nurse wouldn't let him wear it as long as he was in the infirmary.

Ebon put Turf into a soft headlock and gave him a noogie between his perked up dog ears.

"Hey there, Fido." Timbre smiled.

Turf chuckled, "I told you not to call me that, Timbre," he said as he pushed Eubon's arms off of his head. "I'm starting to regret introducing you to Clay and Loam."

"Sorry," she placed a plastic bag on Turf's lap, "The nurse said food wouldn't be too much of a problem considering how fast you're recovering, so will this make up for it?"

"What's in the bag?" Turf asked while holding it up to the light for examination.

Ebon took the seat next to the bed, "Beef jerky, a jar of peanut butter, a tennis ball."

Turf glared at him, "Really?..."

Ebon laughed, "No. We're not _that_ horrible. You also got a couple of root beers in there."

"Fair enough," Turf rolled his eyes.

In the next bed, Roland took a moment to look over the books that Arty had brought, "I don't want to sound like a jerk, but I've read all of those books, Arty," he couldn't help but smile at the gesture, despite this, "I do appreciate it, though. It's a kind thought."

"Well… I kinda thought you'd be bored considering how long they're keeping you cooped up in here," Arty slumped over in the nearby chair, obviously out of breath from carrying the large stack of novels all the way across the school. "Thought you might want to re-read something."

"Mind if I take a look at your collection?" Alice said, turning over to them.

"Yeah, of course! A lot of those are mom's old books, though, so there are probably a few romance novels mixed in. If you aren't into that, then that's a warning," Roland yawned and reclined back in his bed.

Arty groaned before reluctantly picking up the stack and bringing it over to Alice's bed.

Alice began scanning the titles, occasionally pulling a book out to look inside. Before Arty could walk away, she stopped him, "Thanks, Umba."

The gratitude was unexpected, partially because it was Alice, partially because he didn't know what she was thanking him for. "Uh… sorry if this sounds rude, Alice, but… what are you thanking me for?" he looked to the books, "For carrying Roland's romance collection over here?"

Alice closed the first book loudly and placed it on her lap, "Don't test me, Painta-Boy. I'm not used ta sayin' that, okay?" she leaned back against her pillow and looked out the window across the room from her. The cliffside courtyard at the front of Beacon sprawled out below, with the city farther out. "You stayed behind an' faced off with a complete loony, Umba, and you had your team by your side, even when you weren't physically togetha. I guess what I'm tryin' ta say is... thank you for showin' me that maybe, _maybe_ , you have some inklin' of an idea of what you're doin'. You may not 'ave been there when Rime attacked me, but your team took out a monster that wasn't even supposed ta be here in Vale. Had you not done that, there's no tellin' how much more chaos that thing would've caused bein' so close ta the Academy."

Arty was dumbstruck, "I… I honestly don't know how to respond to that. I'm not used to being thanked often," he chuckled, "Guess you could say we got that in common, too."

Alice rolled her eyes, "You can start by saying 'you're welcome' and promising that you an' the rest of your team… when they're all able… will help Team ANTE set up for the welcomin' party here in the comin' weeks."

"Oh… Alabaster's still letting you guys do that?... After all that happened in the forest?..."

"We weren't breakin' any rules, Painta-Boy. They're just upset with us bein' so reckless. Besides, it's a bit too late ta find somebody else who knows how ta set up a party."

Arty nodded.

Alice suddenly found Arty's hand outstretched to her.

"I know we all kinda just dealt with some psycho Grimm worshipers and a demonic dinosaur, but, I could definitely use a creative outlet to help… y'know… _forget_ about all that. At least for a little bit. Just promise me we can change the horrible color scheme you got going on for the ballroom."

Alice looked offended for a moment before allowing a smile to tilt the ends of her mouth. She shook Arty's hand daintily, "Ya 'ave a deal, Umba."

"So… not to break up the whole moment we've got going here, but when is the food coming around? I haven't had a decent meal since we got put in here and Sepia keeps getting caught when she tries to sneak clams in," Roland leaned up and looked around the room, "I'd even walk to the cafeteria to get some food. I'm starving!"

"We are aware of that, man. Very aware," Turf glanced at Alice, "but lunch doesn't sound too bad. I think I could stand to get up and move around. The cafeteria's not that far away."

Alice sighed, "I guess… that sounds okay. The nurse did say that I should start walking around to get the soreness out."

"Well, whaddya waiting for?" Timbre patted Turf on the shoulder, "Let's go! It's hamburger day today, and you guys know Team ASHS…"

Turf immediately jumped out of his cot, "Timbre, thanks for the jerky, but I would rather save that for later. So… yeah. Let's go. If we can get there before them we _might_ have a chance of getting a burger… or two… or four."

"If we go in limping, then they might pity us and just _give_ us their food!" Roland slid out of bed and stood up straight. He was definitely sore, but the promise of food was more than enough to get him to work through it.

' _Let's get a move on, then! The pity party awaits!'_ Sepia rushed ahead and pushed open the door.

The group of them walked off for the cafeteria, all managing to laugh and joke on the way there. Life seemed to be returning to their own special sense of "normal".

* * *

Heavy metallic thuds sounded out down the dark hallway as Oro walked towards her boss's office. She had some _very_ interesting news to report.

"You're an idiot. You know that?" a deep male voice echoed from the shadows.

Oro turned to find a man similarly dressed to her with the black cloak and white Grimm-like mask. His was more similar to a bat's skull than a kangaroo's.

"Oh come on, Echo! It was all in good fun. I know how to control my lovelies," She retorted, rolling her eyes under her mask, "I knew they weren't going to die. Hurt, sure, but die? No."

"You know that's not true. Trex's namesake almost killed that Forté girl on _multiple_ occasions. In case you forgot, she _can't_ die. If you and your… posse had gotten her ripped apart by that Grimm, the whole plan would be ruined, and I'm sure I'd be the one sent to get rid of the broken gears in our operation. Understand?" he shook his head, "I got Speeder to get them out there so you could see how they were progressing on their training and so you could try out the Vacuo group's pet project, not to beat them within an inch of their lives."

Oro went silent. She half considered calling her group to help take care of Echo, but she knew that the Commander and even all of the Lieutenants frowned upon Brother on Brother violence. "Fine, I'm sorry, okay Echo? I almost messed up. Key word, _almost_. Things went fine and I got what I went in there for, and your little trinkets helped immensely on their first run." She tossed the black baton with the red antenna to him. "Our little angel wouldn't have even found them if we hadn't used these. So congratulations, you can follow blueprints, now that you know how they work, all you have to do is learn how to make them smaller and less… stupid looking." She turned on her heels and walked to the large double doors at the end of the hall. "Oh, and Echo. _Never_ threaten me like that again. We all may be working towards the same goal, but _I_ do things how _I_ do things. Vale may be _your_ base of operations, but in case you forgot, _my_ Lieutenant and _your_ Lieutenant agreed that Trex and I should work on this, so stop being so pissy over it. I'm also one-hundred-percent sure the Commander will be _very_ pleased with what we have to tell her," she scoffed, "I thought you'd at least be happy with how that _Faunus_ boy ended up at the end of the night. I know _I_ was."

With that, the doors slammed shut.


	29. V2Ch1: Very Warm Welcome

It was a quaint morning. Birds chirped. A soft breeze drove fresh sea air across the city of Vale and up the cliffs of Beacon Academy. For the average person, it would have been a beautiful start to the day… had it not been for the earth trembling roar of an explosion from within the campus. Smoke intermingled with the salty sea air above Beacon's spires. The source? Well, that was the splintered wall of the ballroom, where Team ARTS had been thrown out and scattered across the pavement.

The students that were gathering around the exterior courtyard began to crowd around in amusement at the team of four now lying smoldering on the pavement.

" _Bloody_ HELL, _Umba!_ " A shrill cry rang out as a girl with bright red hair and a red flower dress stepped through the hole in the wall leading outside. She was fuming, her fists balled up and shaking. " _Are you_ tryin' _ta ruin_ everythin'?!"

Burne "Arty" Umber raised his head, strands of his blond and orange hair singed dark black, "Uh… not intentionally?"

"To be fair, you're the one who stepped on the Magma Dust paint…" Roland Wells peeled himself off of the cement. He looked at the charred bran muffin in his hand, "We kind of exploded before I could pass this off." He tossed it over to Alice.

Without breaking her glare at her enemy-turned-friendly rivals, Alice caught the muffin and promptly crushed it to crumbs in her fist. "It wasn't _supposed_ ta be Dust paint, _Roland_ …"

A whistle broke the tension. Sepia Hughes held up a bright orange banner painted with non-elemental paint and grinned. She mouthed the words, " _I thought it would be fun to switch out the paints! It was!"_

"Well, at least you made one before your little prank…" Timbre leaned up to get a better view of her partner. Given Sepia's condition, she, along with the rest of Team ARTS, had gotten pretty adept at reading lips.

Arty grinned, showing off the odd gap in the top row of his teeth, "See, Alice? Things are fine! We were just having a bit of fun."

Alice's face just turned redder and redder. She shouted in rage and began to stomp towards him.

"Uh oh…" Arty mumbled as he found himself being raised by his neck. He was promptly pulled sideways and thrown a clear twenty feet into the building through the hole that Alice had stepped through. Turf and Navy stepped out of the way just in time to avoid the flying painter. Ebon, however, wasn't so lucky, and soon found himself sliding across the floor of the ballroom from the impact.

"Owwww…" Arty and Ebon both groaned.

"Fun? _Fun?!_ What's _fun_ about the gapin' 'ole ya left in tha wall?!" Alice jumped back into the ballroom. Her arms spread out to show off the massive chuck that was missing from the building. Even Everest wouldn't have a problem stepping through, and even he wouldn't even had to duck his head.

"You know, the janitorial squad seems to be top notch around here. Yamuna broke some massive windows during that whole… Lunacy incident, and they already had new panes up the next day. They got every shard of glass cleaned up. While we were sleeping..." Roland dusted sheetrock off of his hat. His tail wiggled, leaving a cloud of white dust behind him. "You weren't there for that, huh?"

Alice's brow furrowed, "Don't remind me…"

"Oh yeah…" Roland stepped up to examine the hole from the outside. Splintered two-by-fours, powdered sheetrock, chunks of concrete, and pink insulation dotted the crater left in the wall. "You know, at least it wasn't the Nova Dust. There wouldn't be a wall left if Sepia replaced the paint with that."

"More like there wouldn't have a _ballroom_ left…" Timbre winced as a block of concrete fell from the wall and shattered on the tile floor.

Sepia bounded up with her bustle bouncing behind her. Singed feathers dotted her path, each making their own soft descent. Her hands were held out for all to see, ' _I won't lie, I did consider it. I thought Magma would be more subtle. You know, I nearly used that new combo the boys came up with. What was it… Steam and Ice Dust? What did they call it?'_

"Rime Dust…" Arty groaned from his spot on the floor next to Ebon, who was making his own groggy attempt to get up. "Got the idea from… well… Rime… obviously…"

"Too deadly right now. Also working on a Gravity and Nova Dust combo! I'm calling it Galactic Dust. It sort of just detonates when it's exposed to… well, anything." Roland kept his eyes on the hole. The thought of what might have happened had a more… violent form of Dust been used instead crossed his mind, "The Galactic Dust name is subject to change, of course. I almost think that Anti-Matter Dust would be a cool name ever since Xannie and Lurida explained the concept to me. Turf! Navy! Ebon! Any input?"

Navy just sneered as he leaned against the back wall.

"I'll get back to you on that one," Turf jotted down a reminder in his scroll.

"Please… no…" Ebon winced as he gripped his chest with a mittened hand, "Do you guys always have to go for the 'maximum damage' route?..."

"That seems to be the case. At least for Tuscan's boy that is." An almost obnoxiously nasally voice said from the direction of the main doors on the south end.

' _I haven't looked, but I know I already hate this man.'_ Sepia signed without looking to see who was speaking. Upon poking her head in through the hole, she was presented with the unwelcome sight of an Atlesian soldier in full uniform. The amount of pins and stripes on his uniform stated he was pretty high in ranking. Instead of a wave, she presented her favorite finger to him from the safety of her hole. Growing up in the freedom of Vacuo made her pretty sour towards the authoritarian practices of Atlas.

The soldier turned his attention to her. Greasy green eyes peered out from razor-thin spectacles. His blinding white uniform clashed with his oily emerald hair. "Sepia Hughes of Team ARTS. You are just as… distasteful as your records indicate. Of course, what else am I to expect when your team is lead by the grown equivalent of a toddler with a stick of dynamite?"

"Hey!" Timbre stepped through the hole, looking over the scrawny soldier, "Who do you think you are talking about Arty that way?" She turned to her leader to ask him if he was going to let this man speak to him that way after everything Arty had done, but the painter just sat there on his knees, his face pale of color and his eyes wide with what seemed to be fear. "Arty?..."

"Ts-ts-... Tsuga Kauri?..." Arty stammered quietly.

Roland poked his head up next to Sepia's, "That's a douchey name! Is this some Atlas jerk-off, or what?"

Sepia silently giggled and gave him a peck on the cheek. _Took the words right out of my hands._

"Guys!" Timbre hissed, " _Stop it_."

Tsuga seemed taken aback by the attitudes of these children. "Excuse me?! I will _not_ be spoken to that way by the likes of little sh-."

"Tsuga, please." A flat female voice came from behind him. "Calm yourself. There's no need to waste your time with Burne's… team…"

If Arty was scared before, he was petrified now.

A woman in a blinding white pantsuit with noticeably long coattails stepped up in front of Tsuga. Her icy amber eyes peered over the soot covered tiles of the ballroom, then up the cracked columns that divided up the space on either side of the ballroom. The disgust that she held was evident even under the stone-cold wall that served as her permanent scowl. Her black hair was slicked back into a bun and a lion tail swung back and forth with each of her thundering steps. "Burne, I see that I still have reason to keep you out of Atlas."

While the rest of Teams ARTS and ANTE found the unfamiliar woman intimidating, they weren't as frightened by her as Arty was. Timbre noticed that his eyes were wide and his face was pale. Based on his reaction, she decided that she would be safest on the outside of the hole. If only she hadn't ran away from her group again, then she might have had the sanctuary of the two members of her team that didn't care much about other's opinions.  
She began helping her leader onto his feet, "Arty? You okay?"

"G… General Léon?..." Arty stuttered.

"Yes, Mr. Umber," Professor Alabaster, dressed in a black and white striped suit vest and black slacks, came in behind General Léon and Lieutenant General Kauri, "I was just walking the general and her lieutenant around campus when-"

"Lieutenant _General…_ " Tsuga spat.

"Anyway... We heard the... explosion." He looked at Arty quizzically, "I'm glad that you've all found a way to entertain yourselves while setting up for the arrival of the other students, but I would advise that you all try and avoid doing anything that you think that Team ASHS would approve of."

"Oh!" Alice said as she stepped up to her headmaster, "Professor Alabasta!" she curtsied, " _Burne_ here ruined the finishing touches on the welcoming ceremony. He's set us back _hours,_ if not _days_ … and we don't exactly have _days_ ," she crossed her arms and humphed, "I'd appreciate it if there was something you could suggest to make up for it."

Arty was still mortified, "Professor… I… I…" he couldn't get any words out.

"It is fine, Mr. Umber. I've hired on a few extra repairmen since the library incident." Professor Alabaster tapped his cane next to Arty's boots. The end of his cane delivered a firm tap to Arty's toes, as if to remind him to compose himself. "You can't expect there to be no damages in a school where we train students to cause as much damage as possible."

"You can if they have any sense of discipline." General Léon glared at her former student. She clenched her jaw and narrowed her gaze, "I have been told that Onyx has you... _leading_ a team."

Timbre smiled and waved with Arty hanging on her side, "Um, hi! Hello! That'd… that'd be us…"

"You're General Léon?" Roland adjusted his hat. He examined the woman for a moment, "Based on what Arty said about you, I expected you to be more… I don't know, psycho?"

"Excuse me?!" General Léon snapped her head over to the pair of approaching students. Her scowl contorted into a full snarl when she saw Sepia holding onto Roland's hand.

' _Roland, I'd back off. Don't you know that lions eat otters?'_ Sepia signed to her boyfriend. She stuck her tongue out at the general and popped a few finger guns at her.

"Those are sea lions, not _lion_ lions. I think I'm safe." Roland smiled wide at Arty's former headmaster.

"What about sea lio-. Nevermind." General Léon tried to compose herself, "Your team is as I expected them to be, Burne." She briskly made her way across the room, past the group of first-years, and out the open door to the courtyard outside, "I expect that your… new hires will have this fixed before the opening ceremony?" she asked Beacon's headmaster while being half dragged away by him with Tsuga close behind.

"I'll take that as a compliment!" Arty called after her. He quickly fell back onto the floor and held his face in his palms. "Oh my god she's actually here…"

Roland knelt beside his friend, "If it's any consolation, I'm not looking forwards to seeing the headmaster of Haven Academy, either," he pat him on the back, "I've got your back on General Léon if you got my back on… her."

Timbre looked towards the door to make sure the two headmasters had left completely, "Who's worse, the headmaster at Haven or Atlas?"

"To you guys, Atlas. To me, Haven." Roland bit his knuckle for a moment, "You'll get it later. I honestly don't really want to talk about it, if it's cool by you guys."

Timbre nodded, "'Kay then…" she pulled Arty back up with her and brushed off some of the remaining dirt that was on her clothes from the initial explosion. "Hey. Alice? If it's any consolation, we'd be glad to help you fix up what we can while the wall… gets fixed."

Sepia held out the banner to Alice. She stifled her silent laughter, not that it really mattered too much with her.

Alice was still mad, but she knew she wouldn't get everything done in time without any help from outside her own team. She sighed, "Fine… whateva…" she took one end of the banner and led Sepia across the room, away from the blast site. "You pull _anythin'_ like that _eva_ again, I will not hesitate ta beat you to a pulp…"

As Sepia began signing a list of profanities, Roland began to give the translation that Alice wanted to hear, "She says that she won't do it again. Also that we owe Team ANTE lunch after this. Sound fair?"

" _You liar…"_ Sepia mouthed back at him.

"So…" Timbre pat Arty on the back, "what do you want us to do?"

Turf walked right past Alice and Sepia on his way to the rest of Team ARTS, "Uh… me, Navy, and Ebon could work on cleaning up the soot and debris while you five take care of the organized and artsy stuff. It wasn't like we three were doing much more than following you guys…"

"Right," Timbre led Arty away to the pile of tablecloths that, luckily, hadn't gotten ruined in the blast. Away from the others, Timbre was able to ask Arty about the events that had just transpired. "So… General Léon…"

"Yep…"

Timbre unfolded a tablecloth, "I was wondering… why did that other guy scare you so much… if you don't mind me asking?"

"Tsuga?... Yeah, well," they flipped the cloth to lay it down on one of the tables, "after the _incident_ , my dad had to report to General Léon on what happened. She wanted to do much more than just ban me from Atlas Academy."

"Like what?"

"Like prison."

Timbre stopped in her tracks as Arty went to get another cloth. "Oh… but obviously that didn't happen, since you're standing here now. So what actually went down?"

"They struck a deal. I get kicked out of the Academy, I don't go to jail, and the media doesn't blow up the story… no pun intended, I swear." Arty sighed, "All my dad had to do was take a demotion."

Timbre helped flatten out another tablecloth, "Wait… your dad was…"

"Second in command of the largest military power in all of Remnant? Yeah, he was, until I screwed up and he had to let Tsuga take his place. Now my dad's stuck back in Atlas continuing boot camp instead of helping General Léon bring the Atlas students that are participating in the tourna-..." Arty's eyes widened, "Oh crap…" He immediately dashed for the door, "Don't tell me…!"

"Arty!" Timbre chased after him, "Where the heck are you _going_?!" She didn't get a response.

 _Come on. Come on. Come on._ Arty's mind had emptied itself of the events that had just transpired. All that was in his mind now was the fact that, if General Léon was already in Vale, then his friends might be as well. Right as his boot hit the stoop of the main doorway, somebody blocked his path.

He found himself on the receiving end of a bearhug from a boy adorned with gold, gold, and more gold. "Arty! My main man! The rebel that took it to the next level! The bomber like no other! How's it goin'?!"

Arty was grinning ear from ear as he greeted his childhood friend, "Midas! Please, don't call me that!" He said not breaking his excited tone. "So you came in with General Léon?"

"Not just him, Umber." A girl in a simple green hoodie and grey sweatpants walked up next to Midas. She held her hand out to him, barely letting her smile show, "Good to see you again, Burne."

Normally, Arty would just shake her hand back, but he couldn't contain his excitement. He wrapped his arms around her and lifted her up off the ground. "Curie!"

"Yes… it's me. Can you put me down now?" After her demand wasn't complied with the second she finished her sentence, she kneed Arty in the ribs, forcing him to drop her. Upon returning to the ground, she cleared her throat and pushed her glasses back into place.

Arty's grin wouldn't fade, even through the pain in his side, "Good to see you too, Cure..."

"Dude, it's been such a drag without you around! No one does Dust like you, man, and now General Pissy is cautious of all of the heavy Dust users back at Atlas. Now that we're at Beacon, maybe we'll have the pleasure of seeing you spice things up!" Midas clapped his hands together. He looked around for the rest of Arty's team, "From what I heard, that's kind of your team's specialty!"

"Please don't say 'spice'... It's a bad omen." Roland waved from behind his leader, "I think we've already met over the CCT. Midas and Curie, right?"

Curie eyed the cowboy Faunus cautiously, "Yes. Roland, is it?"

"Yeah, nice to meet you," he held out a hand to his side. Sepia stood with a massive grin spread across her face. He watched carefully as she made a few motions with her hands, "Oh, and you know Sepia. She's the mute and really talkative one."

"Dude, I totally forgot you had a Faunus and a chick without a voice on your team! Beacon's got some kind of diversity, huh? That's great! Maybe I should have blown a hole in the school too!" Midas laughed and shook Roland and Sepia's hands.

"You think _we're_ cool? There's a girl that can make weapons out of thin air using Ice Dust and some dudes that can turn into wolves." Arty shook his head, "I'm telling you Midas, this school is nuts."

"Don't forget about me!" Timbre rushed out of the ballroom, despite Alice's protests. Timbre shook Midas and Curie's hands. "Hi! I'm Timbre. It's so great to finally meet you two in person."

Curie's eyes widened and her jaw fell open. She looked as if she were going to pass out. "T-T-T-T-T-T-T-T…"

"Timbre Forté," Midas slid in between his teammate and the singer, "you look even better in person. The name that you're never gonna forget is Midas, Midas Ankara. Maybe we could ditch this place and grab some dinner later. I'm buying! Let me just give you my contact info-"

A broom clattered to the floor on the other side of the ballroom. Turf scrambled to snatch it back up and return to his duties. He raised his hand to grab Midas' attention, "Hey, sorry! She… she, uh… has plans helping out… with the… um…"

"Welcoming ceremony!" Timbre smiled nervously and took a step back. "Yeah. You see, I'm kinda… helping set up this whole thing and I… gotta…" She suddenly turned on her heel and speed-walked back inside. "Hey, Alice! Need help with those streamers!?"

"That's fine! I'll catch up with you later!" Midas waved goodbye. He ran a few fingers through his hair and flipped it back up into place. "Gods, that's one heck of a woman. Think you could get her number for me, Bomber?"

Arty cringed, "Yeah… no. I may be your best friend, but I'm gonna have to draw the line at playing wingman with you and my own teammate…"

"Aw… Roland, how about you?"

"Midas… she left because she was creeped out…" Roland rubbed his arm and glanced at Arty. "This is your best friend…?" he whispered in his ear.

Arty nodded.

Curie tapped her foot impatiently, "Midas… cut it out. Knowing you, you'll be swooning over some other girl in about five minutes. It's not a big loss…"

"I will no- hey!" Midas snapped his head back to the open door. He began waving and jogging towards a group of girls taking a tour of the campus. "Hey! The name's Midas, Midas Ankara!"

"He hasn't changed a bit, has he?" Arty asked Curie as he reminisced on the many times he'd gotten a good slap just from being associated with Midas on his past romantic escapades.

"Not in the slightest. Even though he's the leader of Team MTLC now, he _still_ has to be the lone wolf rebel of Atlas Academy."

There was that name again. _Team MTLC_. The team that _should_ have been Team MLBC. "So, Curie. Where's the rest of your team?"

"Titian and Ledning decided to go down to check out the city before the welcoming ceremony tonight, so… they won't be around until later." She patted him on the shoulder, "Don't worry, you'll get to meet her soon enough."

Arty couldn't believe she'd seen through his line of questioning. "What do you?... I wasn't…"

"Burne, I get it. You want to know about the person who replaced you on our team. You don't need to sit here and try some backwards-ass method to get information out of me." She wagged a finger at him, "You should know me better by now. Just… let it go for the time being, okay? Let's go find Midas before he gets us kicked out of the tournament…"

"Actually, do you think I could take Arty on a little walk? There are some things I want to talk about with my partner." Roland clasped Arty's shoulder and pointed to the doors.

Arty looked to Curie, "I was gonna go walk Curie aro-"

"Go, Burne."

Arty looked to her confused, "But I-"

"Go play leader. We'll catch up after I go find the Great Gold Womanizer before he gets in trouble." She waved as she turned to head the direction Midas went, "See you later. It was nice to meet your team, Umber."

And with that, Curie disappeared into the crowd milling around in the courtyard.

"Wanna talk about what keeps happening when they get brought up?" Roland led Arty out into the courtyard. By the shoulder, he dragged Arty in the direction of the library. A lot of memories were made there between them, but the important thing at that moment was that the flood of transfer students thinned out around the building.

"Nothing keeps happening, Roland."

"Right, because you don't get all awkward as soon as Team MLBC," Roland paused for a moment. He wanted Arty to take notice of his 'mistake', "excuse me, Team MTLC gets brought up. Same goes for when your old headmaster gets brought up too."

"Well, I mean…" Arty pushed the door open to the library, which was eerily quieter than usual, "Stupid question but… wouldn't you feel the same way? I had a team before ARTS and because of me, that team never even got the chance to exist…"

"Arty, I wish the team that I might've been in got disbanded because of a stupid mistake that _I_ made." Roland pulled up a chair at the table where Arty had previously been given the task of redoing every illustration in the Beacon library. "Regardless of what happened to bring me here, I wouldn't trade this team for the world. We've got a solid leader, a celebrity, and... Sepia. That's the best team that I could ask for."

"Don't get me wrong… I think the same way. I never would've met you guys had I not accidentally grabbed the wrong spray paint that day, but… I sometimes think about how my life would be if I was still back home. Yeah, I'd be with Midas and Curie, but I'd still be under my dad's iron fist and General Léon's iron boot." Arty let out a deep sigh, "Do you ever wonder what would've happened had you not left Mistral?... The good and the bad, and compare it to what you have now?"

Silence fell over them.

"I'm sorry, I have no place to ask that considering… everything…"

"No, no, it's fine. It's really fine." Roland rubbed his forehead as he recounted what life would have been like, "You want to know what would have happened if mom hadn't passed away, right?"

"I didn't mean that specifically, but..."

"I'd probably have moved out of the estate to live with Mom by now. I wouldn't become a Huntsman. I'd probably try to make a living writing. I have a few stories in my head that I would love to get on paper. If I'm being honest, I would be a heck of a lot happier than I am now, Arty." Roland placed his hat on the table and leaned back in his seat. "The thing is, I don't want to be happier. If I was happier, then I wouldn't be fighting to make the world that took her from me a better place. It's because I'm not happy that I want to do better."

Arty leaned forward in his seat and stared at the hardwood floor of the library. After everything they did to get Roland to open up, he was still unsure about how to respond to half the things he said when talking about home. After a moment of thought, Arty decided to ask a very general question. "Is that just the way the world works, then?"

"How many people do you know that have both parents still around, Arty?" Roland looked around the library, his gaze settling on the rows marked off for romantic fiction. His mother could have named every last one there. "Remnant is dangerous, and that makes for a dangerous and volatile society. We're… well, you're here to make it just a little less dangerous in every way that you can. It doesn't matter what team you're on or which academy you go to. The end goal is the same, right?"

"That's easy to say when you're not the one responsible for the team at large, Roland. After what happened with Oro and that Trex… yeah, we came out in one piece, but how can we better the world with things like the Grimm Brotherhood out there?"

"We do what we're trained to do. We fight them until we can't," Roland watched Arty's downtrodden gaze carefully. "Listen… I made the decision to charge in and get hit by Oro, man. That's not on you. I almost died because of _my_ stupid mistake, not yours. Quit kicking yourself over that. It was me who made that situation even more dangerous, not you."

Arty shook his head back and forth. "That's just it. _That's_ the big difference between MLBC and ARTS. On MLBC, I would've just been a member following orders. Midas's orders, yeah, but someone _else's_ orders nonetheless. In ARTS… I'm the one that's supposed to give them. If I could have just given the right ones in the first place, then none of that would have happened!"

"Would you rather me be the leader?"

"That's not what I'm saying, Roland." Arty began drumming his fingers against the wood of the table. The stacks of books began to feel too close as he tried to word his thoughts. "Do you remember when we first became Team ARTS? You told me that I was the only one of us that was qualified to be leader."

"Yeah, so?"

"After that whole mess, I honestly think I should be added to the 'not qualified' list. You, Alice, Turf. You were all stuck in the infirmary after that. Then the whole thing with the Trex… There were twelve of us out there that night, and all of us could have died. I mean, I just don't think I handled things as well as I could have. I was stuck. I couldn't move when Oro showed up with all her friends. I knew the Grimm Brotherhood was bad, but what did they want with us?" he held his head in his hands, "I just don't think I'd be able to protect you guys if they ever came back."

"Arty, you used our Nova Dust to save my life. You, Timbre, and Sepia took out a Grimm that we don't even know how to fight." Roland stood up from his seat. He slammed his palms on the table, "Do you have any idea how much that meant to me, Arty? I was down and out. I was sure that I was going to die. I have _never_ had anyone to have my back like that other than Mom, but there you were. You care about me, Arty. You care about Sepia. You care about Timbre. That makes you a good team leader," he clenched his fists against the table, "You're the reason that we lived through that. Everyone sees that but you."

Arty mulled over Roland's words and, as much as he wished he could believe them, something just didn't feel right. Yeah, he cared, but did that really make him a good leader? Does _one_ good make up for all the bad?

"You're always stuck in the past," Roland eased himself back into his seat. Even though his blood was already boiling, he stopped himself from exploding. He shoved his hat towards his leader and crossed his arms, "Do you know what that is?"

Arty looked to the headwear, "Your hat that you've tackled everyone on our team at least five times a piece over?"

"It's a woman's hat, Arty."

Normally, he would've said something to mock Roland, but considering what he knew about him, Arty decided against it as logic put things together. "It was your mom's, wasn't it?"

"Like everything else I have, yeah," Roland placed the hat back onto his head. That felt safe. That felt right, "My mother grew up in Vacuo. There's a lot of sand and dust, so a wide brim hat will do wonders for you. She stopped wearing it when she came to Mistral, then I picked it up out of some of her old things when I was a kid. I haven't stopped wearing it since," he leaned his head back to look at the ceiling, "I lost her, and that made me lose myself. That's why I came here. I've told you on multiple occasions that I am here to find whoever it was that... well, that's not the point. I've been stuck in the past because I lost everything that I cared about, but you seem to be stuck in the past because you gained things that you don't think you deserve. That… that really just pisses me off, if I'm being honest with you. Here you are, the would-be leader that actually became a leader, talking about how you're upset about the mistakes that you've made. Your mistakes made you better, but my mistakes got my mother and a slew of other Faunus killed. Just, why? Why are you so _damn_ upset that you turned the title you were given into your actual _identity_?"

"It's easy to sit here and say I was successful looking back, but do you know how many times I counted where if I made one little misstep, _one_ little misstep, and somebody would've died?"

"That's irrelev-"

" _Do you know how many_?!" Arty could feel his collar soaking through with sweat. He didn't like having this conversation at all.

"Not near as many as you think," Roland leaned back up to face his leader.

Arty nodded and gazed out the window to the students, both native and foreign, passing by the window, all cheerful and enjoying the nice day outside, partially to take a break, partially to avoid eye contact with Roland, "87."

"What?"

"I counted, Roland. Every single one stuck in my mind. There were _87_ _individual times_ where I was either an inch or a second or a paintball away from getting killed or getting somebody else killed."

Not being convinced, Roland pressed further, "What was the first?"

"Allowing us to get talked into going out there in the first place," before Roland could speak again, he continued, "Do you want more examples?"

"No I-"

"When I first used the Nova Dust, I had no idea what it was going to do. It could have gone completely wrong and blown one of us to bits."

"Arty..."

"When Sepia disarmed Oro, I could've taken her out somehow, but I didn't."

"Arty."

"I left you alone and almost got drowned, giving Oro the chance to use you as a hostage until the Trex got to us."

"Arty!"

"And then when it all came to it, I waited until the last possible second to kill it! There wasn't any time left, Roland! If I had waited a second longer, or missed the one shot I had… all four of us would've-"

He couldn't take it anymore. Roland shot across the table and hoisted Arty up by the collar, " _Why are you hellbent on ending up like me, Arty?!"_ he shouted with tears streaming down his cheeks. The grip tightened when he brought Arty closer, "Why do you want to put that much _suffering, baggage, and incomprehensible responsibility_ on your shoulders and yours alone?! Why are you shutting me out, Arty?! Why won't you get your head out of the Emerald Forest?!"

Arty's panicked shouting became a sad and quiet mumble, "Because that's where I found out that there are things out there that I can't study for. Oro wasn't something that we've ever seen in our textbooks or in McGouran's class. She wasn't like my Camolurker, or Timbre's Raach, or Sepia's Scuttlepod, or your Wendigo... I've gotten so used to knowing what we're up against out there in the real world. Maybe I've gotten… _too_ used to it…"

"You're-!" yelling wasn't going to do anything, "You're preaching to the choir…" Roland loosened his hold. Arty was finally allowed to slip out of his grip, "Remnant is ruthless. It will take everything and everyone from you. This school is probably the safest place on this planet, so I get why you'd feel so… slapped down," his words didn't seem to do much, though. He cursed himself, but tried to think of at least something, "Arty, what was the purpose of the first lesson that Professor Maple taught us?"

Arty thought back to that first day of class. He winced when he remembered how Everest had batted him so easily into the wall when they first started their fight. He slowly began to recount the speeches given by Professor Maple and Professor Alabaster, "Be able to adapt to anything."

"That means that we adapt to Oro. That means that we adapt to the Trex. That means that we adapt to this unmerciful world," Roland held out a hand to Arty. Neither of them had to keep suffering so much. They didn't just have to be open. They needed to rely on one another, "Arty, you need to adapt to the burden that you've been carrying since we left the Emerald Forest for the second time."

Arty didn't nod, but he didn't refuse either. "Right… I will, but I need some time first. It's not going to be a full semester or anything, but I just need to figure out how and why and… all that. As much as I need my team, I need my little link from back home too, you know? I need something to… disconnect myself from all of that."

"I know…" Roland's fingers curled back up. He lowered his hand, "I get it, really. Just… time alone doesn't heal all wounds. Just please come to me-" he caught himself, "us. Please, come to us when you're ready. Some things are too big to bear alone."

"Right… will do."

* * *

' _Hey, have you heard from Arty or Roland?'_ Sepia's hands flew in front of Timbre's face. She stomped back and continued pacing up and down the freshly scrubbed floor of the ballroom. She flicked through her scroll for any missed messages, ' _It's been awhile since they left.'_

Timbre shrugged, "Maybe they're just really into giving Midas and Curie the grand tour? That doesn't really explain why Roland's taking so long, though."

"Can you two… one… whateva… stop _blatherin'_?! We're _so_ close to being done here, and the rest of the students should be showin' up any time now!" Alice yelled from the top of her ladder, where she was leaning a bit too far to hang the last streamer on the stone framing of the front door, and only a little way down from the two repairmen who were already smoothing out plaster. As she stretched her arm out further to pin it into place, the ladder began to wobble. With a high-pitched shriek, the ladder fell out from under her and she began to tumble to the ground. Fortunately, her landing was softened by something beneath her. Unfortunately, that _something_ was another teen.

"Owwww…." a groan came from beneath her.

" _Oh no! Oh bollocks!_ " She jumped up, flustered by her own clumsiness. "I'm so _bloody_ sorry… I didn't… I..."

"No, no, it's fine. I'm good…" said the boy from below Alice. He reached out for a pair of reading glasses that had clattered away, just out of reach, "My depth perception is gone without those. Could you help a guy out?"

Turf, walking over due to the commotion, picked up the spectacles and handed them to the boy before helping Alice up.

"Thanks," he placed them back over his eyes. Finally, he was able to see the people giving him at least a... friendly welcome. The redhead in the dress still had the apologetic look in her eyes and the guy in the beanie next to her just looked oblivious to all that was happening around him. That was when he noticed the hole in the wall and the black scorch marks two other guys were trying to clean up. "Woah! Hey, Cai, you sure you've never been to Vale before?" he asked over his shoulder towards the door.

High-heeled boots clicked against tile as the dancer strode in. The unnatural smile that she gave the scorched remains of the explosion sent chills down her audience's spines. Her flowing dress gave off a faint glow like fresh embers, but it appeared to be scorched and ripped around the hem. "Nope, but it sure looks like it, huh?"

Once inside, the woman twirled and kicked the ground, "I like this ballroom a lot. The soot, the smell of ash, the rhythm I get from it! Please tell me prom's gonna be in here," she turned her head to Alice. A bright orange flower was stuck in her chocolate curls bouncing around her head. A red streak in her bangs fell back into place. She held out her hand to the newcomer in green and grey, "Epa, dance with me!"

He was about to protest when he was suddenly yanked to his feet and led around the open room.

"Um…" Alice watched on in mild confusion, "it's not… exactly _supposed_ ta look like this… We're still cleaning and setting up. I honestly didn't want any of tha foreign students seein' tha ballroom like... _this_." Inside, she was screaming. She wanted to pout and yell at these two to leave, but she tried to save face for the sake of proving she could do _something_ right to the rest of Beacon, maybe even herself.

"Um… may I ask who you are? What school are you from? Shade? Haven? Oh, the Atlas students are here, I know that much! Are you perhaps with them?" She asked, even though she highly doubted that the shy nerdy kid with a hiking backpack and what looked like a salsa dancer that had recently survived a house fire were from such a place of high standing in Remnant, but then again, Umber was from that same place. He _certainly_ didn't play the part.

The dancer yanked her partner around, watching his feet carefully, "Come on, Epa! You've got to lead! You're the man!" she laughed while turning in quick circles with him. Deciding that he wasn't going to lead, she grabbed his thigh, held his back, and dipped him in Alice's general direction, "We're from Haven! Come on, you didn't think we were stuffy enough to be from Atlas, did you? I've only heard of one person from Atlas that could really light a place up! What did Rol say his name was, Epa?"

"Uhhh…" he looked up to the ceiling, wracking his brain for a name, "I'm so bad with names… Brick? Burke? Burt? Something like that?"

The dancer burst out laughing and pulled her partner back up, "Epa! We're idiots, or at least I am! Burne! How could I forget that name?!" she spun Epa in a circle and pulled him in close so that he still faced Alice, "But Rol said to call him Arty. I like Burne a lot better, though. It has more flair to it!"

"I would've remembered that if he shared his name with a plant…" the backpacker mumbled as he marched along hand-in-hand with Cai.

Alice was dumbstruck. "Wait… you two… _know_ who Umba and the Fa-" she had to stop herself from continuing her old nasty habit, "who Umba and Roland are?"

"Yeah," Epa said as Cai twirled him, letting him bend backwards towards Alice "he is my best friend after all."

"Wow, sick moves," Ebon said as he walked up to the newcomers, "I always thought that it was a pretty small world when I realized everyone on Team ARTS was from a different kingdom, but I didn't think they'd actually _make_ the world that much smaller! Kinda makes meeting new students easier, eh?" He pulled off a glove and held his hand out to the pair from Mistral. "Name's Ebon. Nice to meetcha!"

"Nice to meet you too! I'm Cayenne and this is Epazote!" the dancer took a hand off of Epazote and shook the skier's hand, "I've heard about you, and Alice, Turf, and Navy too! You're the cool one, Alice is the poker player, Turf is the puppy, and Navy is the soldier, right?" she looked back at Epazote.

Turf rubbed his arm, "Roland called me a puppy…?"

"No, Rol's girlfriend called you a puppy. We know Sep well, don't we Epa? Way better match for him than Saf."

"I'd keep that quiet if I were you…" Epazote shook his head, "you know she has a way of getting info out of people. The less you say about the matter… the better…"

The sound of a small applause echoed through the room as Timbre and Sepia made their way over to the door.

"That was _incredible_!" Timbre beamed as she greeted Cayenne and Epazote. "I've had to deal with a lot of choreography before but it never felt… right to me. You made it look like you were born to do it!" She went to shake their hands, "I'm Timbre, by the way, but I guess you… already… knew that…"

Turf stifled a chuckle. "Everyone usually does, Timbre."

"Yeah, Rol and Sep told us all about you!" Cayenne let go of Epazote and waltzed over to Timbre and Sepia, "Speaking of which, what's going on, Sep?"

' _Chaos as usual!'_ Sepia held up her scroll. Once her message was read, she hugged Cayenne around the waist as if they had been friends for years. After the dozens of visits to the CCT with Roland, her, Epazote, and Cayenne had become well acquainted.

Again, Epazote tried to place the name with the memory associated to it, "Yeah, uh… Timbre, didn't you play a concert at Haven last spring?"

Timbre nodded. "Yeah, during my final tour before coming here. Were you there?"

Both of them shook their heads.  
"I'm not really big on concerts," Epazote shrugged, "I know a few songs, but I couldn't name the person that sings them to save my life."

"That's really cool that you got to play at a big concert! So were you on tour with whoever was playing as the opening act, or what?" Cayenne let go of Sepia. She hadn't the slightest clue who Timbre was. After all, dancing to the beat of music was her thing, not actively listening to it.

For the first time in what felt like forever, somebody honestly had no clue who she was. Even in Mikado Village, a small podunk trading village in the mountains, everyone there knew who she was. It was a shock to say the least, but she found it refreshing. With a big grin, she very enthusiastically shook Cayenne's hand with both of her own, "No, I was! I was the main act!"

Epazote and Cayenne looked to each other with concern.

Team ANTE was also confused by Timbre's reaction.

"You're happy that I don't know who you are…?" Cayenne raised an eyebrow.

"It's just… it's _very_ rare not to be recognized, you know?" She let go of Cayenne and struggled to contain her excitement over her new discovery. "It can get kinda tiring after a while. It's actually part of the reason I was worried about coming here."

Alice spoke up, "Yeah, I didn't exactly keep it a secret that I was a fan when last semesta started."

"Well, I'm glad that I could be… refreshing?" Cayenne ran her fingers through her curls. She tapped the side of her cheek while examining the ballroom even further. Sepia was there without her boyfriend, which was disappointing. She and Epazote hadn't seen their best friend since he left Mistral. "Where is Rol, anyway? We actually came here because we heard that Team ARTS was helping set this place up."

"Roland?" Timbre looked to Sepia, "we're not 100% sure, but my best guess is that he's with Arty and some of his friends from Atlas. We haven't seen either of them in about an hour or so." She turned to the leader of Team ANTE, "If it's not too much trouble for you, Alice, do you mind if we help them find Roland?"

Alice eyed the two Haven students. They seemed nice enough. Why they hung around Roland before, she had no clue, but she did still feel bad about the current condition of the ballroom… and almost breaking Epazote's back. "Okay. That's fine. We should be able to handle the last of it. Really it's just a matta of music choice and lighting. And the repairs, of course."

"Great! Thanks, Alice!" Timbre was full of energy now. It was always fun meeting new people, and she always made an effort to make a good first impression. No longer was she the scared incognito celebrity she was when she flew in on the airship the first day. Today, she was a representative of Beacon Academy, and she was going to be as helpful as possible. She did find it awkward, however, when the idea of pummeling Epazote and Cayenne during sparring, or, with enough luck, during the Vytal Tournament came to mind. "C'mon guys. Knowing Roland, it's not exactly difficult to find him. Even though he's gotten… better, that doesn't mean he doesn't still like getting into the occasional fight!"

Silence fell over Epazote and Cayenne.

"Did… did he tell you…?" Epazote finally asked.

That's when it hit her. Timbre thought Epazote seemed familiar somehow, but now she knew for sure that she'd seen him before.

He was the boy consoling Roland in the picture from his mother's funeral.

Timbre's chipper mood faded quickly. "Yeah. He told us." The guilt she had felt when she had found his binder of letters slowly seeped back in, making her chest ache lightly. "We didn't have any idea until just about a month ago."

"She was close to all of us…" Cayenne rubbed the back of her neck. Memories of Professor Oscura came trickling back. Textbooks floating around, pictures seemingly coming to life for a little while, and countless other scenes played out in the back of her mind. "It makes sense that he didn't tell you guys about it for so long. Professor Oscura was everything to him. She used to have him help out on certain lessons by having him use his Semblance to rearrange her scribblings on the whiteboard. Then he'd start cracking jokes when her back was turned. Remember, Epa?"

Epazote nodded and gazed off towards the cliffs as they began to walk down the side of the the main building, "Yeah. When we heard about what happened, Roland wasn't the only one that was crushed. All of Sanctum was, especially the students who'd already graduated, like us. She was usually referred to as the best teacher the school had ever seen."

"I'd say the best teacher in Remnant. She cared so much about us," Cayenne smiled bitterly at the sky, "and she was always just… there. If you needed help, Professor Oscura gave it. If you needed a book, she would write down the passages that you needed from a bunch of different books, make the properly formatted citations, and do it all from memory. One time, I forgot my lunch at home, and she just gave me hers. I don't like clams, but I ate every last bit of that lunch because she had the heart to give it up. I could have gone a day without lunch no problem, but she didn't want that."

With every new story and detail, Timbre felt like _she_ missed Professor Oscura as well.

Epazote pretended to fix his glasses as he wiped away a tear. "Some of the bullies at school were giving my mom a hard time. She's the student counselor at Sanctum, so she has to deal with the bad ones regularly. As Oscura heard, she'd be over in a second. They saw her and gave her the exact same looks that they did my mom, but within about a _minute_ tops, they'll be all apologetic and be on their way. She wasn't just great. She was _incredible_."

Sepia held up her scroll with a message displayed, ' _I wish I could have met her. I can't help but wonder what she would have thought about me.'_

"Oh, she would have _loved_ you. If you made her son happy, there was nothing you could do to make her upset with you. While Saffron and Roland were still dating, Professor Oscura would spend her own money just to make sure that they both had fun. She even took them to a concert, Timbre's I'm guessing, over at Haven."

 _He was at my concert in Mistral?_ Timbre thought to herself in surprise.

Cayenne bit her lip, "That was a month before… you know. Roland just kind of shut everyone out after that. He put on a face and made everyone think he was okay, but none of us could get very close to him. We could talk about the normal stuff like books and movies, but he shut down if Professor Oscura got brought up… He's doing better now, right? He's not just putting up a front?"

Timbre had never considered Roland's whole personality around them being a front, but, then again, there were _two_ sides to him. There was the angry Roland they met during orientation, and then there was the happier, friendlier, overall more agreeable Roland that they got to know after they confronted him about CiCi Oscura. Was one of these a front? Were _both_ of them a front? "I… honestly don't know."

Epazote picked up his pace, "Well, if he's being generally a nice guy, but doesn't take bull from anybody, then that's the real him."

Timbre looked to Sepia.

' _Sounds about right. That's about how he's always been to me.'_ Sepia signed. Even before they officially began dating, Roland had always shown her a different side to himself. He would always come back to her with a smile, ' _He still has a temper, but that's pretty understandable with everything that happened, right?'_

"What was that?..." Epazote said as he scrunched his nose in confusion.

"She says yeah, that sounds like how he really is." Timbre shook her head as she recounted her own stories about Roland, "When he first got here, all he did was want to pick fights with anybody and everybody. He was… scarily violent all the time. Yeah, Alice and Navy actually pulled some of that 'bull' you mentioned, but… I don't know. It seemed too _real_ to be a front, you know?"

Cayenne slowly looked over at Timbre. The idea of Roland being violent wasn't totally foreign to her or Epazote, "Actually… I think I do know. See, there have been a few times where Roland has completely flown off the handle. It's when people talk about Faunus in a bad light, and more specifically his mother. That was before she… passed on. I don't know if he told you the things that Shirley did to him, but… well, he should be the one to talk about it if he hasn't."

"I guess not… since I have no clue who Shirley is…" After all the strife that they were put through because of Roland not opening up to them, he still had plenty of secrets to hide it seemed.

Epazote began to bring some light to the situation that was Roland's family, "His step-mom, who just so happens to be-"

"Well, well, well, if it ain't Sepia Hughes!" A cheery, thickly-accented voice erupted from behind them. "Feels like I haven't seen ya in foreva!"

Sepia whipped her head around. As soon as she saw her, her face lit up. It was her. It was Opal! Walking up with her flip-flops clacking underfoot was Opal Uluru, Sepia's best friend and the woman that saved her life.

"Well? I don't get a hug from ya or nothin'?" Opal held out her arms in her approach.

Before Opal could get even ten feet closer, Sepia shot towards the poor woman as if she'd been shot out of a cannon.

Timbre let out a soft chuckle, "There's only one person Sepia would have _that_ reaction to seeing," she walked up to the girl Sepia had attached herself to and held her hand out, "You must be Opal, right? I'm Timbre. I've heard plenty about you."

"Oh, I know ya very well, Timba," Opal said over Sepia's shoulders. The hug that she was on the receiving end of didn't seem like it was ending anytime soon. She reached around and took the singer's hand with a smile plastered across her face, "Ya might even say I'm a fan. It's truly a pleasure to meet ya!"


	30. V2Ch2: Reconnection

"Midas! _Midas!_ " Curie yelled as she marched through the huge crowd of students now overtaking the campus. It was nearly impossible to pick out any one person from the sea of people. _Dammit, Midas, when I find you…_

Through the crowd, she caught a bright spot of gold.

 _There you are_. She swiftly made her way through the crowd, not thinking to say "excuse me" or "pardon me" as she pushed her way towards her partner. As she drew closer, she could see him chatting with some ditzy looking girls, a redhead in a Haven uniform and another that looked like a female version of Arty's partner, Roland, minus the tail and adding a pair of bovine horns sticking out from underneath her cowboy hat. _You haven't seen your best friend in person for half a year, and you waltz off to find some bimbos to talk to_.

.

"So then I tell them, 'The only Haven that you gals need is the one in my heart. How about it? I've got a scroll, you ladies have scrolls, and we all have contact info,' but then you showed up. I was on the fast track to digit town, C, _d-i-g-i-t town._ "

Curie pinched the bridge of her nose in an attempt to quell the rage building inside her. "I swear, Midas, you _suck_ at thinking with your brain..."

"That's why we have you, Curie! You think with your brain, and I think with whatever you think I think with. We're the thinkers, and Titian and Ledning are the doers. That's how Team MTLC works." Midas flipped his side ponytail back. He took a fresh breath of air and let it out with an 'ahh', "So what's going on? Where are we going?"

"The library. I can't deal with all of these… people. It should be a lot quieter there."

"Coolio. I bet the babes with glasses are going to hang out in the library, anyways. That's fine by me," Midas looked up to the towering windows on the westerly side of the Beacon library. One of the windows stood out. It seemed brighter than the others. Newer.

Curie glared at him, adjusting her glasses, "You trying to say something about girls with glasses there, Midas?"

"You know I'm not into hermits, but I think Arty is," the golden boy jabbed his elbow into Curie's arm. His eyebrows wiggled up and down at her.

She blushed before returning a much stronger thump to his shoulder, "Shut up, Midas…"

Still, he went on, "Right, because it isn't like your glasses fog up when I talk about the time that you and Arty were rubbing arms and bumping into each other while you guys fixed Palette or anything."

She punched again, "I will keep this up until I break your arm, dammit!" The shout would have been accompanied by a third punch had it not been for the fact that Curie wasn't able to see too well anymore. Haze coated the inside of her glasses. The high humidity of Vale and her flushed cheeks made for the perfect breeding ground for fogged-up lenses.

"Told you! You get all hot under the collar! Maybe take off the hoodie once in awhile! You've got nothing to hide! Remember that one time when we were running around the obstacle course and you had to take off your hoodie because it got too sweaty? I'm telling you, Arty stayed in the back for a reason that day! I guess he thought you in that tank top was a sight to-"

Curie was just about to put a foot in front of Midas's, using it to trip him before he could complete his statement, but instead she put a hand out in front of him and stopped him. "Wait," she listened intently, "you hear that?"

Someone yelled from inside the library, "Why won't you get your head out of the Emerald Forest?!"

"It sounds like somebody's arguing."

"Yes Curie, I's say it _does_ sound like somebody arguing. Nice observation from the brain-thinker of Team MTLC!" Midas waved her along towards the front, "Wanna go eavesdrop, or…?"

"It sounds like Arty and his partner." She began stomping off towards the library's front door, "I knew something felt off when we first met up with him."

"You thinkin' there's some pent up tension in Team ARTS or somethin'?"

"I'm hoping it's the 'or somethin'..."

Midas pushed the doors open just enough to slip inside, Curie following close behind. The orange and purple members of Team ARTS were sitting across from each other at one of the tables. Both of them seemed… depressed.

Roland's tail was limp against the back of the chair. His hat sat loosely on his head, drooping off to the side. All he seemed to be able to do for his partner was hold out a hand, "Please, come to us when you're ready. Some things are too big to bear alone."

Based on the tears welling up in Arty's eyes, it didn't seem that the conversation at hand was going in a direction that he wanted it to. He pulled his arms closer to his chest, "Right… will do."

Midas ducked down behind the nearest bookshelf and leaned out slowly, just enough to where his bright gold hair and suit wouldn't catch the light coming in through the windows, "Woah… I don't think I've seen our boy tear up like that since he told us he got kicked out of the academy."

"Arty, what's wrong?" Curie ignored Midas all together and approached the table. Once she caught the attention of both of them, she shoved her hands into her hoodie pockets, "Look, if this is about what happened back home, or… look, I don't know. Will you just tell me what's going on?"

The golden boy behind the bookshelf clutched his unbuttoned collar, "Curie! What are you doing…?!" he screamed through his teeth. Finding it pointless to continue hiding, he left his hiding place to join Curie, "Hey guys, what's going on? Wow, look at. All. These. Books. It's like a library in he- nevermind…"

Arty jumped to his feet. His chair clattered over behind him, "Wha-... Midas? Curie?" he wiped his eyes with his sleeves quickly, "No… nothing's wrong."

His partner didn't so much as move. Roland just sat still, "We were attacked in the Emerald Forest by members of the Grimm Brotherhood not even a month ago."

Arty spun around and gave a ' _what the hell, man?_ ' look to Roland before returning to his friends, "No, we weren't. Roland's just exaggerating," he moved forward and began herding Midas and Curie towards the door, "Nothing like that happened. _Ever_."

"We were attacked by an operative named Oro. She nearly killed me with a weapon that she claimed was designed to kill people, not Grimm. Arty saved my life, but he's still freaked out about what happened," Roland stood up from his seat and faced Arty, Midas, and Curie. His tail hooked up at the end as if on guard, "You need your little link from home, right? Well here it is."

"Roland, shut up!" Arty demanded.

"Shouldn't they know about what's tearing you up? Shouldn't you at least try and fix the problem at hand? You didn't seem to have any trouble doing that with the Nova Dust against Oro and her goons. You didn't seem to have any trouble doing that against the Trex. You weren't opposed to using an unstable fusion between Fire and Electric Dust to save us."

Arty went to lunge at Roland, but Curie caught him by the arm. He turned to look her in her neon green eyes.

"Arty?..." she sounded half in awe, half scared out of her wits, "You… you killed a _Trex_?"

"And took on the _Grimm Brotherhood_?!" Midas grinned, "That's _awesome,_ dude! Looks like you're following in your dad's footsteps after all!"

The painter looked to his best friend in shock, "What do you mean?..."

"You're dad's been dealing with the Grimm Brotherhood all across Atlas and the surrounding ocean," Curie explained, "It's because of his work we know they're not just some… _cult_. They're organized. Whatever they were doing here in Vale-"

"You _thwarted_ it, dude!" Midas clapped an arm around Arty's shoulders and shook him about, "Whatever they were trying to do, you obviously threw a monkey wrench in their little operation by killing off their big lizard!"

"You're only a _first_ year, too…" Curie shook her head, "Arty… that's _incredible_! It's like… It's like… you did this _insanely_ overpowered Element Synthesis and used an Overcharge ability to power-up a Huntsman card to-"

"Curie, you're nerding out again." Midas chuckled.

Curie's face flushed when she realized how much she was rambling, "Oh… sorry. I was playing a lot of ' _Huntsmen's Requiem'_ on the flight over here…"

As Midas and Curie laughed everything off, Arty couldn't help but find it unbelievable that they were… _okay_ with what they'd just been told. He wanted to keep the whole Oro thing a secret from them, at least until he could come to terms with what happened. He glared back at Roland, who just looked back seemingly proud of himself for what he did.

"You only did what a Huntsman would do, Arty. Quit beating yourself up," Roland crossed his arms. A light blinked on the scroll that he held up for Arty to see, "Oh, and Sepia texted me. Her best friend Opal just showed up and she wants to spar with her, so I have to watch. Timbre is there too. Why don't you bring your friends along to show them the training rooms? They're going to be using them for the semester, so they should probably know where they are and how they work. Let's go and grab our weapons too. Never know who else might want to spar."

Arty wanted to yell at his partner. Right after he was told to leave things alone for a while, he goes and tells Midas and Curie everything.

Curie tugged at his sleeve, "C'mon, Umber. I want to see how much you've been training with Palette," she began dragging him towards the door, "I'm _sure_ there are some improvements I could make to it if I see it in action now that you've had some proper Huntsman training."

"It seems pretty good as is. It didn't explode when he essentially blew up a star inside of it. A few of our upperclassmen told me that the Nova Dust has a similar energy output to… well, a supernova. That doesn't mean anything to me, though. Doesn't really matter since it made short work of the Trex," the cowboy clasped his partner's shoulder. Hopefully seeing Midas and Curie's reactions would help Arty feel a little more at peace.

It didn't.

* * *

Crisp white panels stretched upwards against the wall. The ceiling was coated by the same panels, each beginning to glow hues of red, orange, green, and blue. Beside the nearly seamless door of the sprawling room was a single holographic panel with three icons: a cactus with a snowflake, a split sun and moon, and a raincloud.

The boy in grey and green, Epazote, tapped at the panel. With each press of an icon, the room shifted between a freezing desert in the dead of night, an arid rain forest at sunset, and a windy valley at sunrise, "No way! You can simulate biomes with this system? Time of day?! Weather?!"

Cayenne laughed as she watched her boyfriend geek out, "We don't have anything like this back home in Mistral… as you can probably tell."

"Yep," Timbre walked over, proud to show off one of Beacon Academy's advanced training rooms, "You can simulate anything you want to here. Arty likes to go a bit… crazy when we train. Making things like a frozen tundra in some intense heat, stormy oceans full of rock pillars. One time he set up a simulation of a city inhabited by nothing but talking chickens. I tell you… the imagination on our leader…"

"Crikey…" Opal mused as she examined the console, "Back home they just have all of these dirt pits with rock formations dug out around the school for us ta fight in. They're well made, don' get me wrong, but they're nowhere _near_ as versatile as this!"

With the biomes menu still pulled up, Epazote poked the option for the presets. Sure enough, there was one labeled 'Cluckville'. Naturally, he went to work throwing together something that would top it, "How about… active lava field-"

"Yes, give me that lava, babe!" Cayenne's smile far surpassed the cat-like grin that Alice could pull off, "Give me a good beat, and I'll be rocking around that lava field until the sun goes down!"

"Thought you'd like that," he stifled a smile, "So, lava field… meets chicken tornado at…"

He wasn't able to finish creating the preset before Sepia ran up from behind and set the time to 12:00pm. With that done, she went on and typed in the title for the preset, being "My Next Film". With a finger stretched high to the sky, she made a show of going to press the activation button.

While Cayenne revelled in the idea of burning cyclones, Opal and Timbre both lunged for the panel.

"Sepia! _NO!_ " They yelled in unison.

* * *

"Yeah, the training rooms here are pretty much the same as the ones back in Atlas," Arty explained to Midas and Curie as they walked down the hall. As much as he wanted to scold his partner, he forced himself to ignore his very existence for the time being, "Only real difference is that Beacon is _way_ more lax with what you can do. Pretty much _any_ battlefield you can think of, you can make. Like… hot tundras, raging oceans," he opened the door that Sepia had told them to meet at. As soon as the door was opened, simulated ash and fire blew past them in a fierce gale. Screams and chicken clucks could barely be heard over the roar of the two cyclones in the lava field that had appeared in the middle of the room. " _Or burning tornadoes full of chickens?!"_

Curie had to physically hold her glasses to her face to avoid having them fly away " _I liked the idea of having a bit more freedom with training room setups, but I'm starting to see why Atlas has such strict limitations!_ "

.

Timbre had to make a split second action as Sepia started the new room layout. With a quick flick of her wrist, she latched onto the base of the panel with a well-placed wire right as the storm flung the other four backwards, throwing them around inside the cyclones. The force felt like it would rip her arms from their sockets, but she slowly inched her way towards the panel. As soon as she got close enough, she slammed her hand down on the glowing screen. The burning chicken storm finally died and disappeared as the room cleaned itself.

"You know, I don't think ours has a chicken setting…" said Midas. He peered over the scene in disbelief. A bed of chaos had become a blank white room with five students sprinkled about, "Arty, bro, was that one of your ideas?"

"As much as I'd love to take credit… no, it wasn't." Arty stepped into the room, "Yo! Timbre! Sepia! You okay?!"

Timbre, her head still spinning, sat up and gave him a thumbs up, her wire still trailing from her wrist. "P-P-Peachy…" She covered her mouth as nausea took her over. Falling onto her back was the only thing preventing her from vomiting.

One of Remnant's simplest gestures was given from a facedown Sepia: a thumbs up. It took a bit of effort, but she managed to peel herself off the floor. Her eyes lit up when she saw Roland poke his head in.

"No way! It's so good to see you!" Roland darted past Arty, Curie, and Midas. Arms outstretched, he ran straight for Sepia.

 _Wow, he must be in a good mood!_ she thought with her arms also outstretched. Her slender arms went in for the hug, but only grasped air. Sepia's boyfriend, the only one that she had _ever_ had, ran right by her.

Instead of Sepia, Roland's arms wrapped around Epazote. He hoisted Haven's biggest geek high in the air and gave him a hearty squeeze, "Epa! Dude, I totally forgot you guys were coming! I was too wrapped up dealing with the explosion!"

"Yeah… we saw the aftermath…" he felt the breath being literally squeezed from his lungs. "You _really_ did a good job cleaning it all up…"

A few moments went by before Roland release Epazote from his bearhug, and the two of them went on laughing.

"It feels like it's been forever, Epa. How's Mom? Has she gotten at least semi-back to normal? What about Sanctum and Haven? Cayenne?" Roland adjusted his hat without even thinking. Once she came to mind, it was hard to keep his hands from fixing it.

"Well, mom's been fine. Haven's same old same old and Cayenne… well…" he glanced over Roland's shoulder, "she's been… fine."

"More than fine after that fire-chicken tornado!" Cayenne latched onto Roland from behind and hoisted up like he did her boyfriend only moments before. Though the fire and lava was gone, fire still burned in her deep crimson eyes.

"That… was… _awesome_ …" Opal laughed as she pried herself off the ground, "That fire was so _realistic_!"

"That's probably because it… _was_ real Opal…" Timbre reached up and pinched her own black locks. "Your uh… hair's on fire."

Opal looked up, barely able to catch the glow of a flame burning in her red-brown hair. "Oh…" with a quick lick of her fingers and a pinch, she snuffed the fire out, "No biggie. Ya can't live in Vacuo if ya can't take a little heat!"

"Yeah," Arty walked up to the holographic panel, "everything in here's simulated perfectly using Dust. Whatever can't be made with Dust, like those chickens, are put into the scene using projectors. Makes the training all the more… meaningful, I guess," he turned and looked at the girl whose hair was still charred and smoking. She looked ready to hit the desert in her khaki attire, but the cyan blue flip-flops made him think she was ready to hit the beach, "Um… I'm sorry. You are?..."

She smiled and held out her hand… the one she previously slobbered over to put out her burning hair, "I'm Opal Uluru. I'm Sepia's best friend from back 'ome in Vacuo! An' you must be Arty Umba!"

Arty hesitantly shook her hand, "Oh, so _you're_ the Opal that Sepia goes on about non-stop all the time. Well it's a pleasure to meet you."

Epazote leaned over into the conversation, "Um… Hi. Not meaning to interrupt but, I'm Epazote Elderflower, and this is Cayenne Canella. We're Roland's best friends from Mistral," he said, using Opal's previous comment and ad-libbing his information in place of hers, "Roland's told us tons about you guys, too!"

Arty wiped his hand on his jeans before greeting the two, "Wow. So many new people. I feel like I'm at orientation all over again!"

"While we're in the mood for introductions…" Curie stepped into the room, her calm, almost automatic movements back instead of the panicking mode from the tornadoes. "I'm Curie Geiger, and Goldilocks here is Mi-"

"Midas Ankara," He zoomed past her, keeping his eyes on Cayenne and Opal, "It's a," he slicked his hair back and flashed a smile, "pleasure to meet you," he took a hand from each of the girls and gave both a quick peck on the back of their hands.

"Sorry, I'm spoken for," Cayenne quickly pulled her hand away and used it to pinch Epazote's cheek, her eyes locked on Midas.

"Ditto, mate," Opal laughed, "But I like your style! Abrasive, yet suave…"

"Aw man…" he slouched forwards, "First Curie pulls me away from two babes, now two more are shooting me down. But…" he sauntered over to Timbre and leaned up against the wall, "Hey, how's it going? Now that it seems you don't have to do anything with those streamers…"

Timbre looked over to her team and mouthed the words ' _help me'_.

' _I mean, we came here so Opal and I could fight, and I can't exactly initiate that very easily…'_ Sepia signed over to Timbre. For a moment, she thought about the lime-green children that might come about from a union between Timbre and Midas. That didn't sit well with her.

"Oh yeah, Opal and Sepia were coming here to spar against one another, but… since there's nine of us here now..." Timbre quickly pushed away from the wall and away from Midas.

"Say what now?" Midas's forehead scrunched up.

Opal began clapping her hands, "Oooh! I would _love_ ta fight tha power couple of Team ARTS!" She jogged over and bumped up against Sepia, "Whaddya say? Can I fight you an' your boyfriend?"

"Hey now, if anyone's the power couple, it's Arty and Timbre," Roland put a hand on Sepia's shoulder, a smile across his face. He looked between her and Opal, "I think a more accurate term for Sepia and I would be the troublemaking couple, or just Screenplay if you're into silly team attack… slash couple names."

The frustration that Sepia was feeling towards the cowboy began to fade. If there was one thing that they bonded over, it was fighting together. Seeing that he took value in that like she did warmed her heart, ' _Two on one is hardly fair. Why not get your best friend in on the action, too?'_

A few seconds passed before Roland realized that neither Opal nor Epazote knew sign language. It had become second-nature to him already, "She says that Epazote should join the brawl. You up for it, man? I've chatted with Opal a bit, and I think her fighting style would compliment yours."

Epazote didn't know how to respond. He'd just gotten to Vale and Roland was wanting him to fight? "Uhhhh…" He was suddenly shoved towards Opal.

"C'mon, Epa. Don't be such a wuss!" Cayenne giggled, "You'll do great!"

"Yeah!" Opal flung an arm around Epazote's shoulders, "It's gonna be _very_ interestin'. Roland an' Sepia against their best friends? It's gonna be quite the circus out here in a minute."

Epazote pushed his glasses back up, "R-right… um… so, I guess first thing's first, we should know about each other's weapons and Sembla-"

" _No time!_ " Opal held Epazote closer to her side as she drew a teal boomerang from the strap on the back of her jacket and pointed it at Roland and Sepia, "It's time ta rumble!"

"But we have plenty of ti-"

" _NO TIME!_ "

"So who rubbed off on who?" Roland nudged Sepia's arm.

After some thought, Sepia came to the simplest conclusion, ' _We rubbed off on each other.'_

"Makes sense," he began clacking away at Writer's Block. The clicks of each of the keys was swiftly overtaken by the ding of the reel resetting itself. Soon thereafter, the dings became a singular, shrill ring. Once they stopped, a good chunk of the novel _Days of Our Nights_ was typed out. After stopping by the library, that was about the only piece that came to mind, "Hey! Arty! What form should I use?"

"I don't know… something basic I guess?" he looked over to Epazote and Opal, "I don't know what they can do, so I can't be much help strategizing here…" Disinterest laced his voice.

"Hmm…" Roland looked over the strip of paper, "A lance would be great, but…" the paper and ink contorted into a double-bladed axe that extended about three feet in front of him. He left the new weapon on the reel and raised it up, "an axe would suit me better. You ready, Moviemaker?"

Camera-guns raised, she nodded. One was aimed at Epazote, the other at Opal. No way was she going easy on them.

Timbre recognized the look on Arty's face. It was the same one he had the days following the attack in the Emerald Forest. He was mulling things over and beating himself up really hard over everything. Trying to lighten his mood, she nudged his arm. When he looked over, she gestured to the holographic control panel, "Why don't you put that artistic mind of yours to work and make something fun for them?" she smiled, "I'm curious if they'll even be able to beat each other up in whatever crazy thing you come up with."

Without a word, Arty nodded and made his way across the field. He tapped a few options, moved a couple of sliders around, and, of course, set the color pallet. After the semester of freedom with the familiar system, he'd become a pro at moving through the options and making interesting battlefields.

"Okay. Let's try this on for size." he tapped the large green button at the bottom, initiating the room's transformation.

The floor panels began to glow green and white, releasing mounds of dirt, grass and rock into the room before strong currents of air forced them upwards, causing them to hover as they built up larger and larger. As they developed, more plant life such as trees and shrubs began to form on their flattened tops. When the mounds stopped growing, the glowing panels moved aside, creating a rectangular pit in the center of the room. A new blue glow edged the rim of the pit as water began pouring into it, filling it up until it resembled a large swimming pool.

"Woah… lucky break..." Epazote said looking up at the scene before him. To his side, Opal was bouncing giddily.

Floating islands dotted the room as strong gales of wind kept them aloft. For some of the students, it was reminiscent of Remnant's shattered moon in a way.

"Saw something like this in the last Vytal Festival Tournament. Thought I'd try to recreate it," Arty said as he walked around the edge of the pool, behind Roland and Sepia. "Have fun, you guys."

While he added the detail of the water pool to spite Roland, he felt worried about Sepia. He remembered the useless clicking of her guns after getting soaked in the creek during their encounter with Oro. He just hoped her mobility would keep her out of any situation that would ruin the reels of ammo in her guns. Despite that, he took the opportunity to show off what he could do with the training system. He wanted to make a good impression on Roland and Sepia's friends. Roland may have immediately gone against what he said, but he didn't want to take it out on anybody else.

Epazote took off his hiking backpack and placed it on the ground.

"Let's see whatcha got there, mate!" Opal said as she watched him unzip his bag.

From his pack, Epazote produced a basketball-sized bronze sphere. On its curve was a flattened circular panel with three large green buttons arranged in a triangle. He put the pack on his back and held the ball under his arm, smiling confidently to Opal, "I got a weapon."

Opal tilted her head to the side as she examined the 'weapon', "Right… I guess I just 'ave ta trust ya on that for now."

The water was going to make things difficult, but, with Sepia, there might have been a way around it. He had to put a little faith in her for it to work. Fingers worked over the grenades on his belt and stopped on one without a fuse, "Here," he passed it off to her, "You know what to do. I'll say when."

 _Got it,_ she shoved the plastic ball of ink into her bustle.

"Ready!" Roland gave the other pair a thumbs up. _I'm gonna kill him for the water..._

A large holographic circle appeared high above them in the center of the room. Numbers flashed within it, counting down from ten.

.

Curie watched intently on the four combatants as she mentally counted down along with the numbers, "This should be interesting."

Midas rolled his eyes, "Always with the analyzing. Why can't you just sit and enjoy watching people pummel the hell out of each other!?"

"I like to know what people can do, Midas. Fighting is more than just 'pummelling the hell out of each other.'"

A loud buzzer rang out as the numbers flashed out of existence. Roland, Sepia, Epazote, and Opal all launched themselves into the winds, floating lazily towards the islands.

Opal and Epazote were the first to touch down on the largest of the islands closest to the water. Jumping from rock to rock, Opal noticed Epazote was holding a long bladed polearm, the same bronze and green colors as the metal basketball he was holding just moments before.

"Oi!" she yelled over the howling wind, "Where'd ya toy go?"

Epazote spun the bladed spear in a fast twirling motion, "This _is_ my toy," he said with a cocky grin, "I would have told you had you not cut me off when I wanted to talk methodology."

"Okay, okay. I get it!" Opal laughed, "I shoulda listened!" Her flip-flops clacked loudly as she backflipped onto the highest island, "I guess I was just too excited ta fight with my bestie!"

As she landed, she threw her boomerang, launching it to the other side of her current platform. Right as it reached the other side, it clocked Roland right in the face, launching him backwards through the air.

 _Roland!_ Sepia shouted internally as she watched him fall past her. Her concern had to be cut short as she noticed the sudden addition of a familiar whipping noise to the howls. She just managed to twirl to the side, letting the wind blow her upwards out of the way of the loud shotgun blast that emanated from Opal's boomerang.

The force of the blast changed the weapon's trajectory. With a quick raise of her hand, Opal snatched it out of the air as she walked nonchalantly towards her friendly rivals. "Sorry there, Sepia! Didna mean ta smash your boyfriend's face in!"

"Shotgun-Boomerang. Nice." Epazote said as he walked up to Opal's side.

"It comes in handy."

Sepia's mind was left at ease once she saw a black dot pass by in the corner of her eye. Her landing on a smaller island was rough, but she recovered quickly. Instead of raising her guns and firing, she pointed at Opal's feet, _I'm guessing Team STON isn't known for their situational awareness, huh?_

Opal followed Sepia's finger. On the ground, between her bright blue footwear, a black orb sat in the grass, "What the?..."

"Oh crap!" Epazote yelled as he ducked and dived to a lower island. He'd seen similar objects before and he knew to get well away from it.

As the spray of ink hit her, Opal remembered that she had only seen Roland's Semblance in action a handful of times, and almost all of those times he was simply making a pen float thanks to the CCT. Her mental image of Inkheart was shattered as the black coating on her jacket forced her sideways, slamming her into a nearby tree.

The cowboy landed next to Sepia, "No hard feelings, right?" he asked while flicking his wrist. Each flick sent her smacking against the tree once more. Not wanting to be too mean, he made sure to keep the impacts relatively soft, but enough to still throw her off.

Sepia giggled as she watched Roland toy with Opal. She slowly turned her head to the other side of the island. Her eyes widened as she made the split-second decision to tackle Roland to the ground just as three pulses of green light flew right over their heads.

Opal stood up, her ink-induced joyride now over. She grumbled as she held her head. Nearby, Roland and Sepia were struggling to get up as a barrage of green projectiles were fired at them, kicking up dirt and smoke as they hit the ground. She saw her sparring partner further away, and saw the source of the onslaught as Roland and Sepia leapt around to the smaller platforms overhead. "How many more surprises you got there, mate?"

Epazote put a pause on his attack and held up his left arm, which was encased in a bronze capsule from the elbow down. On the end was a large gun barrel, glowing with the same green energy that was being fired at Roland and Sepia, "Eh, a couple."

.

Back on the ground, Curie watched in amazement. Weapons, or rather, technology in general, was her forte, and Epazote's was one of the most creative things she'd seen in a while, "Woah… a condensed metal framework that rearranges into widely varying weapon forms with the press of a button… a polearm and an arm-mounted plasma cannon? It must've taken _forever_ to figure out how to configure the parts to form each weapon and still be able to condense into a sphere..." she shook her head in disbelief, "And here I thought Khimera Léon's weapon was the peak of transforming weapon technology," she rubbed her hands together as she watched the four combatants going back and forth, throwing kicks, punches, and bullets at each other. "I gotta get my hands on that at some point…"

Midas narrowed his eyes at her, "Curie… three things. One, you're _way_ too into weapons. You need to learn how to appreciate the simpler ones too." he patted the scabbard at his side, "Two, you think too much. And three, nobody cares about dumb ol' General Léon's daughter's stupid weapon."

"Hey, I'm _constantly_ using what I see to improve Alternator. You may not like Khimera, but her weapon influenced quite a few changes to version 3.7. I'm also taking this opportunity to get together some ideas for version 3.8, so buzz off."

Arty laughed when he heard the version number Curie had reached, "You're all the way up to 3.7 now? When I left, you were only on 2.3!"

Curie shrugged, "Let's just say that 2.3 was nowhere _near_ developed enough for full-on Atlas military training… so I had to make a _lot_ of fast adjustments over the course of the semester…"

Cayenne giggled, "Oh, you guys just wait. You think Epazote's weapon is cool now, you haven't even seen all he can do with Archimalter, yet."

.

Roland used the flat of his axe to give him and Sepia a little cover to talk. Pulses of green light exploded against the weapon, causing Roland to wince and grimace. A boomerang and Archimalter. If he could get close to Epazote, there wouldn't be much of an issue. While he had his fair share of losses against Epazote, he knew how the nerd fought.

"Your Semblance. Opal knows it, but I don't think Epazote quite gets it. Think you can use it so I can get in close? Then you take on Opal, and we'll give cover to one another. If one of our weapons gets wet, we use Screenplay. Sound like a plan?" he ducked to avoid one of Epazote's blasts.

A couple of orbs appeared behind her. Her golden eyes glowed with brilliant white-gold light. Even when blinded, she always had that crazy, perceptive look in her eyes. They were on the same page. _Just as long as you have a plan this time, I'm happy._

With that kind of enthusiasm, even Roland couldn't help but smile, "Nice. Thanks, Moviemaker."

A quick gift of a peck on his cheek, and she was off. Guns raised, she began firing down on Epazote, her video-orbs circling over her head like a halo.

Opal watched as Sepia floated through the air with her mini-armada circling her head. _Poor thing_ , she thought as she watched Epazote switch his weapon back to the polearm in order to deflect the rain of bullets coming down on him, _pro'ly doesn' even know 'bout her Semblance_. She turned to face Roland as he dashed forward, axe raised, _kinda like me with his Inkheart_.

"Not so fast, cowboy." To counter Roland's advance on Epazote, she threw her boomerang in an arc around him. She pulled a small grey box out of her pocket and pressed the bright red button sticking out of its center.

As the boomerang reached the apex of its curve, it fired a blast at Roland's head.

"Alright, change in plans…" Roland blocked the shot with the flat of his axe, "Sepia! Take Epazote! I've got Opal!"

She whistled in response. On her end of the battle, she danced around Epazote with her guns blazing. Orbs flew around the two of them, and it seemed that the only reason that Epazote wasn't on the ground was that his weapon had become a pair of dome-shaped shields. Bullets clanged off the metallic surfaces over and over again.

"Ya trust that guy with ya girl?" said Opal. The boomerang zipped through the battlefield. A puff of dirt came out from the furrows of the weapon when it struck the palm of her hand, "Ya know, a lotta guys had their eyes on her at Shade, and that's a gal that likes tha spotlight!"

"Yeah, I learned about that," Roland landed in front of Opal and raised his axe. He brought it down, the blade falling into the bend of her boomerang. With her weapon held overhead, neither of them were getting anywhere, "Funny thing, though. If you want to impress the girl, then you've got to get into the spotlight with her. You've gotta share in her brand of chaos," he leaned against the paper axe in hopes that his opponent would break first, "She told me that the guys at Shade didn't quite get that."

"Yeah, nobody really could understand her… _vision_. I always liked to think I could see things the same way, but she's always a bit full of surprises."

To Roland's surprise, she dropped, but not as to give up their little makeshift blade-lock. As she lay flat on her back in the grass, Roland had no support to keep him on his feet. Gravity and his own momentum sent him falling forwards. He felt her flip-flops rest against his stomach.

"Sorry, mate." With a forceful kick, she sent Roland soaring overhead.

Dazed, disoriented, and confused, he floated up farther and farther still. Then the shotgun blasts came. The boomerang was coming in fast, "Not this time!" he shouted.

Writer's Block's paper cutter sliced off the axe. He snatched it out of the air and swung it towards Opal's weapon like a fan. The moment they connected, the paper wrapped around her weapon, but things didn't quite go as planned after that. With one end of the boomerang dug into the paper axe, the other was pointed right at his chest. Three rapid shots to the sternum sent Roland flying into the wall.

"Sorry, Sepia, but it looks like I took Roland outta this fight." She looked back and winked at her friend.

Sepia rolled her eyes, _Figured… He's too head-strong to fend of someone like Opal._

As usual, the peace in her mind wasn't reflected on the battlefield. She flew around Epazote, letting loose with an endless barrage of bullets. Something needed to give before she ran out of ammo.

The loud pinging from the bullets connecting with his shields was making Epazote feel like he was going deaf, "Opal! A little help over here!?"

Opal flopped down onto the ground and crossed her legs, "Sorry, mate. I did my part. Kinda want ta sit back an' see how you handle her."

"What?!" He suddenly had to jump backwards as Sepia made a dash for the gap between his shields. After a few seconds of the bronze metal shifting, Epazote was back to his trusty polearm. It was the only way he could stay on the move and deflect Sepia's rapid fire. _I gotta do something… anything…_ He allowed himself to glance over at Opal, who just sat twiddling a blade of grass between her fingers.

The idea hit Epazote like a lightning bolt.

"Grass… Trees..." Arty's words echoed in his head. _Everything in here's simulated perfectly using Dust. Makes the training all the more… meaningful, I guess_. Epazote watched as Sepia zipped around the island, making sure that she didn't stay in one spot for too long. What was disconcerting was that she got closer with each fluid motion. If he was going to act, he needed to act fast. "Please let me be right," he muttered as he aimed his arm towards the tree behind Opal.

Opal felt the ground beneath her begin to rumble. "Wha' the?..." She turned back just in time to see the tree unrooting itself from the ground and begin looming over her as it fell between her battle partner and Sepia. She rolled out of the way right before it would have crushed her. "Oi, what's goin' on?!"

"Sorry, Opal. Just needed to get the cannons ready." Epazote moved his arm over the fallen tree towards Sepia. As he flayed out his fingers, the tree's branches fell under his control. The wooden appendages grew rapidly, shooting outwards towards Sepia. " _Salix babylonica_ , or your regular old weeping willow. For a while I thought the plants in here would be fake, but I decided to try this anyways. And let me just say that I'm glad I did! Just a warning, but you should know that willow branches make _excellent_ projectiles."

.

"He can control _plants_?!" Arty was awestruck. He'd seen some crazy Semblances, mostly from his own team, but he'd never heard of somebody controlling plant matter before.

Cayenne giggled, "I was hoping he'd do something like that during this fight! You should have seen his face when he saw that you made a battlefield with trees. He about looked like a kid at Satsuma's Sweets! Guess he's just been holding out on using it until things got hairy!"

Timbre and the Atlesian students looked at her quizzically.

"It's… it's a big candy store back home. Sorry. I'm not used to being around so many people that aren't from Mistral…"

.

The branches closed around Sepia's position, or, rather, the position that she would have been in. Between the rush of bark and leaves, the side conversation, and the rushing of water below, the director had disappeared. All that was left was the fading glass shards of her orbs.

Epazote was hoping that his Semblance would be his trump card, but he wasn't expecting it to make Sepia just give up upon seeing a tree fall over and getting attacked by its branches.

.

Midas laughed at the sight unfolding before him. " _Woah!_ I'm pretty sure I said this already, but in case I haven't, I _really_ like your team Arty!"

Arty watched Sepia's show, "Yeah, when you have an agent of chaos as a fighting partner, you kinda gotta get used to stuff like this."

Timbre shot to her feet and cheered, "Woohoo! Go Sepia!"

.

Slender fingers dug into the dirt underneath the island. Sepia hung out of reach of Epazote's new pet with one hand. Her other hand clutched Garde, one of her weapons, in its whip form. Film and bullet brushed against the surface of the water, then were sent up around the island. A tug told her that it had wrapped around something solid.

Garde's reels began retrieving the whip, sending Sepia rocketing around the underside of the island. After swinging in a wide arc back above the island, Epazote's back came into view. If only she could have spoken, then she might have been able to apologize for the utter butt-whooping that she had planned for him. Avant was drawn out from her bustle, Garde shifted back into its gun form, and she reigned down lead against the poor guy's back. Not wanting to hurt him too bad, she decided that zipping forwards and kicking him into the water was the best option.

.

Epazote yelled as he fell through the air, the gusts of wind stinging his eyes. He landed with a painful slap as he belly-flopped into the water.

The spectators all winced as they watched him slowly sink downwards before surfacing.

"That couldn't have felt good…" Arty said as Cayenne went to help Epazote out of the pool. He watched curiously as Cayenne rubbed her hands together. Before his eyes, flames sprouted from her palms.

"There you go, Epa. Don't want you catching a cold now do we?" She laughed as she hovered her hands around Epazote's body, slowly drying off his clothes and hair.

"I could've just… gotten a towel somewhere. We're going to have to change for the ceremony anyways..." he snorted, "If I didn't know you any better, I'd say you just wanted to show off your Semblance."

Cayenne looked over her shoulder to the students watching her act as the human space heater, "Aw, you know me too well, Epa," she turned and wiggled her burning fingers, doing a small twirl to show off her flames, "Yeah… it's more than a matter of just _liking_ fire."

She held her hands up and snapped her fingers, shooting quick plumes of fire from her hands, "It's kind of a part of my soul… literally."

"Well that explains why she was so excited for the fire-nados…" Timbre said, shaking her head, "I love seeing what other people can end up doing with their Semblances. It's the best way to learn about each other's true natures after all."

"So what can you do, Timbre?" Curie asked, ever eager to get her hands on as much information as possible.

Timbre stammered, but lucky enough for her, Arty interjected with a quick observation.

"Did it… just get _way_ too quiet in here?..." He pointed up to the center island at the top of the training room. "I mean, Opal and Sepia are still fighting, aren't they?"

.

 _Yeah we are,_ Sepia turned towards Opal with her guns raised.

Opal flipped her boomerang, holding its open end towards her friend. She smirked as she held up her fob, ready to fire. "Looks like we're in an ol' fashioned standoff, eh?"

Sepia tilted her head to the side. She'd always been a fan of westerns, and that was only amplified when she got to Beacon.

Seconds felt like hours as they stood, their guns aimed at each others' faces. As if it were all planned, both lowered their guns and fell into a fit of laughter.

They jogged over and met each other in the middle of the island. They wrapped their arms around each other and swung each other in circles as they giggled.

"You've gotten _much_ betta, Sepia! I can't believe the girl that used to need wires to perform big jumps just did all that!"

Sepia went stiff at the mention of wires. Her fingers curled around her choker, exposing the twisted scar around her neck.

Opal realized what she said and slowly let Sepia down. "Oi… Sepia… I didn'-"

Sepia put away her guns and began typing out a message on her scroll. Once done, she held it up in a fit of silent laughter, ' _I'm kidding! I got over it a long time ago! I'm just playing around!'_

Opal joined in as she read the message.

"Hey!" Epazote called up, "Are you guys gonna just laugh all day or are you gonna keep fighting?"

"Nah! You guys can end the simulation! I ain't got the heart to shoot this gal!" she put away her boomerang. She, along with Sepia, jumped down from the floating island.

"Well that was certainly… interesting." Arty said as he looked over his battlefield, "You two certainly got some moves! And your weapons are just incredible! I don't think I've seen anything like them… except for maybe the Rhea sisters with all the… floating laser orbs and razor rings."

Curie honed in on the conversation, "Did you say floating laser orbs and razor rings? If there's one thing I love more than shifting mechanisms in weapons it's the concept of floating weapons."

Midas put a hand on her shoulder "Calm down there, home girl. One thing at a time. I think we still got another fight to get through."

Curie nodded, "Oh yeah, that's right," she began pulling small metal objects from her pockets and hoodie, each seeming to be made up of a mess of wires, metal framing, and copper. To top it all off, there was one object that looked similar to a tesla coil. She began folding and connecting them together into one long cylindrical object. She held it at one end by the handle, opposite from the coil at the end.

The non-Atlesian students looked on with shock.

"Curie," Timbre stood pointing at the blunt weapon in her hand as it sparked with electricity, "What exactly, _is_ that?"

"This, Ms. Forté, is Alternator version 3.7. My custom reconfigurable tesla-bat/tesla-gun combined weapon. Each part can be removed and rearranged. It runs off of high-capacity batteries that can be taken out and used as makeshift energy sources for my team…" she looked over to Midas, "or a stun-gun if need be."

"You've definitely made a lot of improvements since I saw it last!" Arty said as he looked over the weapon, "But… um… why are you showing everyone this?" he chuckled, "Just wanna show off or what?"

Curie raised an eyebrow, "I thought I told you earlier, Umber," she lowered the bat, aiming the sparking coil at his face before giving a barely noticeable smile, "I wanted to see what you can do with Palette now."


	31. V2Ch3: Electroplating

"Dibs on making the battlefield," Roland straightened his hat in his approach to the console. Violet eyes burned with cool hatred, every ounce of which was directed at his partner. Arty wanted to make an environment that hindered his already limited mobility, then he would make Arty's worst nightmare a reality, "I had a bit of an idea out there for you, and I only think it's fair."

Arty glared at his partner, "Yeah. Fine. Go on ahead, Roland."

As Roland typed away on the command console, Timbre couldn't help but feel unsettled by the obvious animosity between the two. She made a mental note to drill them about what they talked about after they walked off.

"Oh, I will. I happily will," Roland took one last glance at Arty's specially designed floating oasis of hell, then selected 'Clear All' on the control panel. The gusts of winds ceased, the floating islands fell into the water, and the panels on the floor opened up to swallow it all up like a giant trash compactor.

Epazote's lip quivered as he watched the tree he had used against Sepia fall into the pit and get crunched to pieces, "M-m-my weeping willow…"

Cayenne patted his shoulder, "You'll live, Epa."

"Yeah, well _it_ won't…" he mumbled.

"Okay, let's see..." Roland poked at a few options, "I'm no artist like Arty, but I am a writer. I know how to put people through terrible things… that's what a story is, usually," but one rule he knew was that it's best to keep things simple. Focus on the stress that one thing alone can bring, "Hey, Timbre, Midas, join in. It'd be best for the plot I've got going in my brain."

Timbre held up her hands, "Oh… no. I'm okay. Really. I'd feel bad for fighting you guys…"

Midas leaned over towards Timbre. The layer of cheap cologne was enough to make her gag, but his wink was what nearly made her puke, "Aww, don't worry, I'll go easy on you."

She had only known Midas for a little over two hours, and he had already cemented himself in her mind as an absolute creep. "Okay, yeah. I'm in," Timbre said quickly, whipping her arms down to activate her gloves.

"Wonderful…" Roland pressed the activation button. Instead of some kind of extravagant display of nature's beauty, slender pillars of steel rebar shot up from the floor and into the ceiling. With just about three feet between each bar, it would be difficult to get a shot in on an opponent. That wasn't the end of Roland's steel prison, though. More rebar shot out from the walls, forming five separate checkerboards going upwards, each spaced eight feet above the other.

"Roland…" Arty said glaring at the bar maze, "what _is_ this?"

"Looks like fun to me." Curie said, fixing her glasses again.

"It was going to be bamboo, but then I heard Curie mention the batteries. I thought steel would be more fitting," Roland gestured over to Timbre, "and I thought you'd love the monkey bars, T."

"Aww…" Timbre said with mock appreciation, " _Thank_ you, Roland. That's… so sweet…"

"It's my pleasure. After last semester, it's the least I can do. You really saved my butt. Well, you, Sepia, and Arty," Roland leaned up against a wall with his arms crossed.

Sepia looked between him and Arty, ' _Okay, what's going on?'_

"Oh, nothing, babe! Just being the _good_ friend that I am! I mean, I gave Curie some metal, I gave Timbre some monkey bars, and I even gave Arty that urban atmosphere that he loves so much!" his sick grin grew, "Just watch where you're shooting, man! One inch to the right or left, and you might blow one of us to smithereens!"

Arty nodded, "Okay, then." He retrieved Palette and threw his backpack over to the side, where the spectators would sit. "Let's do this, then." He said, smiling to Midas and Curie.

"Bring it _ooooon_!" Midas roared as he leapt into Roland's battlefield.

"See you on the inside, Umber." Curie saluted before diving in after Midas.

"Hey," Timbre jogged up beside Arty. She held her gloves out, trying to decide where to launch to first. "What's going on between you two…?"

"He's being a jerk, like usual," he jumped into the maze of bars, "C'mon, let's just try to enjoy ourselves for a little bit."

"Right…" she glanced back at Roland, then back to Arty. After the events of the previous semester, she thought that their problems were over. As always, she was too optimistic.

.

"So, who are you rootin' for?" Opal asked chipperly to Epazote and Cayenne, "I don't know any o' these guys personally, but my Lien's on the girl with the zappy-bat."

"I think I'll put five down on her being the last one standing, then five more on Arty getting knocked out first," Cayenne sat and leaned back on the wall, "I don't know too much about Arty, but I know what Rol does when he's mad. He _really_ likes to screw people over. For example, there was this time that Rol booked some sparring time in the room at Sanctum where we simulate a lava field. It wasn't Rol and Epa fighting, by the way. It was _me_ and Epa. The only reason he did that was because, only a few hours before, Epa had dropped one of his books in a toilet by accident"

Opal winced and chuckled, "Bet that was fun, eh? Considering your girlfriend's little affinity for the burn?" She elbowed Epazote in the shoulder playfully.

"Oh yeah… _lots_ of fun…" Epazote tried to shake away the memories of the intense heat. He felt sunburnt for weeks after that fight.

.

Arty had to wave his arms to keep himself balanced on the horizontal bar. The large sturdy soles of his snow boots were made for being on flat, or at least relatively flat, ground. The thin iron bar was about as far as he could get from that. He grabbed one of the vertical beams, careful not to drop Pallette the twenty or so feet to the ground below.

"You gonna make it, Arty?" Timbre said as she zipped up beside him by a wire. She sat crouched, perfectly balanced in her clunky black combat boots.

Arty was jealous of her honed balance, "Yeah… sure. Just…" he looked down, "not really used to this type of environment."

"Look, if you want me to take you down, it's okay. We don't have to spar in this if you don't want to," she tried to lift his spirits a bit. He never got very upset over his and Roland's quarrels. Even after he got clocked in the face, he had stayed calm, cool, and collected for the most part.

"No, I'll be fine." he looked down to find Roland watching expectantly, chatting occasionally with Sepia, "Just a little tired of this back-and-forth."

What he meant by that, Timbre didn't know.

"Hey!" Midas called out from a few levels below, "We gonna fight or what?! If I'm gonna show Timbre my moves, then I've gotta move, dude!"

"Ack!" she pressed her hand over her mouth, her face turning a tint of green.

Curie reached her weapon over and gave him a light zap, sending a small plume of smoke up from his shoulder, "You give the call, Burne! We're ready when you are!"

The painter took in a deep breath and let it out slowly. He knew he needed to ignore Roland's petty stabs. He was just having a fun sparring match with his friends, both from Atlas and Beacon. As he stood there on the bar, he began to think about how after Sepia and Roland began going out, Timbre was really the member of Team ARTS he'd grown the closest to. He shook the thoughts away when he remembered her yelling at him to get off of his ass the night Oro and the Trex attacked, "Yeah! We're ready!"

The large holographic numbers flashed in the air again and began to slowly countdown from ten.

"We need to talk about this after, Painter," Timbre shot a wire diagonally to a spot a few levels above, but waited to begin her ascent, "I don't want someone screaming at me again because I started snooping."

As the numbers finished counting down, Arty mumbled to himself, "Right… will do."

The four students began jumping and weaving through the metal maze. Bullets, paintballs, and bolts of electricity flew threw the air.

As much as she tried, Timbre just couldn't get enough space to swipe a wire at either Midas or Curie. _Dammit_ , she cursed to herself.

Arty knew the best place for this fight was at the top of the metal box, as close to the ceiling as possible. That way he could separate Midas and Curie and, hopefully, Timbre could handle her own.

Midas watched as his best friend ascended the bars, flipping and fumbling his way to the top.

"You know I can't do that." Curie said to her leader as she shook her head.

"Too many corn chips and too much soda, I know," Midas lunged for a bar overhead. Already well into his ascent, he thought it a safe enough distance away to make one of his famous wise cracks, "When's the last time you stepped on a scale, C? Not including the ones that you reprogramed to make you feel better."

"You _know_ that's not the reason, Goldilocks!" she yelled angrily as she fired a bolt at Timbre, who was sliding through the gaps in the bars, bending and swinging as she made her way towards the center of the cube.

.

Arty panted as he reached the top level, _You made one heck of a jungle gym, Roland…_

"What's wrong, man? Beacon making you flabby?" Midas yanked himself up over the bars with one hand. He stood up between two bars, the crown of his hair brushing the ceiling, "I heard that they're a lot more lax around here when it comes to training."

Arty watched as Midas drew his weapons from the combined scabbard-gun-holster attached to his left hip. After a few fancy twirls, the boy in the solid gold suit held a solid gold sword, and a solid gold flintlock pistol, "Still got ol' Chrysos and Drachma I see. Curie still giving you trouble over having such simple weapons and nothing fancy like… I dunno, _everyone else that's ever had combat training ever_?"

"Hey, the ladies dig the classical weaponry. I've had at least three girls look at me while these puppies were in my hands since I got here," Midas whistled down at Timbre, who cut away from her fight with Curie to glare up at him in disgust, "and now I've made that four! These things work some serious magic, man."

Arty chuckled, "I don't know if I'd call that 'magic', Midas."

"You know what is magic? That look you give Curie when she's not looking!" Midas jumped back onto another pair of bars, "Like that time you hung back in the obstacle course when Curie got so hot that she had to take off that hoodie!"

Arty whipped Pallette towards Midas and fired a string of bright yellow and red paintballs at him, "I told you to never bring that up _ever_ again, dude!"

Yellow and red paint coated the blade of Midas' curved sword. He deflected them without much of an issue, and managed to make it work in his favor. His blade arced with electricity and whipped up a blaze, "You should ask her to prom when it comes around! You've been holding out for Curie for years! On top of that, it's the _perfect_ time in your life to get your groove on with the ladies, or gremlins. Whatever suits your taste."

Arty whipped his gun down, shifting it into a bat. He rushed towards Midas, jumping from bar to bar, and swung downwards at him. His bat was stopped by Midas' blade. They stood eye to eye, pushing against each other, "I'm sure she appreciates you talking about her that way."

"She takes pride in it," Midas held up his pistol with his other hand and angled it at Arty's stomach, "and you love it just the same. Those dull green locks, that neon streak in her hair from what I can only guess is from her energy drink addiction, those giant glasses that fog up when she's flustered. Man, you should've seen the look on your face when she stripped down just a little right then and there! It was like you'd never seen a woman before!"

Arty was launched backwards by the blast from Chrysos. He barely managed to loop his fingers around a bar to prevent himself from tumbling down. He imagined that his bones hitting all the metal on the way down would sound similar to a xylophone. He would've laughed had the idea not been so painful, "Okay. You wanna play dirty with your Semblance? Well, I can play dirty, too!" He knew full well the difference between the average shots from Chrysos and one affected by Midas' Semblance. Arty looked down at the paintball loaded into the center of the bat, "Oh thank god I put some of those in there…" he muttered to himself as he slammed the bat against the bottom of his boots.

"Playing dirty?! I don't know what you me- why are you walking on the ceiling…?" Midas stared up at Arty, who stood upside down above him. He had seen some crazy things before. A giant lion, goat, _and_ snake, blasts of light, and even watching metal rust away into nothingness was all normal for him. Seeing his best friend defy the laws of physics? He wasn't expecting that one.

Arty dashed across the ceiling. Now that he was on a flat surface, he could run and not worry about performing a balancing act. He rushed Midas, swinging his bat, sending sprays of fire, electricity, ice, and even a few blasts of shadow that seemed to force the two of them in one way or another.

Blasts of shadow. That thought brought understanding into Midas' eyes, "Ah, gotcha… Gravity Dust. It'd be a shame if I," he stepped out into a space between the bars, then caught himself a little ways down, "made you start climbing again!"

" _Dammit, Midas!_ " Arty yelled as he looked up… down… as Midas fell towards the floor. Arty reached to his belt and grabbed the solid white paintballs at his belt.

.

"I've gotta say," Curie said as she ducked backwards under a wire, "You've definitely got some moves, Timbre. Much more than I would've thought after following your music for so long," she jumped down, swinging in a quick arc. She drove her feet up, her high-top shoes connecting with Timbre's abdomen as she launched herself up, landing back on one of the bars.

Timbre latched a wire around a bar before she could fall any further. Curie was _much_ more agile and acrobatic than her appearance suggested.

"Yeah," Timbre backed away as Curie thrusted a sparking battery towards her. "You too. That Atlas training really shows!"

Curie reloaded the battery back into her weapon, which she had hastily rearranged into a shape resembling a gun with a long-barrel. The tesla coil on the end sent sparks in varying directions. "Eh, Atlas training is okay, I guess," she aimed the gun towards Timbre as she dodged, one eye closed to line up the shot, "I'm more interested in seeing what I can learn from students from the other kingdoms."

The strong jolt launched Timbre into one of the poles, slamming her back into the cold metal. She began to tumble down through the cube until she bounced against the floor. Through sputters and coughs, she looked up to see Curie standing nonchalantly on a bar a few levels above her.

"You really don't have any bullets in those things, do you?" Curie pushed her glasses back up, "Interesting… I've never seen anything like that back home."

 _Good_. Timbre thought to herself as she aimed her arms upward. While Curie was busy analyzing her opponent, Timbre had the opportunity to line up a clear shot through the bars.

Curie was shocked to find thick cables wrapping around her midsection. "Well… that's a bit unexpected," she pulled the battery out of the frame of her gun, "but I can manage." She gently placed the prongs of the black box against Timbre's wire. Her hoodie gave her enough insulation to prevent the actual jolt from running through her body. Timbre, on the other hand, wasn't as lucky. Her exposed skin and armored corset sent the full force of the shock straight through her.

Timbre's hair stood on end as the glowing shock travelled from the wires straight into her arms. When Curie pulled the battery away, Timbre stumbled around, her vision blurry and her hair smoking. She only made it halfway through her groan of pain before she found herself being dragged through the air.

Curie was small, but she was no force to be reckoned with. She had looked down, judged the height of the bar she was standing on and the distance between her and Timbre. It was perfect for what she wanted to do. She slowly stepped backwards, and let herself fall from her perch. Acting as a counterweight, Curie's descent yanked Timbre through the air, slamming her hard into the bars as she flew towards Curie's original position. As she drew closer, Curie let gravity do the work. She flew upwards in an arc as her wire swung against a lower bar, and repeated her previous action of driving her foot into Timbre's stomach.

Timbre felt the air blow out of her lungs. After the electric shock and a pendulum kick to the ribs, she was ready to quit. Again, gravity did the work, letting Timbre fall back down to the floor.

.

"Timbre!" Arty called as he watched her bounce against the floor. She was obviously out of the match, meaning Arty was on his own. After having some trouble countering gravity to load his weapon with Air Dust paintballs. On a few occasions, some of his ammunition almost slipped out of the tube he was holding. After getting everything in place, he put a second coat of paint on the bottom of his boots. As he kicked against the ceiling, a strong blast of air launched him downwards.

"Trying to keep this confusing there, Burnie?" Midas smirked, "Shame it's two on one now." He sucked his teeth as he looked down to watch Sepia and Roland help Timbre out of the battleground. He pointed his pistol at upside-down Arty and gave a cocky grin, "Wanna give up?"

Arty flipped Pallette back to its gun form and pointed it back at Midas, "Dream on."

Midas saluted with his gun, "Okay then. As you wish," he launched himself towards Arty, swinging his sword and firing his gun as they exchanged blows. Arty wasn't used to such close combat, especially fighting someone that appeared to be upside-down. Midas wasn't going to let him change Pallette again. The golden boy was obviously at the advantage with two weapons rather than just one. Arty tried to counter with his forearms and feet, but Midas was wearing him down.

With a kick, Midas drove Arty backwards, almost making him stumble back upwards. "Yo, C! Care to finish this up for me?"

Curie nodded and reached into the pocket of her hoodie.

Arty's eyes widened when he saw her pull out two more black batteries and attach them to her gun.

The glowing arcs of power from the Tesla coil began to intensify. "Midas, you might want to go ahead and get ready! I can't overload Alternator's circuits for too long!"

Midas turned back to Arty and gave a wink. He reached his hand out to the pole to his right.

The whole room went into a stunned silence as they watched the entire metal grid begin to turn gold, the yellow sheen spreading from the point where Midas stood.

Midas pulled his hand back, but the whole structure stayed gold. He put Chrysos and Drachma back into his scabbard before removing it from his belt. "Sorry, Arty! But like the gremlin said!" He jumped down into a gap, his scabbard catching across two parallel poles, allowing him to hang freely from the sheath without making contact with the now golden grid, "We just wanted to see how Beacon's been treatin' ya!"

Curie held the end of her gun up, inching it ever closer to the pole to her side.

Arty tried to get out of the way, but with the confusion of being inverted and from his lack of balance, he could do nothing but watch as Curie sent a supercharged pulse into the gold framing. In the exact instant, his whole world went white as the entirety of the battlefield lit up from the electricity pulsing through it.

.

"Arty!" Timbre called out as she watched Arty shoot out of the grid and fall before slamming into the ground outside of the battlefield. Presumably, the Gravity and Air Dust on his shoes deactivated when he went unconscious. She tried to get up, but the aching in her ribs kept her cemented to her spot on the wall. Her aura had healed a majority of her scrapes and bruises from her fight with Curie, but she was still pretty sore.

"Wow…" Epazote cringed, "I'm kinda glad I wasn't part of _that_ fight…"

"You and me both, mate…" Opal said as they watched the gold color fade from the metal arena.

.

"Good goin', C! I think you might've zapped that orange bug a bit too hard!" Midas called out as he climbed back up, his feet on a bar. He leaned against a pole as he looked down at his friend.

Curie glared up at him before pressing the gun against the metal again.

Everyone covered their eyes as a second bright light filled the room.

Midas stood, his hair singed and smoking, his body rigid from being electrocuted. He too fell like a rock to the floor below.

"There, now the golden bug is zapped, too." she dismantled her weapon, putting the parts back into her pockets before jumping down to tend to her friends.

.

"What in Remnant, _was that_?!" Cayenne yelled ecstatically, "I mean, it wasn't an explosion by any means, but that was one heck of a light show!"

Curie nodded her head towards Midas as he twitched on the ground, "Goldilocks' Semblance lets him strengthen anything he touches. Anything under his power gets a nice coating of gold until he either breaks his focus or decides he doesn't need to buff it anymore. That's part of the reason behind his gold weapons. Even if somebody knows what he can do, they can't tell if his bullets will just sting and his sword just knock you back a bit, or if his gunfire will launch you across the room and his sword slice through steel," she pushed her glasses up, "Even though I _hate_ how simple his weapons are, I have to give him credit for being clever enough to hide his Semblance with his weapons to get an upper hand on his opponents. Back to your question, gold makes a _much_ better conductor than steel by about sixty percent, so a good coating of that, plus electricity, and Roland's maze became one big bug-zapper."

"You don't think you went a bit overboard, though?!" Timbre questioned, wincing.

"Trust me, I've done worse to these two before," Curie looked down to the boy in orange as he began to stir, "I had to have _something_ to test Alternator versions 1.0 through 2.3, and Midas over there's been one of the test dummies for 2.4 to 3.7."

"Arty, are you okay?" Timbre asked, ignoring Curie's rambling about her weapon.

"That… was… _awesome_!" he sat up a bit too quickly. He held a hand to his forehead as a wave of pain went through his brain, "Oww… I see you've upgraded to three batteries since I saw you last…"

"Well… it's actually five maximum now, but I really only keep two as backups." Curie pulled out one of the black boxes, "The last time I used _all five_ , Alternator version 3.3 exploded…"

"Glad you didn't use that on them..." Epazote said, noting the wisps of smoke curling off of Midas and Arty, "They'd probably be dead from all those volts!"

Curie was somewhat annoyed with how wrong Epazote was, but guessing from his appearance and Semblance, it made sense that his field of specialty didn't concern the properties of electricity. She fixed her glasses and narrowed her eyes at him, "It's not the volts that kill you, it's the current that goes through vital parts of your body like your heart or your brain." she put one of Arty's arms over her shoulder in order to help him up, "Aura kind of helps prevent that, and that's why I made sure not to break anyone's in case I resorted to something like shocking them."

"Gold, plants, electricity, fire, whateva!" Opal laughed, "All these weapons an' Semblances are cool an' all, but the only thing I care about right now is gettin' a bite! Think we could get somethin' ta eat befo we gotta go ta that welcoming ceremony?"

Arty looked to his scroll which, thankfully, didn't get fried from Curie's weapon, "Looks like we got a couple of hours until then. The food hall should be pretty busy, but we got some groceries put up in the dorm's kitchen if you guys would rather not wait in a line and only have two seconds to eat."

Sepia's stomach rumbled, ' _Sounds good to me!_ '

Curie went over to help Midas, "He's not exactly speaking right now… but I'm sure we'll be fine. Ledning and Titian are probably going to end up picking up something in town."

Cayenne grabbed Epazote and pulled him close in a hug, "We'll catch up with Saf and Pep later! I could use a meal without them chiding me about how spicy I like my food."

Epazote rolled his eyes, "Yeah, we got some hang time to make up for!" he said as he reached his fist out to Roland.

"You bet we do." The Faunus returned the fist-bump.

Arty glared at his partner, mad at how smug he was being about the whole battle of the battlefields, "Yeah, let's go. I'm starving after getting my butt handed to me…"

Curie walked over to the control panel, tapping the button to reset the conditions of the room, "Hey, don't beat yourself up more than we already did," the bars began to retract back into the walls, floor and ceiling, "You two put up a good fight. It just happens that the… conditions of our fight were more suited towards Midas and I. Had we been in a concrete city or a forest, we'd be done for."

As she walked up and joined them, she began tapping away at something on her own scroll, "The past forty-nine Vytal Festival Tournaments have had a total of about seventy-three different types of biomes in their battlefields. One-hundred-and-four if you count slight variations. It's all just a luck of the draw kind of thing in terms of both battlefield _and_ opponents."

Arty glared at Roland, who was happily chatting away with Sepia, Opal, and his friends from Mistral, "Yeah… luck of the draw."

Timbre caught this and remembered Arty's promise to explain later. "Well," she clapped her hands together, "let's go get lunch ready. We have a big night ahead of us!" She glanced to Arty, who nodded reassuringly to her.

" _Fooooooooood_!" Opal cheered as they exited the training room.

* * *

After getting lunch and splitting off from their friends, Team ARTS went to their dorm to prepare for the opening ceremony. While Timbre and Sepia got ready in the bathroom, Arty and Roland finished getting dressed in the dorm. They went about in silence, neither wanting to talk much after the events of that morning.

"Hey, um…" Roland huffed with his back to Arty, "I'm sorry for being a bit of a jerk earlier. I thought it'd be good for you to tell people that you trust more than us about what happened with Oro."

Arty looked down as he buttoned the brown jacket of his uniform, "I didn't _want_ to tell them yet, Roland."

"And you're never going to want to tell them. That's not how things like that work," Roland went to tie his handkerchief around his neck, but lost his grip. He swore under his breath and went to pick it up, "I didn't handle it in the best way, though. I will admit to that."

Arty remembered how Midas and Curie had reacted to hearing about the whole ordeal. The admiration and sense of awe that flashed across their faces as Roland recounted what happened. Despite that, Arty was still shaken up over what could have happened. After seeing how much better Midas and Curie were at fighting and coordinating, he felt that they would've been able to deal with the Grimm Brotherhood and the Trex no problem. _Would Midas be feeling like this had it been Team MTLC out there?_ "I wasn't exactly dealing with it that well either. I'm sorry about that roll of paper I ruined… but I told you I needed time before I explained everything to them."

"Yeah, you did. I should have respected that and blah, blah, blah," Roland forced a grin while trying to retie his handkerchief. Fingers clenched and lost it once again, "Just tie the stupid thing!" he shouted at himself. Squatting down, he snatched up the piece of cloth.

Arty sighed, "I guess I kinda deserved it though… after… everything that happened last semester." He reached out a hand, "Truce?"

"Yeah, truce," Roland ignored Arty's hand and continued trying to tie on his disobedient piece of violet cloth. The knot was just about to slip closed on the back of his neck, but then it unraveled and fell to the floor for the third time, " _ **DAMNIT!"**_ he threw his hands up in the air in exasperation. With that, his bed buckled and began floating. All of the books underneath had begun levitating.

Arty jumped as the heard the pages fluttering across the room, "You okay, dude?"

"No, I am _not_ okay! This is all bullsh- UGH! Stupid handkerchief!" Roland's gaze fell on the floating bed and books, "Go. Down."

At his command, the books fell back down and the bed slammed against the floor with a thud. The books still buzzed with whatever force Roland was exerting on them.

"Okay, what's going on?" Timbre demanded as she and Sepia came out of the bathroom, both dressed in their Beacon uniforms. She brushed down her skirt, obviously uncomfortable in the garment, "Ugh, I _hate_ this stupid thing… I feel like Midas is going to make some slimy remark about my thighs..."

' _I mean, you do have some nice legs. Can't blame him,'_ Sepia toyed with her choker to straighten it, ' _Sorry, back to the problem at hand. What's up?'_

"This. _This_ is what's going on!" Roland snatched up his handkerchief from the ground and held in front of Timbre and Sepia's faces.

Sepia didn't allow Timbre to respond. She just took the piece of cloth, walking behind Roland, and reached up to put it on over his collar. For once, she was thankful for losing her voice. If she could have spoken, then she would have. That might have ruined the sweet simplicity of a kind gesture.

Arty let out a defeated sigh, "I've been feeling like crap because of what happened in the Emerald Forest a couple of weeks ago, felt like a crap leader, can't stop thinking about how the four of us could've died under my leadership. I told Roland I needed some time to recover from something like that, he promised he would leave it alone but then Midas and Curie overheard us, he told them immediately told them about it all, I took it out on him with the floating island battlefield with the water, he got payback with the bars, now here we are with that issue resolved for the time being, but now we have a new issue, that being something Roland's getting pissed over and he hasn't had the chance to tell me yet." he took a deep breath, almost running out of air from giving the short version of the story in one breath. "That's what's _really_ going on…"

Timbre nodded, "You guys really do have quite a way of working out your problems… don't you?" She looked to the otter Faunus, his anger somewhat dampened now that his handkerchief was neatly tied around his neck. "So… can I ask?"

"I've told you about my mom, yeah? I loved her to the moon and back, but I don't talk about my stepmom much. Her, I don't love to the moon and back. I hate her to the depths of the abyss," Roland clenched his fist to remind himself to not get too worked up, "and she's here at Beacon right now. She'll be going back and forth between here and Mistral until the Vytal Festival."

"Wow… I don't know what to say to that…" Timbre responded, "but at least she's not here the whole time, right?"

"Yeah, why is that by the way? She an instructor? Work with your dad's business?" Arty went through the roll of logical conclusions that came to mind.

"Have none of you ever heard the name 'Shirley Wells'?" Roland raised an eyebrow at his teammates.

The lack of any response told him they haven't.

"Shirley Wells was named Headmistress of Haven Academy after the last one passed away. She was the first headmaster or headmistress of Haven to not have been born in Mistral. Everyone knows about her back home..." Roland explained through notable discomfort. It seemed that information travelled around Remnant even slower than he even realized, "It's been about fifteen years or so since she took the position."

"Well then…" Arty nodded, "That's… fun…"

"She made my life at home a living hell half the time, and then treated _her_ kids like angels. Don't get me wrong, I love my sister very much. Dante stood up for me when Shirley turned a blind eye to Ahab's pummelings…" he continued on, practically growling, "I spent a good half or more of my life in Mistral staying at my mom's apartment or with Epazote. That's probably the last bit I've hidden from you guys."

Sepia poked her head around Roland's shoulder. Even she hadn't heard about that bit of Roland's life, but she also hadn't heard about CiCi until he had told all of them. Having taken a moment to consider her words, she began signing, ' _Why did you keep_ that _of all things hidden?'_

He went on, "Because they aren't the problem anymore. I hate them, but the things that they did aren't what I really deal with daily. I don't have to be associated with Ahab or Shirley if I don't want to be. My mother was the reason I came to Beacon, not them."

Arty held up his fist to Roland, "Like you said, you help me deal with General Léon, and I'll help you with your stepmom. Deal?"

"Yeah… right…" Roland unenthusiastically bumped Arty's fist, "Look, can we just get a move on? See if Team ANTE is ready to head out so we can all go together, which I never thought I would say?"

"Sure," Arty walked to the door and held it open, "Can't play without a full deck after all."

' _It's not just Rime that's getting sick of the puns and bad wordplay…'_ Sepia signed, glaring at her leader.

"You wanna know what she said or…?" Timbre chuckled.

"Nah, I'm good." Arty replied as he knocked on Team ANTE's door. "Yo! Queenie! You guys ready for the ceremony?"

Before his knuckles could connect with the door again, the door flung open. Alice, along with the rest of her team, stood before Team ARTS in their Beacon attire.

"Sorry, we were busy puttin' last minute touches on tha ballroom while you four were off gallivantin' around with your friends…" Alice stopped herself before she could continue her rant, "But yes, let's be off."

Arty gave her a thumbs up as she walked past him, "Coolio."

* * *

Sunlight gleamed like deathrays off of Midas' shining gold Altas uniform. It had the same tight collar and close-fitting style, but the snowy white fabric that made up the uniform had been defiled by his golden touch. Gold suited the guy better, though. Rebelling against authority was an added plus to making sure his clothes matched his flawless hair and glowing personality.

In apparent defiance of her leader, Curie dusted off bits of charred fabric off of her shoulder. Though her uniform was dotted with scorch marks and burn holes, she still stuck to the traditional uniform, but with the addition with a pair of black leggings. Modesty was her specialty, though the slight change to her uniform was more through social awkwardness rather than actual modesty.

"Quit being such a jerk-off and get rid of the gold…" Curie narrowed her eyes and fixed her glasses.

"Uh, who's the leader here?" Midas wagged a finger at her, "I've gotta stand out!"

"That's exactly what General Léon _doesn't_ want… that's kind of the point of the uniform and the military mentality…"

Instead of a response, Midas just kept walking along on the path to the auditorium. He could see Arty and his team walking on a joining path out of the corner of his eye, along with the cute redhead and her team from before, "Right… because the military mentality totally works…" he held a hand out at Arty's paint speckled uniform, "and red is _definitely_ more his color. Matches the explosions nicely. I am confused about why the school in the capital of self-expression has a uniform though…"

Arty rolled his eyes, "Trying to balance that out with your new designer military duds, Midas?"

"Yeah, yeah, so…" Midas strode past his friend and to the redhead behind him, "Hey cutie, how's it goin'? Love the hair! The name's Midas, if you didn't already know."

Roland leaned over to Arty, "He's always been a creep, hasn't he…?"

Arty shook his head, "I don't know if I'd call him a _creep_ per se… more like…"

"What tha _bloody 'ell_ are ya doin' to my hair?! Get away from me you loon!" Alice yelled as she shoved Midas away from her.

"A playboy?" Curie finished his sentence.

' _No, no, I'm liking what Alice called him. He's definitely a loon,'_ Sepia looked around for the laugh that just wasn't there, ' _Right… not everyone knows sign language…'_

Midas went on with Alice, "Hey, hey, hey!" he ran another hand through her hair again, leaving another golden streak through it, "Come on, gold looks good on anyone, and I've got the golden touch, baby. Gold and red go great together!"

The group watched with little concern as Alice lifted Midas by his golden collar and threw him backwards down the path towards them. He slid across the ground, kicking up dust as his face grinded against the pavement.

"You okay, dude?" Arty asked, obviously having seen this scenario play out before.

"I think she digs me."

"Yeah… about three inches into the ground…" Turf added in his two cents. His dog ears shuffled underneath his beanie, "and does anyone hear… live electricity…?"

Navy patted down the side of his slacks, "Oh, that's actually me," he pulled a stun gun out from his pocket and flicked the switch, "That was my mistake."

"No, no, that wasn't it. I heard that already. I was ignoring the live stun gu- wait, why do you have a stun gun on you?" Turf raised an eyebrow at the soldier. After everything that happened in the last semester, Navy started easing up a bit. Maybe he was just following Alice's lead and was still a huge jerk deep down, or he was actually following her example. Either was just as likely as the other.

"I mean… yeah? I always keep some kind of weapon on me," Navy kept his hard eyes focused straight ahead towards the doors of the auditorium.

"Me too," Curie held up a sparking battery and pressed the electrodes to the golden leg of Midas' uniform.

Midas screamed out from the jolt, then shot back to his feet, "Seriously, Curie?!"

"Isn't that a bit… much?" Timbre asked as she followed the trails of smoke curling off of Midas as he twitched. Arcs of lightning still danced in his hair.

"Trust me," Curie shoved the battery back in her pocket, "he doesn't learn from just _one_ punishment. If the backlash from the girls he hits on doesn't do it, the battery usually does. If he keeps it up after that, I usually get Titian to shoot him a few times. Lucky for him, we haven't had to go to DEFCON 2 yet."

"How bad is DEFCON 2?" Ebon dared to ask.

"That's if he hits on someone in power. We nearly got to that when he tried to call General Léon 'hot'... but Ledning choked him out before he could get to the 't'." Curie pursed her lips at the golden boy, "We estimate that DEFCON 2's consequence is expulsion. DEFCON 1 is probably prison. Not sure what he'd have to do to get to that point, though."

"I could always try to blow a hole in the school," Midas winked at Arty.

Sepia began signing excitedly, ' _I'm gonna tell that general lady that she has a nice a-'_

"Woah there, sweetheart…" Roland put a hand over hers to keep her from finishing her statement, "Wait, no, nevermind. If they know sign language, then they deserve to know."

She grinned and went on signing out her plan to reach Curie's fabled DEFCON 2 and hopefully DEFCON 1.

"There's my little, directa!"

Sepia found herself in a headlock, her loose brown curls being ground against her head in a noogie. She silently laughed as Opal hugged her.

"God, Sepia. I'm so glad ta be here with ya," she chuckled, "Betcha jealous I don't 'ave ta wear a uniform, huh?" she said while clacking her flip-flops loudly.

Sepia's mind drifted back to a time where she thought she wouldn't have to wear a stuffy uniform. Then again, she had to wear it to be with her team. That was worth wearing a uniform.

' _I'm going to head out and meet Team STON! Are you guys okay with that?'_

"Yeah, go on ahead!" Timbre shooed her off, "Have fun!"

"Right, well then, cool if I meet up with Epazote and Cayenne?" Roland began walking along with Sepia and Opal.

"Yeah, I think I'll join Curie and Midas to meet Titian. See you guys after the ceremony!" Arty began walking along with Midas and Curie, leaving Timbre alone with Team ANTE.

Timbre was confused to suddenly find herself without her team. She realized that she, unlike her team, didn't have any prior friends to hang out with. She knew that the gap year between combat school and Beacon made her drift away from her friends from preparatory combat school, but it had never affected her since she was put into Team ARTS. As she walked into the auditorium, she was by herself with Team ANTE. As she mulled over her newfound loneliness, she felt something nudge against her shoulder.

"How about you come along with me and my team? It's no reunion, but we Beacon kids have got to stay together," Turf pat her on the back. He nodded them all along, "Come on! We can have fun and hang out too! See, this is Team ANTE. Alice is our leader, Navy is the blue one, I'm the dog, and Ebon is the cool guy! It's great to see you again after so long!"

Timbre couldn't help but giggle at Turf's goofiness, " _Nice_ ," continuing with the act, she held her hand out to Alice, "It's great to see you aga-"

Before Timbre could finish her sentence, Alice stomped up to her with a scowl on her face. Between her fingers, she held out strands of her long hair, now streaked with bright gold. "That _cretin_ is one of Umba's friends, isn't he? He's already hit on you. Did he do anythin' like _this_ ta you?"

"Um… no, but-"

" _How long am I going to look like this?! I don't like looking like the reverse of Umba!_ "

Turf, Timbre, and Ebon struggled to keep in their laughter as Alice continued to rant about her new hairstyle.

Timbre couldn't help but smile on her way to the auditorium, _Well,_ she thought to herself, _this isn't too bad._


	32. V2Ch4: Intruders

Shadows curled up from the boundless blackness surrounding her. Tendrils of inky tar twisted and constricted around her ankles. Ahead was the burning white figure of a woman. Her mother. Every second that passed, the light faded more.

Aria was dying again.

Timbre was helpless to stop it again.

"Mom! Stop! Don't go!" Timbre reached out, her tears dripping down and sending ripples through the black bindings that held her in place.

More and more, the bindings crept up her legs. They squeezed her. They beckoned her to join them in the bottomless pit below. Cold seeped from them into her. Death would come soon if Aria did not turn around.

Timbre struggled against those unholy things to no avail. She kicked. She screamed. She pleaded, but nothing came in return.

The light was about to flicker out like a dying star. The blackness was inches away from overtaking her. Needles of frost seeped into Timbre's heart. She was gon-

* * *

Timbre's eyes shot open. A pair of booming headphones rested on the floor next to her bed. Cold sweat streamed down into her already puffy eyes. Tears could already be felt against her neck and hands. Her chest heaved with panic. No matter how hard she tried, she couldn't move.

 _I haven't experienced this in years..._

Moonlight trickled through the curtains. The dorm of Team ARTS was in an unusual state of serenity that only occurred when they slept. Looking around the room, she found that Sepia wasn't in her bed. This intensified her terror for a moment, but she found that Sepia was curled up next to Roland in his bed upon turning. Arty snoozed peacefully, but Roland and Sepia both seemed to be disturbed. Roland seemed to be holding onto Sepia for dear life, and Sepia was trembling.

 _Bad dreams too, huh…? At least you guys have never experienced sleep paralysis… as far as I know._

Weight bore down on her chest. A presence. It wasn't the music from her headphones giving her that feeling. It was the vaguely humanoid shadow near the door.

She prayed that it was just her eyes playing tricks on her. A result of her current state of mind. It had to be some sort of image left over from her nightmare. Blinking didn't get rid of it. The shadow just seemed to move a little closer to the door every time she opened her eyes. When the door knob snapped shut and the shadow disappeared, her fears came to life.

After what felt like hours, she was finally able to move again, " _ **ARTY! ROLAND! SEPIA!"**_ She screamed at the top of her lungs. Her fingers curled around the edge of her blanket, tearing the seams. Her heart thumped in her ears. Someone had gotten into their room.

Roland's feet hit the floor as soon at Timbre screamed, his hat already on, "I'm on them! Sepia, come on!" he shouted. He threw open the door and ran after the intruder.

Apparently Sepia was aware of what was going on as well. Six of her orbs already zoomed around her as she ran out after Roland. The pair of thumping feet dissipated as they made their way down the hall.

Arty was wide awake to the sounds of screaming, feet slamming on the floor, and sobbing. Still half-asleep, he tried to process what was going on in the dark room, lit only by the light streaming in from the hallway and the moonlight from outside. He had seen Roland and Sepia run off, but Timbre stayed behind, crying in her bed as she sat in the fetal position.

"Woah! Timbre!" He jumped across the room and sat on her bed next to her, "Are you okay?"

Right as he finished his question, she latched onto him, her face hidden in his t-shirt. Her grip tightened as if her life depended on it.

Seeing her like this worried him. What had happened? Roland and Sepia wouldn't have ran off after a regular nightmare.

.

"Where the hell did they go?!" Roland peered down the hall. Even though he could see relatively well in the dark, his enhanced sight didn't do much without at least a little trickle of light.

A glowing orb flashed to life next to his shoulder, bringing him some sight down the hall. Sepia ran up beside him, more orbs spinning around her. Her eyes were shut tight, and the balls of light shot off down towards both ends of the hall to the stairwells. Even with a baggy t-shirt on, a rat's nest atop her head, and on the pursuit of an intruder, she was still enchanting. Well, as enchanting someone as crazy as her could be.

"Focus…" Roland growled to himself. Admiration could wait. No Writer's Block, no grenades, no hat… the chance of winning in an actual fight was low. It didn't help that he was running barefoot in a pair of violet pajama pants and a black tee. Who would take him seriously?

"You wouldn't have happened to have…?"

Sepia passed off a paperback romance novel without opening her eyes. She was always thinking one step ahead… or maybe she was thinking one step at a time in rapid succession.

He nodded thankfully, "Nice, thanks. One of Mom's books is perfect," he threw the novel ahead. Pages exploded into a flurry of paper and ink. Each page folded with another, leaving a paper broadsword with an inked edge suspended in midair. He snatched it up, "So where did they go?"

' _I saw a shadow go upstairs, but I hear someone talking downstairs, too,'_ she signed in the light of the orb beside Roland.

"Right. I'll go up, you go down. You don't have your guns, so don't just go rushing in. If you need me, make this orb go up and down three times," he pointed to the orb that she kept beside him, "I mean it. Don't go in alone. Got it?"

 _You're a bit of a hypocrite, huh?_ Sepia pushed the unwelcome thought to the side and nodded, ' _Right, I understand.'_

"I'll meet up with you as soon as I can. Lov-" Roland stopped himself. Was that too weird? It certainly felt weird.

She rushed past him, ' _I'll see you soon,'_ she ran down the stairwell with an orb by her side. Her cheeks flushed bright pink. Had he started to say what she thought he was saying?

"Right…" He ran up the stairwell with his sword held to his side, _Stupid. Stupid. That was stupid. You've been dating her for four months, chill._

.

Timbre didn't know why she was crying so much. The tears just wouldn't stop no matter how much she willed them to. The nightmare and the unwelcomed guest into her dorm room had set something off, and it wasn't ending anytime soon. She heard some of the surrounding teams beginning to stir from all the commotion.

"What the bloody 'ell?..." Alice questioned from Team ANTE's door as she pulled a pair of earplugs out of her ears.

"Timbre!?" Turf shoved past his leader and into Team ARTS's room, his brown ears perked up. Even though the screaming was loud enough to wake the whole floor, it had hit him first. "What's going on!?..." He had his fists raised, ready to fight whatever force was threatening her. As Navy turned on the lights, he found Timbre curled into a ball on her bed, crying against Arty's chest.

His ears drooped, but he pushed on anyways. Timbre needed help, "What happened? Where did Roland and Sepia go?"

Timbre was still shaking, unable to answer.

"She thinks she saw somebody in the room," Arty spoke for her, turning to Turf, "Roland and Sepia ran after them."

"What did they look like!? Who was it!?" Turf demanded.

Arty was taken back by Turf's questioning, "I-I-I don't know! I didn't see anybody!"

Turf turned to Alice, but before he could ask permission to chase after Timbre's stranger, she held a hand up.

"Go ahead. Just be careful." She turned to Navy, "You go with 'im in case things go sour, okay?"

Navy didn't look happy with the order, but he nodded before following Turf down the hall in the direction Roland and Sepia had ran.

.

Roland's heart raced. He was four floors up from where he started. The shadow wasn't anywhere to be seen on any of them. The only place left was the roof.

"Sepia, are you okay?" he asked to the orb beside him. He clutched his sword in anticipation. Once the orb seemed to nod, some of the tension eased, "Good. I'm going in."

He turned the knob of the door at the top of the stairwell. The intruder had to be on the other side, but that theory lost some credibility when he heard footsteps coming up from below.

It seemed that a fight was inevitable. The newcomer neared him, step by step. They were only a floor below. Half of a floor. Twenty feet. Ten feet. Five.

"Your mistake!" Roland shouted and slammed his tail into the gut of whomever was behind him. He spun around just in time to see someone tumbling down the stairs. That someone seemed familiar… Dog ears and all…

"Turf?! What are you doing?!"

Turf groaned. His dog ears sagged, "I was coming to help…" he held his stomach, "Navy went to give Sepia some backup…"

"He what?!" Roland's eyes narrowed at the orb, "Sepia, keep… ugh… nevermind…" he reached down and hoisted Turf up, "Come on and watch my back."

"Right, got it." Turf put his back to Roland's, "I'm ready when you are."

"You better be…" Roland threw open the door. The sword was readied, and for good reason. Someone was standing on the roof in a black jacket, staring up at the moon. Their flowing grey hair and stark white complexion was… again, familiar.

"Frost?!"

She jumped when the voices shouted from behind her. Her fingers flew to her heart as she yelped, "Wells? Fescue? What are you two doing up here at this hour?"

Something felt… off. "Frost, what are you doing up here…?" Roland growled with his sword still raised.

Frost looked confused. Why was she being questioned? "I come out here when I am unable to sleep. I am not exactly able to open my window without waking the rest of my team." She noticed the panicked expressions on their faces and the sweat dripping from them. They'd obviously been running, "What is going on?"

Before Roland could speak, Turf shoved his way forward, "You didn't hear Timbre scream from up here?"

Frost tried to respond before she was interrupted again.

"I'm pretty sure the entire building heard it…"

"My ears are nowhere near as sensitive as yours, Fescue," Frost held up a chocolate bar slowly, "I was just up here having a late night snack."

"Right, very likely…" Roland stepped forwards with his blade raised. It had to have been her. Being on the roof was much more suspicious than wandering the dorm halls late at night.

His grip tightened on the sword, "Did you see anyone come up here, or was it you that I was chasing? Why were you in our room, Frost?"

Frost narrowed her gaze. "I have no idea what you are talking about." she crumpled the wrapper of her candy bar in her fist, "Are you trying to pick a fight with me, Wells?"

"Answer my questions, and we'll see if I am."

"I have been up here for the past hour or so. You can ask Rime. She woke up when I left the room," she began to head to the door behind the two Faunus boys, "and what reason could I possibly have for being in Team ARTS's room in the first place?" She turned her dark gray eyes to him, "You are flattering yourself too much if you honestly think I am watching you sleep at night."

Roland put an arm between her and the doorframe, "Excuse me if I'm a little on edge after nearly dying to Oro. She seemed to know a good bit about us. It isn't too far of a stretch to think that the Grimm Brotherhood has eyes on us…"

"This is ridiculous. I have done nothing to deserve this kind of treatment from you, Wells. And in case you forgot," she pointed a finger at herself, leaning her face in close to his, " _I_ was targeted by the Grimm Brotherhood that night, too." She shoved his arm out of her way, "They are nothing but a bunch of monsters. I would _never_ be a part of anything that they take pride in. Mindless slaughter and fear-mongering gets you nowhere in life. I am here to put my life into honest work for the protection of Remnant." As she was about to disappear inside, she refused to give him the last word. "You have some serious anger issues, Roland Solferino Wells. A psychiatrist or a counselor can go a long way."

With that, the door shut closed.

Turf turned wide-eyed to the seething otter Faunus. "Roland… you don't really believe that Frost is a part of the Grimm Brotherhood because of this… do you?"

"You know what, Turf? I don't know who could be or could not be. About the only ones that I'm really sure of are Arty, Timbre, and Sepia…" he lowered the sword finally. After the conversation that he and Arty had about learning to adapt… to accept… he couldn't help but think that maybe the Grimm Brotherhood could do the same.

Turf tilted his head to the side as he processed Roland's words. "Look, dude. I don't know if you remember, but I was in the bed next to yours while we were recovering from all that. They also _hate_ people like us." Turf began to stomp towards the door, "Whatever… I have to go make sure Timbre's okay."

"Yeah… right…" Roland looked to the glowing orb beside him. Had it been bobbing up and down the entire time?

.

Sepia saw Navy running down the hall from a few yards back out of an orb. _Of course…_ she mentally groaned. With Timbre's screaming and the disappearance of half of Team ARTS, it wasn't surprising that Alice would send backup her way. She turned to face the approaching soldier, an orb perched on her shoulder.

Navy ran up, the stun gun he apparently always had on him buzzing in his hand. He eyed the glowing balls of light surrounding Sepia warily, "You stay out of my way, and I stay out of yours. Got it?"

Sepia nodded. Navy didn't know sign language, but surely he had played charades before. She pointed at him, then down a hall that led straight to the main doors and back around to the other half of the building. Once she thought he understood, she pointed to an orb and down the way to the lobby.

Navy grunted, which Sepia took as agreement, before dashing quietly down the hall. At every turn or open door, he would stop, quickly duck his head in, and retreat before continuing towards the main door.

Sepia began her survey of the lobby, but quickly found that it was occupied with four people on the couches around the coffee table. One had on neon yellow footie pajamas, and another had on a similar outfit, only theirs were neon purple. Xannie and Lurida's bedtime attire… differed from what she had first expected.

Another of the occupants had a willowwood cane, black slacks, a black dress shirt, and a checkerboard vest. It was Professor Alabaster, no doubt about it. The fourth person was a complete and unbelievably terrifying stranger.

Her orb quivered in midair when she noticed the features of the stranger. Her dark skin was practically glowing, her black hair pulled into a ponytail that rested over her shoulder. Nothing seemed too out-there in her general appearance. Some khaki shorts, white tennis shoes, and a navy blouse. She would have appeared like a normal attractive woman had it not been for the fact that there was a massive hole cut into the back of her top to expose four plated spider legs. Each of them were at least three feet long, and two of them held a coffee mug in front of her.

It didn't take much else for Sepia to get Roland's attention and text Arty and Timbre.

 **Sepia Hughes: Get down here. Spider problem. Now.**

.

Arty heard his scroll buzz across the room. "Hey, Timbre. I'm just gonna go get my scroll, okay? It's probably Roland or Sepia." He half expected her to beg him not to leave, but she seemed to be calmed down enough to let him check his messages without screaming again.

The words that flashed on the scroll's holographic screen confused him. "Spider problem?..." He returned to Timbre's bedside and knelt down in front of her, "Hey, Timbre. Sepia says we need to go downstairs. I have no clue what's going on, so I don't want to leave you alone here. You okay enough to go with me?"

Timbre wiped her puffy eyes with the back of her wrist and nodded. A slight whimper still made her lip quiver.

"Good." He took her hand and helped her out of her bed. As earlier, she latched onto his wrist as they made their way down the hall to meet up with Sepia.

He let out a sigh of relief when he saw that Sepia was completely fine. The 'spider problem' wasn't a Raach infestation or anything catastrophically dangerous, "Look, Sepia's fine. There's nothing in here to worry abo-"

Timbre started to let out another ear-piercing scream as they entered the lobby area and she laid eyes on the woman with spider legs sprouting out of her back.

Arty yanked his hand away and used it to clasp over Timbre's mouth before she could wake anyone else up, "Hey. Hey. Timbre. I'm telling you this as a friend. _Enough_ with the screaming. Okay?"

Timbre looked over to the Spider Faunus and back to Arty. She nodded and whimpered meekly.

' _You can't really blame her. I would have done the same if I could,'_ Sepia opened her blazing gold eyes. The orbs around the dorms exploded into bits of glowing glass, and her vision and hearing were returned to her own eyes and ears once more.

Professor Alabaster pressed a finger to the inside of his ear to stop the ringing caused by Timbre's banshee scream, "I apologize, Ms. Weaver… Ms. Forté is not usually this… loud…" he smiled meekly at Arty, Timbre, and Sepia, "For a team with someone of Faunus background in it, I am surprised to see… er… hear such a reaction from you."

Arty led Timbre into the late-night social circle, "Sorry, Professor. We just had… an incident in Team ARTS's dorm. Timbre swears she saw someone by the door, but… it's starting to look like it was just a very, _very_ vivid nightmare. She's just shaken up."

Timbre huffed and frantically shook her head, "It was _not_ a nightmare, Arty! There was someone in our room!"

Sepia pointed up at the ceiling, then down at her backside, telling everyone where Roland and his tail had went during the whole ordeal. Timbre was right. They were chasing someone, but the only two people that Roland had come across were Frost and Turf. The intruder wasn't either of them.

"Hey, hey, it's alright. Believe me, I understand nightmares _very_ well," the Spider Faunus set her mug onto the table and got up to greet the students, "In fact, the Rhea twins were just complaining about nightmares too. It must have been pretty bad, huh?"

Arty and Timbre looked to the twin sisters who definitely looked like they hadn't had a very restful sleep. Both had disheveled hair, dark bags under their eyes, and both were slumped over, out of energy but unable to do anything about it. "I'm sorry but, who exactly are you?" Arty said, eying the Faunus woman.

"Sofaira Weaver. It is my pleasure to meet you, Arty," she held out a spider leg for him to shake, "Oh, and you two. Timbre. Sepia," she held out two more for them to shake.

Sepia took the hooked end of the spider leg and shook it happily. Up close, she saw this spider-woman as more of a mom than a gut-sucking killing machine. That, and she smelled like lavender. Sepia _really_ loved lavender.

"It's… nice to meet you, too." Arty said as she shook her… leg.

Timbre hesitantly did the same. She looked past Ms. Weaver and Professor Alabaster to the twins on the nearby couch. "You guys, too, huh?"

Xannie wasn't her normal chipper self, but it didn't seem to be solely from her exhaustion. "I don't think it's the same… scenario. I don't know about any intruders, but…"

"We're going through something I don't think the three of you could _possibly_ understand." Lurida added tersely, glaring at the three first-years with her anger-filled gaze.

"Darling, I would hardly call an anomaly between the dreams of a set of twins something that they couldn't understand. Please, take a few sips of your nice, warm, rich coffee, and think about gazing through your telescope at the stars with your mom and dad. Live in that happy place for a little while longer," Sofaira's voice flowed through the room with a hypnotic smoothness to it. Once Lurida's eyes glazed over, she smiled, "That's a good girl…"

Professor Alabaster chuckled, "You've always had such a way with… hold on…" he waved his cane in front of Xannie. No response. "Well then… you got both of them with that… nicely done."

"Sanctum keeps me around for a reason, Onyx. I'm good at my job," Sofaira giggled and returned her attention to Arty, Timbre, and Sepia, "I apologize for that interruption. Where were we?"

.

A few minutes later, the three students sat across from Sofaira as Professor Alabaster paced nearby. Xannie and Lurida stayed slumped over in their seats.

Team A_TS recounted their story.

"I see… so Timbre and Sepia had nightmares, and Timbre woke up first… then she saw someone in your room…" one of Sofaira's spider legs tapped at her lips thoughtfully, "Timbre, have you ever experienced sleep paralysis?"

"When I was a kid… there were a few times. But I've never hallucinated anything like that before." Timbre explained.

"Would it be too much to ask what was going on last time you experienced it?" Sofaira asked, nodding for Professor Alabaster to step out. His presence seemed to put the students on high alert. Their anxiety would only make this all harder.

Without a word, Professor Alabaster made his way out the main doors.

Timbre shifted and rubbed her arms and tried to sink further into the cushions of the couch, "My mom was a Huntress along with another instructor here at Beacon. When I was about five years old, around fourteen years ago, my mom was killed in a mission gone wrong."

 _Wait… Timbre's 19?_ Arty thought to himself. _Shut up. That's not important right now_.

"After she died, I kinda shut down. Wouldn't speak to anyone. Stuck to myself. In my own isolation, I began having these night-terrors where she'd be running away from me while I'm surrounded in shadows. Sometimes they'd be Grimm, sometimes just a formless, neverending void. I haven't had them since I turned ten."

"I see…" Sofaira pulled her coffee up to her lips. As what seemed to be the norm with her, her spider legs delicately tipped the mug for a sip. She held it at her lips while humming to herself, "Might this have something to do with what happened back in the Emerald Forest?"

Timbre and Arty glanced to each other. _How does she know about that? How much authority does she have with the Academies for Alabaster to tell her that?_

"Well… It's been a few weeks ago since we ran into Oro in the forest. Tonight's been the first night the nightmares came back, so I don't know if there's any real correlation there."

"We can test that," the Faunus woman smiled warmly, then pointed an appendage at Arty, "I don't mean to be too nosey, but have you been having any nightmares after you all were attacked? I understand that the leader of this team would probably feel the brunt of the resulting trauma."

Arty was hit by a sudden surge of the guilt he had been feeling. The conversation with Roland a couple of weeks prior played through his mind again. Despite the build up of negativity he'd been feeling, he knew for a fact he hadn't had any nightmares since that night. "No, ma'am. I haven't."

"I see…" she looked to Sepia, "You were caught with Arty and Roland against Oro, correct? How have you been faring since?"

Sepia froze. This woman knew _way_ too much about what happened. Either Alabaster had told her, or she had done her research. Either way, it was becoming clear that this little therapy session was anticipated.

"Please, free yourself of your anxieties. I understand sign language, so please let it all out with as much detail as you can."

' _Right…'_ Sepia looked between Arty and Timbre. Unlike Arty, she had a nightmare, and a terrible one at that. ' _It was my accident. I dreamt that I was hanging from my wires again… like a noose. I could feel them cutting into me… See, I fell into a crevasse while attached to my equipment, and the bottom of the pit, in the dream at least, was filled to the brim with glowing eyes. Eyes like fire. Grimm. They snapped at my ankles for the fresh blood…'_ her hands tensed up. Feeling from her fingertips was lost, but she forced herself to keep going, ' _The rest of my team was with me. They were hanging from wires too, but they… were not as fortunate as me… they didn't make it…'_

"I am sorry that happened to you. I understand that it must have been terrifying to see that…" Sofaira reached over and pushed Sepia's hair behind her ear with one of her legs, "It is alright now. Everything is safe."

"So…" Arty said, "They had nightmares. How does that explain the person Timbre believes she saw?"

" _Did_ see, Umber." Timbre corrected.

"What did this figure look like?" Sofaira questioned, "A black, shadowy figure perhaps?"

"Yeah, but… I don't know what that has to do with anything. I never saw Oro. I saw some people who seemed to be some Grimm Brotherhood grunts with Oro masks, but not Oro _herself_."

"Same cloaks as her, I would guess," Sofaira went on, "That would be the only real image that you have of Oro, wouldn't it? It makes sense that you would see that in a bout of sleep paralysis."

"There's an issue with that. Sepia and I also heard the door shut, Mom."

Arty and Timbre knew it was Roland that had entered the lobby, but those didn't sound like his words.

" _Mom?_ " Arty asked in confusion. He looked back to Sofaira as if he'd seen a ghost. "But-"

"Oh, no. No, no." Sofaira laughed and waved her hand. She stood and half-jogged over to Roland, "Sweetheart! It's so good to see you again!" she opened all six appendages for a hug.

"Good to see you too," Roland returned the hug, grinning at the feeling of two human arms and four spider legs squeezing the life out of him, "I didn't mean to eavesdrop. I just got done looking around and came down to meet Sepia."

"Oh, you're fine!" she let go, "Please, sit. Tell me what you know," she waved for him to sit down as she returned to her seat.

Roland took a seat next to Sepia, "Yeah, yeah, I'll tell about my dream in a second, Mom," he looked to the rest of his team, "I didn't find anything. I chased the shadow to the roof… or so I thought. I just found Frost having a snack, and now she's mad at me. Sepia can fill you guys in later."

Arty and Timbre were still staring at him.

"What's with you two?" he snapped back.

"Roland…" Arty pointed to Sofaira, "Isn't your mom… you know…"

"Oh, no. This is my mom's best friend, and Epazote's mom. I spent so much time at their place when I was a kid that Ms. Weaver became my mother away from… well, my mother. It got to a point where it seemed weird _not_ to call her 'Mom'." Roland explained while smiling at Sofaira. After everything that had happened, it was a wonderful surprise to get to see her again.

Sofaira giggled, "Well, I did practically help raise you. I still remember rocking you in my legs when you were a baby, and when CiCi gave you your first rock. You still have that, don't you?"

"I use it on every clam."

"Wonderful…" she sighed wistfully.

Arty and Timbre sat with blank expressions. Apparently being long-time family friends with Faunus meant being used to widely varying and sometimes odd mannerisms.

"So," Arty chimed in, "back to the matter at hand…" He looked expectantly to Roland.

"My nightmare?" Roland raised an eyebrow.

"Yes… the nightmare." Timbre hung her head down. She looked ready to get back to bed.

"I had a dream about the night that my mother… passed. I already told you guys the details about the scene, but I saw the killer in this dream." He paused to take a deep breath, "Oro was standing over her body with that… weapon of hers," he clenched his fists against his knees. Had he anything in his stomach, it would have been making its way back up. The smell of blood wasn't one that he could forget, "There was this symbol painted on the wall in her…" he bit back the word 'blood', "It was red. A wheel with eight spokes, and the top middle eighth was filled in red as well. I guess I saw it on Oro or something…"

Sepia's ears perked up at the last detail, ' _Oro didn't have a marking like that that I saw…'_

"What? Surely she did…" Roland's clenched knuckles went from red to white. He turned to Arty, "You got really close to her. Did you see anything like that?"

Arty wracked his brain. Considering how many times she got close to him in their fight, especially when she stopped one of her lackeys from drowning him, he would have seen a symbol like that. "Not that I remember, no. But… I don't know."

"But…" Roland didn't quite know what exactly to say. If it was in his dream, then surely he saw the symbol before. Then it came back to him. He had seen that symbol, "Wait, no. It was there, in the dream I mean… or, I mean…" he took a deep breath to collect himself, "That symbol was on my mom's wall, but I did see it with Oro too… It was on the end of her weapon. You guys really don't remember that?"

"I mean…" Arty looked to Timbre, "I may have an eye for detail, but I was a bit too focused on not dying from that thing to notice the decoration on it."

Sepia shrugged. She was in the same boat, but she hadn't been hit by the thing. She might have noticed a symbol if it was plastered onto the weapon that almost killed her.

"If I were to guess, I would say that these nightmares stem from the close call that you all had. It was a very stressful situation, and it is common to have nightmares and even sleep paralysis after such a traumatic experience. I am free to talk to any of you about it whenever you need," Sofaira sipped at her coffee thoughtfully, "How have you all been grappling with it _consciously_?"

Arty sat forward, "I've been feeling really guilty about everything that happened that night. I agreed to the contest between us, Team ANTE and Team FREZ. If I hadn't done that, then Roland wouldn't have gotten hurt and we wouldn't have almost died fighting the Trex." Arty still wanted to point out Timbre's earlier point about how that over a month ago, and that this was the first time he'd even heard about their nightmares. "I'm not having nightmares, but-"

"He's definitely been beating himself up over it." Timbre cut in. "He hasn't been the same since that night."

"I see… well…" Sofaira leaned forwards in her seat to look at Arty closely. Her dark, almost black eyes analyzed him for a moment. He had probably heard that it wasn't his fault, and that it was all okay. To him, that was almost certainly a lie, "How can you make sure that you're ready for next time, Arty? How do you plan to fight back and come out on top?"

Arty mulled over the question for a moment before answering. "I guess all we can do is watch ourselves and keep up our training."

"Is it?" she set her mug down to point at the other three members of his team with her appendages, "What could you and your team have done better?"

Arty looked to each of his teammates one-by-one. He didn't want to say anything to hurt their feelings, but he wanted to answer Ms. Weaver's questions truthfully. "I guess… I should have prevented Timbre from running away. I should've kept Roland from going alone against Oro. I should have told Sepia to keep a better watch on her teammates." His eyes fell to the rug beneath his feet. "And I should stop being so indecisive about everything. Learn how to stop getting distracted. Learn how to make choices based on the circumstances. Do-"

"Your circumstances aren't based on just you..." Xannie yawned. Her and her sister seemed to be coming out of their haze, "Sorry, I only heard the last bit," she stretched, "but the probability of a victory goes up with every action that you perform with your teammates. At least, it certainly seems that way in Team ARTS's case."

"Back to the realm of the living, I see. Wonderful," Sofaira clapped her hands together.

"Yeah, yeah… realm of the living… nice word choice…" Lurida groaned, "All I heard was Arty saying 'I', 'I', and 'I' over and over. Geez…"

"What?" Arty stammered, "I didn-"

"What did I _literally_ just say, Umber…?" Lurida pinched the bridge of her nose in frustration, "Hold on. Xannie, what are the odds of Wells actually listening to Umber's orders and _not_ attacking a masked psychopath?"

Xannie scrunched her eyes shut, "Um… taking Roland's drop in violent tendencies in the past couple of weeks into account along with his calm demeanor around his girlfriend…" She began moving her fingers around as if typing on her holographic screen. "Wow, even with all that, it's still only around twelve percent."

"What about Timbre not running off?" Lurida glared at the singer.

Xannie waggled her fingers around more, her eyes still closed. "About the same. Closer to ten-point-five percent."

"Oh, and Sepia staying in the same spot to defend someone?" she continued, "That is, taking into account that she's the wild card. Use the parameters of how she normally performs in combat."

"Okay… also going to add in the use of her Semblance, its reconnaissance abilities, and its lack of defensive capabilities." Xannie swiped her index finger down as if going down a long list on a scroll web-page. "Oh," she chuckled, "even lower than Timbre's. About seven-point-two-five percent."

"One last question: How do the odds of success go up if Umber focuses on building synergy and reliability in his team, despite all of their flaws?" Lurida smirked as Team ARTS looked at her sister with awe in their eyes. Xannie's supernatural genius when it came to numbers had a tendency of shocking people.

Xannie took a while longer to answer this question. "Ehhhh…" she finally opened her eyes. "About fifty-three-point-six percent. Not great, but _much_ better than they used to be earlier last semester. That's just going off of the _known_ circumstances." She smiled, as if proud of seeing how far Team ARTS had come, even if they didn't feel like they had. "Good job guys!"

"Okay, so are you just really good at estimating, or…?" Roland looked between the Rhea twins and the rest of his team.

Xannie giggled. "I love freaking people out with my Semblance."

Lurida just rolled her eyes.

"You see," Xannie began, "my Semblance allows me to rapidly deduce the probabilities of any _given_ outcome to any _given_ situation, like I did just now. It works a bit quicker in the heat of the moment, like a fight. The only downside is," her face seemed to drop a little, "I can only see outcomes based on _given_ information. I can see Team GLXY winning a fight with a Minotaurus, but if there's a secret pack of Beowolves waiting in the shadows that I haven't _seen_ yet, then that probability goes down a bit to make room for the new possible outcome."

Sepia held up her hands to say something, but decided against asking any questions. She didn't want to hear another mind-breaking speech from the Rhea twins.

Lurida picked up on her confusion and pat Xannie on the shoulder, "She can spit out the odds of something happening as long as she knows what's going on. Things get hazy when there are factors that she is unaware of."

Team ARTS all let out simultaneous "Oh"s of understanding.

Xannie nodded, "My Semblance is also… the reason I… _we_ are down here right now."

"What do you mean?" Timbre piped up.

"That's right…" Sofaira waved a hand at the Rhea twins, "You kids aren't the only ones that have had nightmares. Xannie, Lurida, Onyx and I were just talking about that before you all got here. I'm sure they wouldn't mind to explain now that the initial shock is over."

"Right…" Lurida scrunched up her nose at the memory, "It's starting to get a bit hazy now that I've been awake for a while, but I remember that I didn't notice the Kokonatsu that nearly took off my sister's head back in Mikado."

"When the first wave showed up and Roland and I were stuck in the shop with the villagers..." Timbre remembered how captivated she was by the show Xannie and Lurida had put on. The amount of power they had used against the pack of fox-like Grimm was both amazing and terrifying.

"Right, just when I gave Xannie a little bit of a haircut. In my dream, I saw that Kokonatsu pounce on her hea-" Lurida held a hand over her mouth to keep from gagging. Even though it was a dream, the horrors that she watched felt real, "They ganged up on her, and my Semblance wouldn't work. I was too scared."

"What does that have to do with Xannie's Semblance?" Arty asked. Something didn't feel right. It had to have been a normal nightmare, right?

"It was one of the probabilities that I figured _after_ Lurida saved me," Xannie answered, "Had she not seen it and killed it before it pounced on me, our dream would've been reality."

" _Our_ dream?" Timbre questioned.

Xannie and Lurida nodded together.

"I saw the same scenario, exactly as Lurida described, only… I wasn't _me_ in the dream. It was like I was floating above the village. An observer. We have shared dreams sometimes because of the Twin Dynamic but… there's always more coherence to it. If we ourselves are not in the dreamscape, we see the same things from the same perspective. If we both _are_ present in the dreamscape, we see from our own respective points of view, but if I wasn't _me_ in the dream… then who was I?"

"That's why we wanted to talk to Ms. Weaver more since Professor Alabaster introduced us to her after the welcoming ceremony." Lurida added. "We wanted to know if there was something wrong with us. Well… other than my caffeine addiction."

"Wait…" Arty held a hand out, "One thing at a time. First, what the heck is the 'Twin Dynamic'? Second, you think that something's going wrong with Xannie's Semblance that's…" he looked to Lurida, "linking to your dreams?"

"CiCi would have been better at explaining this…" Sofaira sighed, "You see, the aura of two twins are intrinsically linked. It's common for them to have linked dreams, and even to interact with each other in their dreams. From what I do know about aura, I can sum it up to twin's auras being linked because their souls are connected from before they're even born. On the psychological side of things, we call this the 'Twin Dynamic', and twins will often be taught that this concept exists from an early age," she angled a leg at the other Faunus in the room, "Darling, you've read pretty much everything that your mother had on it, haven't you?"

"Yeah, I have. A few of Mom's books have things on the effects of twins being separated for too long. I'm no psychologist, but I'd say that all of the research suggests that twins don't just have linked auras and souls, but also minds…" Roland frowned at Xannie and Lurida, "but aren't you fraternal twins? I mean, one of you is purple, and the other is yellow."

Without any prompting, Lurida pressed a finger against her eye, and used her thumb to remove her contact. With the little purple disk gone, her eye shined with a similar neon yellow to Xannie's. She even exposed the roots of her hair to show that any new hair was bright yellow as well, "Tell anyone, and I'll kill _all_ of you."

Team ARTS didn't know why Lurida would hide the fact she was identical to Xannie, but they knew well enough not to go against her wishes, Timbre especially.

"Okay, okay. We won't," Arty agreed, "So… if this is a result of the 'Twin Dynamic' thing, what does that mean for the sudden differences in your dreams?"

"That's what they came to me about. It honestly could be nothing, but I'll need to do more research on it..." Sofaira smiled at the Rhea twins, "I do hope that our talk helped you both feel at ease. If you both would like, I can set up a session for you sometime this week. I'll be working out of a counselling center in downtown Vale while I'm here."

"That would be great," Xannie took Lurida's hand to help her out of the couch. "Thank you so much Ms. Weaver," she shook one of Sofaira's legs followed reluctantly by her grumbling sister, "We're so sorry to trouble you this late at night. And we hope Team ARTS gets… better, too?" She winced, realizing her wording was a bit awkward.

"Remember, I will kill you…" Lurida glared at Team ARTS while being led away. Her eyes seemed oddly reminiscent of Yamuna's, only neon purple and yellow instead of gold and dark blue. She popped the contact back in as they walked away.

"Switch to tea when you can, dear! Or at least decaf!" Sofaira gave an oddly mechanical wave with her spider legs, "And keep the death threats to a minimum!"

Lurida murmured something poisonous as they headed up the stairwell.

"Well that was… interesting." Timbre muttered. Her face had finally lost its red puffiness from her meltdown earlier. "So… any idea how to help _us_ then?"

"I think that you four have all lived stress-filled lives for a while now. It is not unreasonable to think that your subconscious mind still doesn't know how to handle all of it. Timbre, you said that this wouldn't be the first time that you had experienced something akin to sleep paralysis. It's common to see shadows moving about when you first wake. I wouldn't worry too much over it," Sofaira slowly got up from her seat, then extended her legs to help the four up, "You all should try to get some sleep. If anything happens, Onyx and I will be nearby. No intruder is getting by us."

Timbre, Arty, and Sepia stood to return to the room. From their short conversation, they knew that Sofaira Weaver knew what she was talking about. Sleep paralysis could lead to some serious hallucinations. That combined with the hysteria Timbre caused could have easily led the rest of the team to believe what she saw in that half-awake state was real. They thanked her and began down the hall.

' _Coming?'_ Sepia signed to Roland.

He stayed on the couch and waved them away, "I want to talk to Mom for a bit longer. I haven't seen her in a while. I'll be up there in a bit."

She looked back at Arty and Timbre. _Don't go on keeping more secrets…_ she thought. Instead of pressing the matter, she ran to catch up with her leader and her partner.

Once he was sure that they were gone, he furrowed his brow at Sofaira. Once she sat back down, he relaxed, "You glossed over the fact that Sepia and I heard the door close."

"Even sounds from dreams can carry over into the waking world, dear. I read up on the files of all of you that were involved in the Oro incident. Your girlfriend probably remembers those cables snapping in her accident. You probably remembered the sound that Oro's weapon made. It's nothing out of the ordinary." Sofaira smiled patiently at him. Even after so many years of kindness and hospitality, something always seemed frigid underneath all her warmth. Maybe it was just the spider-blood running through her veins.

Roland shifted. She avoided the mention of CiCi's death, but he was over it. Wasn't he? "Look, don't think that this nightmare business is about-"

"You don't get over something like that. You cope, and your team is helping you do that," she stood and moved to sit next to him, "You all had reasons to have nightmares, and you all have a lot of pain that you can't simply get over."

They stayed silent for a while. The smell of lavender kept Roland relaxed, and Sofaira's presence brought back memories of much simpler days.

"She's proud of you."

Roland clenched his teeth at the mention of CiCi, "I… I wouldn't say that…"

"I know that you wouldn't. You're like her. Way too modest," she hugged him tight and kissed the top of his head, "I think that you can help your team just as much as they can help you. Just… be the friend to them that you are to Epazote."

"Right…" Roland slowly got up, "Thanks. I'll see you around, okay? You, me, Epazote, and Cayenne can all get lunch sometime. It'll be fun. I even know a nice cafe in town."

"I think that would be wonderful. Sleep well, sweetheart."

He started up the stairs, "Goodnight, Mom…"

* * *

"Ya, an' then he just neva came back up. I was gonna ask you about it, but you lot went ta bed when you got back." Alice walked alongside Arty. The rest of their teams walked behind them, minus Navy. After their night of screaming and running around, he had been the only one not to come back.

"Yeah, we didn't see him on the way back. We just assumed he was back with you guys." Arty turned to Sepia, "Didn't Alice send him to meet up with you?"

Sepia pulled up her scroll and typed out a message. She showed it with a perplexed frown, ' _I tried to tell him to check the halls around the first floor, starting at the main doors.'_

"Weird…" Timbre said as she read the message. "Did you guys try… y'know, _messaging_ Navy last night?"

"We were worried he actually found something, so we found it best to not blow his cover… if he had any that is." Ebon responded.

"You guys didn't think to go looking for him?" Roland held open the main door for the group of students.

Turf shrugged, "I mean, it was like four in the morning. Besides thinking he might have found something, we also thought he might have decided to just use the time for a run around campus or something. He's weird like that."

"Always workin' out that one…" Alice muttered under her breath as she walked outside. "I swear, if he worked on his head as much as his body, he'd be-"

"Nice to finally hear from you guys…"

The five students whipped around to find Navy, still in his wife-beater and sweatpants, standing at attention in the grass right outside the door.

"Navy?!" Alice looked disgusted by his condition; covered in dirt and leaves. He'd obviously been sweating earlier as well. "What in tha _bloody 'ell_ happened ta you?!"

Navy tilted his head to either side, cracking his neck with two sickening crunches. "Hughes told me to search the perimeter of the dorm building. I assumed that she was busy on the inside, being why nobody bothered to come get me. I walked around all night to make sure that the intruder we were looking for didn't escape."

Sepia began signing through a fit of silent laughter. Of course she felt bad, but the fact that he stuck so close to that 'post' was just too much for her.

"Um… let's see…" Roland watched her hands, "She… she meant check the halls, starting with the main door. Did you not see Alabaster when he left?"

Navy's brow furrowed in confusion. "No… I didn't…"

"What about the spider lady?" Timbre put a hand over her mouth to keep from laughing, "Ms. Weaver?"

Navy's brow furrowed further. "No… I didn't… I knew it was strange, that's why I was waiting all night for an update!"

"Hold up, so you missed _two_ people leaving?" Turf looked around the grass, then to the bushes. There was a little rut in the grass that seemed to stop and start between every bush, "Wait, no way… were you walking around the dorms, and then taking cover behind _every_ bush?"

"Of course. Why wouldn't I?"

"And you did this from like four in the morning until now…?" Ebon's mouth hung open in sheer disbelief. He knew that Navy was a little… dependant on orders, but this was ridiculous.

"Well… yes." He snapped his attention to Alice, "So did you guys find the intruder or not?" He suddenly glared to Arty and his team, "Or did Team FARTS over here make it up to send us on a wild goose-chase?"

Alice gently guided Navy towards the door, "No, Navy. Everythin's fine. There wasn't an intruda, now get back upstairs an' take a nap and a showa. I'll explain ta Professa McGouran why you aren't in class."

Navy was livid, "Wait… there… _wasn't_ an intruder?" He turned around as his bare feet hit the carpet of the hall, "Are you kidding me right no-!"

Before he could continue his tirade, Alice closed the door on him. "We'll be seeing you, Navy!" She called out as she continued down the path, her fingers firmly pinching the bridge of her nose, "I knew he was _daft_ , but this is a whole new level for 'im…"

"You know what, Alice?" Arty said, his arms folded his arms behind his head, "I honestly didn't expect anything else."

The previous semester, Alice would've snapped back, but now, she knew Arty was speaking the truth. "I… I didn't eitha…"


	33. V2Ch5: Flare Up

The one thing that Beacon had going for it was that it was nestled across from a smaller lake than Haven. She was forced to use a cheap conditioner without the humidity to give her hair a little extra volume, but it ended up making her already oily hair just a little too oily. At least she didn't have to take an hour every morning to battle her rat's nest with a brush while in Vale. That certainly was a plus. All of that extra time actually gave Dante enough time to eat breakfast for a change.

"Grb mm buk," she ordered through the apple clenched in her teeth. Her fingers worked around a mass of curls in an attempt to bring them together in a ponytail. A few spiraling strands still hung down around her face.

Her brother pretended not to hear her. He stayed slumped over the table, eating his bagel.

The completed ponytail finally sat high up on the back of her head without falling. She palmed the apple in her gauntlet, "You lost an eye, not an ear. I said grab my book, Ahab. I have time to read, so I am not going to pass that up," she pointed to the positively massive book resting beside her brother. Across the front was the title in gold leaf: _The Complete Fiction of H. E. Loverust_.

Ahab groaned and pulled himself up. Despite his physique, he still struggled a bit to lift the book. "I don't understand why you'd bring something like this along, Sister," he held the book over the table in front of her and let it fall, slamming into the wood with a crash, "Why are you even reading one of _his_ books anyways?"

"Because Roland has good taste in literature. You can't get more than five pages into a children's storybook without stopping, so I'd say that your opinion on my reading habits is completely invalid," she opened the book to about the halfway point. There wasn't much that she smiled at, but the stories of the Old Ones always brought a chilling grin to her lips, "It also gives me inspiration for my poems, and you know how important my poetry is to me."

Ahab sneered, "Whatever you wanna tell yourself, Sister." He stood up, grabbing the old white naval jacket from his chair as he did so, "I'm going back for seconds. This school's combat class can be quite the pain in the ass, so I'm making sure I'm not hungry in addition to being bored."

"Don't start anything with him," Dante shot him a glare from over the book.

Ahab chuckled, "What makes you think that I was going to? Besides, we haven't seen our little brother in almost half a year. I have nothing but hugs and noogies to give the little runt of the litter."

"Do I need to repeat myself, Ahab?" she moved to stand from her seat, "I'm not going to pull Mother away from her duties just to tell her that you were being a jerk again. And need I remind you that he's actually _older_ than both of us?"

Ahab slung the jacket over his shoulder, "This ain't Haven, Sister, and Mother's not here right now. If anything happens, I'll do what I've been doing for the past seventeen years," He leaned in close, his mouth near her ear, "Play dumb, plead innocence, and pin it all on Roland." He pulled back and continued back to the far end of the dining hall.

Dante sighed and opened up the pocket-sized book from her belt. The pages were brightly colored and glowing with the familiar light of activated Dust. An opened page glowed with a royal blue haze, "Thou needest lightly tread, for thy ignorance shall only spell dread."

Ahab knew the first line of this particular couplet well, but by the time he realized what was happening, it was already too late. A thin layer of ice coated the bottoms of his sandals, lowering the friction between the soles of his sandals and the tile beneath him. He found his feet flying out from under him. The impact sent a flash of pain through his whole body, making him let out a low groan. The bright light from the windows was blocked out by his sister looking down at him.

A bright red page was held open between the black iron plating of her gauntlet, "I am not going to sit here and let you ruin our team's reputation while we are here. We're not to cause too much of a scene, remember? I don't want Team READ getting into trouble because of you. We're only four weeks into this semester," she looked to her book. Two lines of text was all that she needed to teach him a valuable lesson, "I _will_ call Robin, and I don't think he'll be too pleased to have to deal with you in the middle of combing his coat. Maybe I could get Eden instead, but I'd hate to ruin her good mood now that she's finally out of the velvet stage of her new antlers."

Ahab gagged at just the thought of his teammate's peeling antlers, "Don't remind me."

He pushed himself off the ground and dusted himself off, "Fine. You win, Sister. But if I get the chance to beat the crud out of him during sparring, I _will_ take it. Nothing from the witch's little spellbook is gonna keep me from doing that."

"How about my Gravity Dust debuff? That seems to work pretty well," she placed the book on her belt, "Maybe Lightning Dust? Or how about the Air Dust debuff? Do you doubt my Semblance, Ahab?"

"Of course not. It's helped us in the past, but here's the thing: I _know_ your Semblance. I _know_ how it works. If there's anyone that can avoid your little games, it's _me_."

"Congratulations," she looked back to Roland's book anxiously. Having her reading time interrupted made her feel just a little bit on edge, "but I shouldn't have to use its negative side on you. Now straighten up and let's get going."

"Aw man. I didn't get my seconds." Ahab hoisted himself up with Dante's help. He started to grab his tray, but froze when he heard pages turning.

"Bolts rain down from the heavens, striking down on-"

"Okay! Okay! You win. Geez…" he plopped back down in a seat across from his sister knowing full well that she was not going to be taking her eyes off of him until their combat class began.

* * *

"Hello! How is my wonderful class doing this morning?!" Beacon's most eccentric scatterbrained teacher, Professor Carmen Maple, paced across the battlefield, "Who's ready to kill each other?!"

The students from the other schools looked on in confusion, some in abject terror, but the resident Beacon students didn't look fazed in the slightest.

Carmen winced, "Sorry. It's a joke. I'm still not used to a class-size this… large…" She said as she gestured to the packed room in front of her. "I forget that most of you aren't quite used to my... colloquialisms quite yet."

' _Think Arty's up against Everest for a rematch? I was kinda let down the first time around,'_ Sepia signed to her partner. As much as she wanted to see the new students fight, she really wanted to see what would happen if Arty tried bashing Everest's brain in again. Maybe he wouldn't get so lucky this time…

"I don't know, Sepia. It could honestly go either way at this point. Everest's gotten a bit better and Arty has a bit more of a…" she glanced over to the paintballs on her leader's belt, "destructive arsenal."

"Hey," Arty crossed his arms and leaned his chair back, "I left the Nova Dust in my locker…"

"Let's just hope it doesn't go off." A flat, barely feminine voice said from the row behind them.

"Oh, hey Curie!" Arty almost fell out of his chair, "When… when did you guys get here?"

"Um… when class started? Duh." Midas interjected, "I swear Umber, your attention span must be shorter than your IQ!" He jabbed his index finger at the side of his head.

Curie turned and stared at him as if he were an idiot, which he most certainly was. "I'm not even going to attempt to correct you because I know it won't do anything in the long run."

"Can you guys shut up…?" Roland asked from beside Arty. He kept his eyes glued to a girl in a red cloak sitting on the other side of the arena. Carmen kept going on and on, but none of the words quite got to him. Seeing that girl sit so calmly seriously pissed him off.

"Hey, Roland, you okay there, bud?" the girl in red armor beside Curie asked, "You look pretty pissed, which… I mean… isn't abnormal from what I've gathered."

Of course Titian had to jump in. She'd been doing it ever since Arty introduced her to everyone. He gathered that she not only took his place on Team MTLC, but also his role as team nuisance. Arty's replacement just had to be one to pry, and Team ARTS knew just how much Roland hated prying. "It's a family matter. It isn't your business."

Titian held her hands up defensively, "Woah-kay, man. Just askin'." She leaned over to Curie, whispering in her ear so Roland couldn't hear, "We've been here like… what? A month? I think he already wants to kill me…"

"You're really annoying. Of course he doesn't like you." Curie looked up at the folded over rooster's comb that was Titian's hair, "Remember when you tried to take Ledning and I to a club because we needed to 'socialize'?"

"You two do need to meet people. Just because you live in Atlas doesn't mean you can't live a little," Titian looked over to the boy in the black jacket next to her. Underneath the jacket, he wore a grey hoodie with the hood pulled up, and further below that was a dark gray-scale camouflage t-shirt. She clapped him on the back with her armored hand, "Ain't that right, Ledning?"

He grunted in response.

"I'm just saying that what _you_ call socializing and what _other people_ call socializing may be completely different. I talk to people all the time. I play my games with players from all over Atlas, even Remnant if the global lobbies' pings aren't bad."

"Yeah, behind the cardboard walls that you set up around your bed!" Midas nearly shouted. He covered his mouth to keep from raising his voice again, "I thought you were antisocial before Arty left, but after-"

Curie kicked him in the shin, causing him to slam his knee into the underside of the table.

Arty leaned his head back, "Play nice you guys. Remember, you're representing the _great Atlas Academy_." He said, putting on a fake monotone voice reminiscent of the way General Khidna Léon spoke.

Midas and Titian laughed, possibly a bit too loud.

"And Team MTLC!" Carmen shouted to be heard over Team MTLC's exceedingly important conversation. Beside her stood a tanned girl in a scorched flamenco dress, "Ledning Coyle, come on down!"

Ledning snapped his head forwards and froze.

"I'm sorry, did you not catch that either?" Carmen cupped her hands around her mouth, " **Come on down and fight the walking case of spontaneous human combustion!"** she leaned over to Cayenne, "Sorry dear, you know that I didn't mean that in a bad light."

"Oh no, I'm not offended. I actually took it as a compliment. I'm cool with fire. _Really_ cool with fire…" Cayenne snapped her fingers, causing a little flame to burn right on the end of her thumb like a lighter. She whispered, "It makes the world go round…" while keeping her eyes lasered in on the flame.

Ledning got out of his chair, "What the heck's going on?"

"She picked you for a fight numb-nuts." Titian smacked his rear end, "Now get down there and kick some butt, already. Or are ya too scared to fight a girl and lose?"

Ledning glared back at her, "You know that's not true. I've beaten you and Curie dozens of times over and you know it."

Titian waved him off, "Shoo. You got a fight to take part in."

"Yeah! Come on!" Cayenne adjusted the steel bars attached to her forearm by a pair of red steel bands. It seemed to be some sort of rail system, and undoubtedly went with the scorched crimson contraption hanging from her waist. What was even stranger was the tube running from the bar on her arm to a cylinder on her lower back. It looked like a gas canister, but those hadn't been in conventional use since Dust started seeing widespread application.

"Psh, whatever." Ledning fixed the dull grey bracelets affixed to his wrists before he shoved his hands into his jean pockets. He kept his bored gaze level with those of his bright and happy opponent as he skulked his way towards the arena.

Professor Maple began walking towards the edge of the arena while putting on what appeared to be a welding helmet, "So you two kids have fun, and I'll be watching your aura levels very closely!" she broke into a sprint and hopped over the wall separating the bystanders and the fighters before the force field activated, "Begin!"

"With pleasure," Ledning crossed his hands over his wrists. He flung his arms downwards. With the light whooshing sound of something cutting through the air, the bracelets around his wrists changed before the class's eyes. When he held his fists up to complete his fighting stance, the bracelets had formed two straight blades resting parallel against the top of his hands.

"I see he's still got that whole lead-bending thing going." Arty commented, "Thought he'd get another weapon to use alongside it by now."

Curie sighed, "Nope. Just like his cousin here, he refuses to listen to me. ' _Midas, Chrysos and Drachma are too simple, you need something more… complicated._ Nope. _Ledning, you can't rely one-hundred-percent on your Semblance and Telum Subcinctus all the time._ Nope," she shook her head, "I can't wait to see how this goes."

"Hey," Midas laughed, "Leave my little cuz and his horribly-named trinkets alone. You've tolerated us and our weapons for years now. You can deal for a few more."

Curie tilted her head and narrowed her eyes at him, " _Can I_ , Midas? Can I?"

Their attention flashed back to the battlefield when Cayenne began spinning. Every turn, more and more cinders began to burn around her. The Fire Dust woven into her dress glowed brighter, then flames erupted from the folds of the garment. Amidst the fire tornado that she was creating, she shoved the rails on her arm into the contraption her her side, and the device unfolded into the barrel of a flamethrower with the crimson and bronze head of a warhammer attached to the end.

She stopped her little show, cinders still flying upwards around her. Her 'magical girl transformation' always got some interesting looks from her opponents, "Did you know that lead melts at roughly six-hundred twenty-one point five degrees? Propane burns at three-thousand six-hundred twenty-three degrees. Wanna back down now?"

Ledning didn't like dealing with heat, and judging from the show-off's little dance, he was going to have to deal with a _lot_ of it. "Do you always use theatrics or are you just showing off to those that aren't from Mistral?"

"Oh, I just like to dance. I do it all day every day," the hammerhead burst with flames. The ensuing giggle that came from the once normal-ish girl sent shivers down the spines of the audience, "I also like fire. A lot. Those two things make for a very showy person. There's nothing wrong with that, is there?"

While Ledning and Cayenne prepared to go toe-to-toe, Roland nudged Arty on the arm, "Hey, how much do you care about Ledning…?"

Arty cocked an eyebrow to his partner, "What do you mean by that, Roland?"

"I mean that you might want to say your goodbyes if you care a lot about him. The 'Pyrodancer of Haven' goes a little… overboard when it comes to burning things."

Arty was going to respond, but was cut off by another flash of fire from the battlefield.

Flames exploded around Cayenne's feet. She rocketed towards her opponent with a trail of cinders curling upwards in her wake, then spun around in a tight circle midflight. Her hammer flashed through the air and slammed into Ledning's crossed blades, " _Come on! Let's get to it! Fight me!"_ she shouted with her flames reflecting in the shine of her eyes.

Ledning broke off and ran around the ring of the arena as Cayenne shot bursts of fire towards him. He kept repeating to himself how much he hated fire as he felt the flames lick at his back. Midway around the circle, he jumped up, planting his feet firmly on the wall in front of teams ARTS and MTLC. He looked up to his cousin, "Midas, you're dead for getting me into this."

"But I-" Midas was cut off as Ledning kicked off the wall and backflipped towards Cayenne. The last burst Cayenne shot off sprayed heat and light up the wall and along the inner dome of the forcefield, nearly blinding the other students.

 _How about we try this on for size since you like to melt things so much?_ Ledning thought to himself as he unclasped his bracelets and threw them to the side of the ring.

"O-hoo-hoo-hoo! Is that a forfeit?" Cayenne held her weapon across her chest in preparation for another hammerswing, "Come on! Don't give up! _The show has only just begun!"_

 _You bet it has_. Ledning had to twist in midair to avoid another plume. He was glad to finally be the one attacking. He caught Cayenne off-guard by connecting his foot to her face and sending her sliding back.

"Woohoo! Go Ledning!" Midas cheered from the stands.

Epazote walked between the aisles, and he took a seat beside Roland once he made it to his destination, "Hey, thought I'd get a better view of the fight. The girls were getting a little too excitable…" he pointed to the left and a few rows down at a Faunus cowgirl with horns and a redheaded schoolgirl who were clapping and cheering loudly.

"Not surprised…" Roland looked up to Midas, "By the way, I wouldn't be cheering for Ledning too much…"

"What's that supposed to mean? Look at him!" He gestured to the battlefield, where Ledning and Cayenne were now locked in an up-close-and-personal brawl. Ledning was using his fists and feet while Cayenne was just fine with her warhammer, "I'd say he's holding his own pretty well!"

"She's your girlfriend, so I'll let you explain…" Roland kept his eyes on Cayenne's warhammer. Not even a wisp of flames came from her weapon, which wasn't a good sign for Ledning.

"Right…" Epazote adjusted his glasses, "See, Cayenne is all about freaking people out. Her goal is to do whatever is most inconvenient for her opponent in a fight, Grimm or human, hence the dancing. A moving target is hard enough to hit, but someone who moves as much as her is even more so," he leaned in closer to get a better look at her hands, "You see, _she's_ the ignition switch for her flames for the most part, and I think she's trying to make Ledning think that the fire from her weapon isn't an issue anymore. She wants him to focus on the melee aspect, not the firepower. After all, the gas leaking from her wristband isn't visible to the naked eye, so the more distractions the better."

Midas shot to his feet and cupped his hands around his mouth, " _LEDNING!_ _SHE'S NOT DONE WITH THE FIRE!_ "

The other teens around him just stared at him.

Curie pinched the bridge of her nose, "You are such a child… you know that?"

"The what?" Ledning snapped his neck back as he held Cayenne's weapon back with his forearm. He threw a kick to her side, knocking her away from him. He saw his chance to finish the fight as he made a mad dash towards her, his fist reared back to deliver the final punch.

" _The_ _ **fire**_ _!"_ Cayenne sang while her hammer ignited, only the flames didn't stop there. It burst into the air, sending fire rippling out around her and Ledning.

"Crap… I can't see them anymore!" Timbre said as she moved around in a vain attempt to see the two fighters within the smoke and flames.

Ledning coughed and tried to wave the smoke away from his face as the flames died down bit by bit. The fire hurt a lot, but he was still on his feet and ready to fight.

He didn't see the shadow flying at him through the opaque grey veil.

The room watched as Ledning came flying out of the burning arena and slammed against the force field for everyone to see. He looked like a big grey bug splattered on a windshield. Everyone winced as they watched him slowly peel off and fall back into the circle.

Rabid cheering came from the cowgirl and the schoolgirl on the row to Cayenne's back.

"Did I pass?" Cayenne detached her weapon and clasped it to her side.

Carmen slowly lifted up her welding helmet and deactivated the force field, "Yeah! Yeah you did!" she hopped over the dividing wall and landed next to Ledning, "Ledning as well!" She winced as she watched wisps of smoke curl off of Ledning's body. "Are you alright? You look a little… charred…"

"Just…" he coughed and held his stomach, "a bit… crispy."

"Yeah, that happens a lot around here…" she looked up to Alice, who was looking on with a mixture of excitement and horror on her face, "She blew up a caveman with a Queen of Hearts one time!"

Ledning didn't know if it was the hammer to the ribs, the smoke inhalation, or the belly flop into the forcefield, but he swore he heard the maniacal teacher standing next to him say 'blew up a caveman with a Queen of Hearts.' "What the… heck are you talkin' about, lady?..."

"One of my students. She blew up a caveman with a Queen of Hearts. He's fine, but it was certainly a show," Carmen pulled him up by the arm, "You can ask him after class. He stands out in a crowd."

Ledning was too dazed to try to process anything. He just accepted his loss, grabbed his bracelets, and returned to his team.

"Phew!" Arty waved his hand in front of his face, "Is someone cooking barbecue, because something smells _burnt_."

"Yeah, you should know, eh?" Midas reached over the desk and poke the top of Arty's head, "Wink, wink."

Ledning sneered, "Shut up, before I plant my foot up your-"

" _Wooo-hoo!"_ Cayenne ran up from behind Ledning and tackled Epazote in a big hug, "The new coupler you put on the fuel cylinder is just what I needed! It _really_ maximized my output!" she sat in his lap, looked up at Ledning, and held out a hand to him, "Thanks for helping me test it out, Ledning! Sorry if I got too rough out there! Good fight, though!"

Ledning grumbled, but he shook her hand, "Yeah. Sure."

"Great!" Cayenne scooted off Epazote's lap to squeeze in between him and Roland, "Cool if I stay here for the next fight?"

"Arty's call," Roland shrugged.

Again, Arty cocked an eyebrow, "Why would I object to that?" he turned to Cayenne, "I'm fine if you stick over here. The one you should be asking is Ledning!"

They all turned to find him with his hood pulled over his face and his feet on the desk. Either he was sleeping or he just didn't care to talk.

"He says it's okay." Titian said with a slight smile.

"Great!" Cayenne leaned her head on Epazote's shoulder, "It's nice to get away from Saffron and Pepper for a bit…" she glanced over at Team ARTS, "So does anyone know who's next, or…?"

"I do! I do!" Carmen jumped and waved her arms from the center of the battlefield, "Don't tell anyone, but I snuck the teacher's lesson plan from her office this morning!" she turned on her heels to look at Team FREZ, "You know, like Rime and Zero did while everyone was at breakfast! How about they tell us who is next?!"

Frost looked accusingly to the aforementioned teammates. "You two _what_?"

Rime leaned over to Zero and whispered, "Play it cool. Maybe they'll stop being mad if we just play dumb."

"Oh, _I'm_ not mad. _I_ think it's hilarious. Your _leader_ is mad, so I'll let _her_ decide what punishment is appropriate for you two!" Carmen's usual maniacal grin was showing once again, "So, tell me who's up next!"

Rime and Zero sank into their seats.

"Looks like the gig's up, Z." Rime whined. The whole room was looking at them. She sat up and cleared her throat. "It's…" she looked at the pen ink scribbled on her hand, "Dan… Danfe Werls… and… Sahoola Tanif?... It's a bit smeared… but… yeah..."

"That'd be Dante Wells…" the girl in the red cloak Roland had been watching stood with her hands clutched around _The Complete Fiction of H. E. Loverust_. She caught the looks that her half-brother was giving her, but brushed them off. It was either because she had ignored him since she had gotten to Beacon, or because she had one of his books. Either was likely.

"And Shorla Tamil." A pale girl in mostly black with shoulder-length dark purple hair stood up near Opal. Everything about the leader of Team STON screamed darkness and goth, from the piercings to the shades of black, grey, and purple she wore. Even after the first few weeks, there weren't many that could say they felt comfortable being around her.

"Woo! Go get 'em, Shorla!" Opal cheered as she nudged the other girl towards the aisle. The other two members of Team STON to her side clapped along with the rest of the room, both boys obviously unfazed by Opal's enthusiasm.

"Dante of Team READ versus Shorla of Team STON," Carmen paced the battlefield, "And yes, that's pronounced like 'red' and like another name for a rock. I wish they would put the pronunciations of team names in the pamphlets they hand out for the tournament… Maybe if they put me in charge of actually designing them for once instead of just being the one printing them…"

"Wait… we got pamphlets?" Arty asked, obviously confused.

"Um… yeah." Timbre affirmed, "Don't you remember? They handed them out during the welcoming ceremony."

"Oh…" Arty reached for his backpack. He opened it and gazed at the mess of objects inside. "I… uh… must have shoved it in my bag."

For once, Timbre, Roland, and Sepia all shared the same eye roll at their scatterbrained leader.

' _You think he even realizes yet?'_ Timbre signed as Arty was distracted by rummaging through his bag. She was still confident that his sign language skills weren't good enough to understand the conversation.

' _Not in the slightest,'_ Sepia signed back, ' _Let him figure it out on his own.'_

' _Or just wait until the tournament. That'd be even better,'_ Roland jumped in.

Carmen caught a few of the words in the exchange between Team ARTS. Poor Arty didn't have the slightest clue as to what was going on. She poked at her scroll and pulled up the aura meters for Dante and Shorla, "So, from the deserts of Vacuo to the cliffs of Mistral! Who will win this epic battle for the ages?!"

"I'd _hardly_ call it that." Shorla said as she entered the arena. "It's just sparring…"

Dante rolled her eyes, "I'm with you on that… No need to make it more than it is…" she walked up next to Shorla, "It seems enthusiasm and optimism isn't lacking around here. I haven't yet met an instructor here without a few screws loose."

"I know right?" Shorla agreed. It was weird finding someone with shared views on Beacon, but it was a welcomed experience.

"Can you two just talk about me behind my back like everybody else...?" Carmen trudged over to the dividing wall and proceeded to hop over it once more. This time around, she looked far more dejected, but brightened up when she turned back to look at the contenders, "Or not. I mean, I don't get my feelings hurt that easily! Now please begin!"

The field was up, and the two girls took their battle stances.

Dante held her pocket-sized Dust book in the gauntlet of her left hand. She spun in a circle while drawing a Fire Dust tipped fire-poker, her crimson cloak rippling through the air. Dazzling white, glistening silver, then cool black descended down her chestpiece plate-by-plate, as was with the gauntlet on her left hand and brace over her right forearm. Armored boots that traveled up to her knees slammed down in their fighting stance, both gleaming with the same white, to grey, to black pattern. Hazel eyes fell on Shorla. Cinders burst off of the end of fire-poker aimed at the goth's nose ring.

"Shall we?" Dante's eye narrowed on her opponent.

Shorla sneered, "Aaaand with that, you lost my respect. What happened to 'no need to make it more than it is?'" Shorla held her arms out away from her hips. The room let out a shared gasp as dark ovals of shadow that almost looked like tears in the air itself appeared to either side of her. Her hands quickly dipped in, disappearing into the darkness rather than coming out the other side like one would expect. When she retracted her hands, the tears vanished and she was left brandishing purple crystal throwing knives, three in each hand. "Whatever. Let's just get this over with." She slowly lowered her right arm and pointed the three blades towards Dante, completing their preparatory stand-off.

"Right," Dante took a step back. She thought for a moment. The fight was technically on, but… "Would you mind if I read a poem to start things off? Think of it as a friendly gesture."

Shorla rolled her eyes, "You're _still_ not done yet?! Here I thought that last Haven girl was a show off… Is _everyone_ from Mistral like that?"

"I'm just trying to make a good impression on everyone here! I mean, I would hate to make the audience think that I had any ill will against you, Shorla. This is just… a reminder that I want nothing more than to walk away from this as friends," Dante waved her fire-poker around as she spoke, "So may I?"

She really didn't want to, but Shorla complied, "Sure. Whatever. Just get this over with so I can get out of here."

While Dante flipped through the pages of her book, Roland nudged Arty.

He leaned in closer to his leader, "You know how I like to fake people out when I can? Fight a little dirty?"

"Yeah?"

"My sis puts me to shame…" he pointed down to the book that Dante was still flipping through, "Care to tell me what's in those pages, Dust Devil?"

"Oh… Oh no… Don't tell me that those pages are-"

"Ah! Here we are!" Dante made a show of flipping to the page that she was seeking. It glimmered with a white haze, "Let wind weave and flow," her boots began glowing with a faint white light, "Through my words, body, and soul," gusts caught the hem of her cloak, making it billow out, "And bring victory."

Dante's lower half burned with white light. The soles of her boots hovered a mere inch from the ground, then slammed down into the tiles. She rocketed towards Shorla, her fire-poker raised to strike.

Shorla wanted to point out that Dante's "poem" didn't rhyme at all, but was suddenly faced with having to deflect a razor-sharp fire-poker with her knives. The only way she knew how was to bat it away with quick horizontal swipes with her arms, hitting the poker in the side with her own weapons before it could hit her. Dante's mobility had caught her off guard, but catching people off guard was _her_ specialty.

Another tear, larger than the ones that Shorla used to retrieve her knives, appeared beneath Dante's feet.

 _Gravity might have been a better option…_ Dante thought to herself while falling into the tear between time and space. When she came out the other end, she felt Shorla's boot slam into her spine. Air Dust poofed out from around her while she tumbled across the battlefield, her mobility buff gone.

"Okay then…" she spat out a thick wad of watered down Air Dust onto the tile and got back up, "You're not one for poetry… are you?"

Shorla twirled a knife between her fingers, "No, I am. Yours is just too… sappy… and uplifting." She began throwing her knives one at a time towards Dante, their violet crystalline blades glinting in the harsh lighting of the arena.

"It's not meant to be enjoyed. It's meant to be used in a fight!" Dante ducked to her right to avoid two blades, then kicked off to the left. She sprinted around the area, jumping over and weaving around Shorla's knives, "So you can make portals? What happens if you don't give one an exit?"

"Trust me," Shorla disappeared into a portal that manifested behind her.

"You don't want to find out,"

Dante swiveled to find Shorla looking at her from another portal that had opened up immediately in front of her. The sole of Shorla's boot connected with her face and sent her slamming onto her back.

Shorla held a fistful of knives down towards Dante, "So, you ready to take your loss and let me be done with this class? Or are you gonna try and keep wasting my time?"

The fight was practically over for Dante. Nowhere to run. Nowhere to hide. There was no way that she was going to get enough time to set up a buff or debuff, nor was there enough time to even get up.

"Take my loss? That's the thing about a Wells, Shorla," Dante twisted the grip on her fire-poker. It folded back and seemed to coil up, leaving a puny black steel pistol with a wide barrel. She leveled it at Shorla's head, but didn't shoot, "We don't give up until the bitter end."

Shorla reared her arm back, ready to continue her barrage on her pinned opponent. "Shooting me point blank? That's pretty dirty."

Just as she had hoped, Dante heard the faint whooshing that accompanied Shorla's portals as they opened. Though the fight was fast-paced and hard to follow even for the combatants, Dante had caught on to some of her opponent's patterns. The most important of which was Shorla's seemingly instinctual response to open a portal somewhere to collect her knives after she threw them, which explained how she never seemed to run out. It was the same couple of handfuls being thrown each time.

"Yeah, I suppose it would be!" Dante whipped the pistol back behind her head and fired. A blazing ball of fire shot into the black void that Shorla had created. It flashed brilliantly inside whatever pocket dimension lied on the other side, casting out orange light from the portal behind her as well as each smaller portal Shorla had scattered around.

Shorla stumbled backward, a fist next to her head. She was blinded. "Okay! _Not. Cool._ " Shorla looked around, trying to gauge where she had left Dante. Unfortunately for her, Dante wasn't on the ground. She started to make out the standing red form in front of her. It became more detailed as her vision cleared. "I think I'd rather you go back to hearing your bad poetry."

This little _wench_ thought that she could go on insulting her poetry of all things, an offense like that couldn't just be written off. If Shorla wanted to take a shot at her art, then Dante was happy to shoot back.

"Let's dial back a bit. You think what I did was not cool? Would you like to know what I think is not cool?" her boot slammed into the pit of Shorla's stomach, twisted her ankle to grind it in, and sent her flying into the edge of the arena, "You. Your style is absolutely rancid, your nose ring and bangles were only fashionable forty years ago, and your roots are showing! You smell like dirt and poser! Now get up and put up a real fight!"

Shorla looked up to her opponent as she made her way towards her. After a short series of clicks, the flare gun was back to a fire-poker, and the white hot point was aimed right at her.

"Get up unless you want to disgrace you and your team by forfeiting."

Shorla wanted to punch the smug look off her face. She sneered and shook her head. "Not even close, Red." She held her palms against the smooth tile. The white faded to a dark black as the Vacuan sank into nothingness.

The portal closed, leaving Dante in the arena alone.

Dante let out a frustrated shout and stomped around in a circle, "Oh, _real_ mature! Just hop into a portal and get ready to surprise me! _Nice!_ " she was losing her composure fast. Shorla's ability ticked her off, but it also managed to psych her out. It was dark, slimy, and even eldritch... a lot like… "Loverust…"

The fire-poker morphed back into its flare gun form. If Shorla wanted to play on the side of dark, then she could play on the side of light. She could fight the dark. She already read so much about what mere mortals have experienced in the incomprehensible. This was just a fight with a girl who could borrow the incomprehensible. This was nothing.

She spoke to the air around her, "Alright then. I'll play your games. Bring it on."

The whole room watched as small pinpricks of black formed a dome over Dante's head. A matching set dotted the floor around her.

She cursed as she took in the sheer number of portals looming around her. Too many to take account for and too small to get a good shot with her flare gun. She opened her book to a bright red page in an attempt to find something that might flush Shorla out of her hiding spot. "I don't know what you're playing at, but I'll get you out of there, one way or ano-"

Dante was interrupted by knives raining down from above her.

"Ow! Ow! Ow!" she darted off in a vain attempt to get away from the crystalline knife rain, "This is ridiculous!"

Pages turned in the frantic storm whipping up in her book of Dust poetry.

From the stands, Team ARTS and their guests watched on.

"I think Shorla's outdoing you, Cai…" Epazote piped up.

Grinding of steel came from the side of Cayenne's dress, "No one can outdo me!" she shouted with her warhammer raised. Fire erupted upwards from the barrel of the flamethrower.

Everyone around her watched on in wide-eyed terror. Titian was the first to speak up.

"Okay, hot-stuff, you had your turn. Let those two have their fight."

Cayenne gritted her teeth together and began shouting at the top of her lungs, "Maple! I wanna fight Shorla sometime!"

"I'll mark it down!" Professor Maple called back with her eyes trained on Dante.

"Good!" Cayenne finally simmered down. She could feel the eyes of Team MTLC on the back of her head as she sat back down, "So Dante's in a bind, huh?"

' _Yeah, no kidding! Roland told me that she knew what she was doing, but she just seems like a Salmon Faunus out of water!'_ Sepia signed to the group.

Timbre furrowed her brow at her partner, "Why does it have to be Salmon _Faunus_?... They'd still be able to breathe out of water, wouldn't they?"

"Not if they got the gills," Roland pointed out without taking his eyes off of the fight, "I mean, it's not unreasonable. My grandmother had bumblebee wings and my grandfather had gator teeth. Faunus have a wide range of… things we can be."

"How did a _bumblebee_ and an _alligator_ lead to _otters_?" Arty questioned incredulously.

"Two different Faunus having a baby leads to a random type of Faunus. Faunus plus human usually results in the same type of Faunus as the Faunus parent, but can result in a human."

Epazote raised his hand, "Hey-yo."

Roland nodded, "Any more questions about the gators and the bees?"

Arty shook his head, "Nope. I think I'm good. Gonna go back to watching this fight your sister's in." He watched as a knife bounced hard off of Dante's back. "Looks like she's still having trouble with that goth girl's attack. Honestly, I think this counts more as a 'Meteor Shower' than Xannie and Lurida's little… thing with their weapons."

"Yeah, it looks like she might… oh, there it is," Roland seemed to smile a bit when Dante opened her book to a purple page, "She found the page that she wanted."

Arty watched on in anticipation as Dante began rattling off some prose containing the words "float", "void", and, most worryingly, "oblivion". "Oh god. That's…"

"Gravity Dust…" Timbre finished. "I used to be fine with that stuff. You know, before I met _you_ , Arty."

"Thanks, Timbre. I'm happy I could make you fear the super-powerful near- _magical_ substance that can actually _alter the direction of gravity_. Glad to know I had to be the one to do that for you."

A response might have came had it not been for the violet flash around the knives. Everyone was stunned into silence.

The knives froze in midair, all of them drifting off in random directions. Through it all, Dante was smiling wide, "Look at that! I guess the debuff can go through your little portals! Fascinating!"

Dante immediately stopped her jeers towards Shorla when she heard a small jingling from behind. Turning slowly, she found another portal, larger than the others and not following the pattern of the ones used in the knife-rain. Coming out of the portal was a pale arm with painted black fingernails and a collection of jingling silver bracelets. It was reaching slowly for one of the floating weapons. The owner was obviously struggling to work through the new lack of a gravitational field.

 _Looks like your fashion choices backfired on you._ Dante thought while aiming her flare gun, "Care if I give you a _hand_?"

Shorla's hand began to retract, but not in time to avoid the burning ball of Fire Dust. It exploded inside of the portal, sending orange light bursting out from each miniature portal overhead and below.

Against her whim, a new portal opened up, puking Shorla out onto the floor. She skidded to a stop, rubbing her eyes and shouting in pain. With gravity returning back to normal, her floating knives fell to the ground. Through the stinging in her retinas, she heard one crystal blade clatter to the ground next to her. Dante's boots began stomping up to her, and she reached for the knife instinctively, aiming it towards the noise. "Don't think you've won so easily! I'm not done yet!"

Dante aimed her flare gun at Shorla's forehead, "Look, I'm going to shoot you in the head while you throw your knife at my face. Both of us are going to recover, then we're going to go through this whole ordeal again. That's going to repeat until either our instructor over there pulls us out of the ring or until one of us falls below that 15% threshold. I don't know about you, but neither sound particularly appealing to me."

Shorla looked down the glowing barrel of the flare gun as she pondered over her opponent's words. She didn't want to admit it, but Dante was right. She let out an audible groan and rolled her eyes, "Care to call it a draw then, or do you still want to shoot me in the face because of your whole 'to the bitter end' spiel?"

"I'm a poet. I say a lot of things in the heat of the moment if I think that they sound good," Dante holstered her gun and put away her book, "I would really love to get back to my book. I am satisfied with a draw."

Shorla looked to her team. None of them would be too upset considering the show they put on, but she didn't care. Theatrics weren't her specialty. That was Opal's job, and she'd still be talking about this fight for days. Without a word, she let her knife disappear into a portal and held out a hand to Dante.

"I'm glad," Dante hoisted her opponent up, "Professor Maple! Can you take down the barrier so we can get on with the lesson?"

"Yeah… of course…" Carmen tapped her scroll to take the force field down. She hadn't expected the fight to simply fizzle out. When she paired up the goth and poet, she was planning on a far more brutal battle.

Once the pair of students left the arena, Carmen hopped back in and began tapping down notes, "That actually concludes today's lesson, I believe. We hit every point that I wanted to… so…" she shut her scroll and forced a smile to her students, "Have a great rest of your day, avoid Alabaster until my class is technically supposed to end, and tell him that you're running a very real errand for me if you get caught! See you guys later!"

"Wait…" Curie began to complain, "Class is over? That would _never_ fly back at Atlas."

Midas threw his hands up and cheered, "I _love_ it here!"

"Yeah, you guys are going to have to forgive her." Timbre stood up with the others as the room began to file out, "Carmen can be a bit… scatterbrained. You'll just have to learn to get used to it," she pat her leader on the back, "but you guys are used to Arty. He doesn't meet Carmen's levels, but he's _pretty_ close. You find the pamphlet yet, Painter-Boy?"

No matter how much he tried, he couldn't find the elusive pamphlet in his backpack. "No… I didn't."

"Yeah, because I Inkhearted it out when you looked up at the fight for a few seconds," Roland held up a crumpled piece of multicolored paper. It was clear which instructor was put in charge of printing them after they were written up.

Arty scowled at him, "Roland… why would you do that to me?"

"I'm angry with my sister and was looking for an outlet to express my feelings that wouldn't jeopardize the relationship with my team," Roland kept his eyes locked on Arty's the whole time. After a few beats of silence, he burst out laughing, "Kidding. I just thought it would be funny. Well, I wasn't kidding about my sister. I'm pretty angry with her, but that's a family matter. Taking the pamphlet was just me screwing with you."

Arty snatched the pamphlet from his partner's hand. Looking at the cover, he winced upon looking at the horribly clashing color scheme. Carmen's favorite. The symbol of the island of Vytal, which doubled as the emblem for the Vytal Festival and combined the symbols of the four kingdoms into one, was printed on the front of the crinkled paper. Arty read the small subtitle; ' _Participating Teams and Rules'_.

"Again, how did I forget about this?" Being a regular watcher of the Vytal Festival Tournament, he decided to skip the rules. He opened it up and began to scan through the lists of participating teams, which were conveniently sorted by kingdom.

A few familiar names jumped out at him, including his own friends Team MTLC under Atlas and Roland's friends from Team SPCE under Mistral. Most of the names he recognized were under Vale, obviously. Team GLXY made it, of course. By some miracle, Team ASHS made it in as well. A lot of first years also made the list.

The name of every team in their orientation group were listed under the word ' _Vale'_.

Arty's jaw dropped. "We… we're…"

Midas patted his friend on the back. "Glad you could join the club, bud. Took you long enough."

Curie shook her head, "I honestly don't know how you didn't realize it when you saw we were taking a class called 'First-Year Tournament Sparring'."

Arty finally managed to get out the thought that was caught in his head, " _ **TEAM ARTS IS ACTUALLY IN THE TOURNAMENT?!"**_


	34. V2Ch6: Seeing Red

" _THIS IS COMPLETE AND UTTER BULLSH-AAGH!"_ The shatter of glass shook the dormitory lounge when a plastic gaming controller shot through the window behind the TV. Curie shakily stood from her spot on the floor, " _I AM THE TOP OF THE GRANDMASTER TIER IN HUNTSMAN'S REQUIEM AND I WILL NOT ACCEPT LOSING TO SOMEONE WHO IS NOT EVEN RANKED!"_

Beside Curie's legs was Sepia. Five fingers were splayed out on one hand, and a big fat zero was made with the other. She was on a roll with Curie, and she showed no signs of stopping her onslaught.

"Aw man…" Titian groaned from the couch behind them, "I closed that window in hopes that your controller would stop ending up outside, Curie." she stood up and walked over to the window, sitting down on the sill to face her teammate, "I swear if I have to go get it one more time, I'm taking away all of your games." Jokingly, she held her nose and leaned back, falling straight out the window to the grass below like a diver over the side of a boat.

"Don't you dare touch them…" Curie muttered angrily under her breath.

Epazote stepped over to Sepia and Curie with a plate of freshly microwaved burritos and plastic forks. Steam whipped up off of them, fogging up his glasses and fogging up Curie's even more, "I remember Sepia mentioning that she's pretty good at games, but this is ridiculous. You should play in tournaments, Seps."

Sepia swapped the setting on her scroll in order to type out a message while Curie slid a burrito onto her plate with one of the forks. She waved to get their attention and look at her scroll, ' _Nah. I just play for fun. It isn't like I take it seriously.'_

Curie snapped a plastic fork in her hand as she gritted her teeth.

"You… you… uh… need a new fork…?" Epazote held up another one of the plastic forks.

She picked up the burrito and ripped a bite off of one end. "No. No I do not."

"Why don't you guys get that girl set up to do her placement matches? I kinda wanna know what happens if Seps gets in ranked," Cayenne walked up next to Epazote with a hand on her hip and sweat on her brow. Instead of her usual flamenco dress, she wore skinny jeans and a red tank top. She even had her hair down.

"If _Seps_ ranks above me, I'll scream." Curie grumbled.

Once again, Sepia held up her scroll, ' _That could be pretty fun, I guess. Obviously I'd rank above Curie. Where about would that put me?'_

"She's been #1 in Atlas and top five in all of Remnant for the past three years." Titian said as she climbed back into the room. Curie's custom gaming controller was surprisingly still in one piece. "She reminds us about it constantly."

Curie crossed her arms defensively. "I take great pride in my skill, Titian. I refuse to let anybody take my place."

"Looks like you'll have to if Seps gets on," Cayenne pointed out while standing on one foot with her leg out behind her. Apparently ballet was the easiest dance to have a regular conversation through, or the most showy.

Curie pointed back at Cayenne, " _I won't let my place be taken! I will defend it to the DEATH!_ "

On the other side of the dorm lounge, closer to the door, Arty and Roland sat at the table with a mess of supplies in front of them including plastic casings, bags of powdered Dust, jugs of ink and paint, and various bits of metal used to construct explosives. They were busy at work making grenades and paintballs.

Roland rolled his eyes, "C'mon, Curie. It's just a-"

Arty's eyes widened and he jumped to his feet to clasp a hand over Roland's mouth, nearly knocking over the container of red-hot paint infused with Fire Dust off the table. Had it hit the ground, it could have easily blown the whole dorm sky-high, but he was preventing a much bigger disaster. He kept his voice down and whispered harshly, "Don't _ever_ say that to her, Roland. She takes her games _very_ seriously. Telling her that 'it's just a game' is basically like telling her that you don't value your own life."

Roland yanked Arty's hand off his face to get a word in, "To be fair, I think she'll kill Sepia way before me," he nudged his partner away. He glanced at the red grenade that he was working on cautiously. It was missing its pin, "By the way, was that the one I was just finishing up…?"

Arty looked down to the grenade in Roland's hand. Its pin was hanging loosely around his pinky finger, "Oh crap…"

" _IT'S LIVE!"_ Roland shouted. He waved his hand towards the window, sending the grenade flying towards the controller-shaped hole in the glass. Unfortunately for him and the rest of the room, the explosive glanced harmlessly off of the window frame and into Sepia's lap.

If it was possible, Sepia would have screamed at this panicked game of hot potato. She threw the grenade to Curie in hopes that her aim might have been better than Roland's. After all, she did throw the controller through the window five times so far.

Curie wasn't angry at the live explosive in her hands like she was with the game. She was terrified of it. After yelling and bouncing it around between her hands, she underhand-tossed it quickly towards Cayenne.

"Thanks!" Cayenne happily caught the grenade and held it in front of her face to watch the tremendous Fire Dust explosion that was to come. Her aura could take the blow, and those sweet flames would be worth it. The orb began to tremble, ready to release all of its pent-up energy.

Epazote snatched the grenade out of her hands, "Why would you throw it to her?! Why _her_ of everyone here?!" he pitched the grenade at Arty in hopes that the guy with so much experience with Dust would know what to do.

"I'm sitting next to nearly ten gallons of Dust paint and you throw it back over _here_!?" Arty began to panic as Roland's ink grenade began to glow a bright red in his hands, aggravated by being touched by so many active auras. Most everyone around him ducked for cover... except for Cayenne and Titian. Arty didn't have a choice. He was going to be in a world of hurt in a matter of seconds. He shut his eyes and waited for the explosion.

' _Is this some sort of karma for what I did to Atlas Academy?_ ' He thought to himself.

Titian sprinted across the room. In the little game of 'Pass-Around-The-Deadly-Explosive-in-the-Middle-of-a-Crowded-Room', she couldn't get a hold of the live grenade sooner. She clasped a hand around the device in Arty's hands. The plastic casing and metal inner-workings quickly crumbled away in a matter of seconds, leaving Arty holding a swirling mess of dripping red and black ink.

Arty slowly opened his eyes, expecting to see what version of the afterlife awaited him, but instead he found the same lounge with the same broken window and same scared friends taking cover from the imminent explosion. He looked to his hands in bewilderment, "What the?... Titian? What di-"

"There. That was a close one!" Titian wiped her brow as she gestured to the liquid dripping to the floor from between Arty's fingers.

"Did you just disappear the grenade?!" Cayenne shouted. She looked as if Titian had just kicked a puppy.

"Was that even a sentence, Cai…?" Epazote mumbled while slowly standing up from behind the couch.

Titian snickered as she waggled her fingers. "Semblance. Can kinda… dissolve things. Growing up, people told me that it would cause nothing but trouble, but I just saved Beacon Academy the costs of repairing more damage caused by Team ARTS!... Have I really not told you guys about it already?"

Curie pinched her nose as the rest of the room shook their heads.

"Huh… that really should be the customary greeting for Huntsmen-in-training like us. Like, 'Hi, my name's Titian Mars. I'm from Atlas. I'm a first year. I'm in Team MTLC. My Semblance can dissolve things. How about you?'"

Curie shook her head, "Your Semblance doesn't _dissolve_ things, Titian, it _oxidizes_ them. There's a _huge_ difference."

Titian waved her off dismissively. "Oxidize, schmoxidize. It's easier to explain if I just say 'dissolve'."

"But that's _wrong_."

"Don't care. It gets the point across."

"Bu-"  
"I. Don't. Care. Curie."

"Thanks for oxi-dissolving my grenade… I guess…" Roland put a hand over Arty's. The ink peeled off and formed a floating sphere above their hands, "I'll just… repurpose this," he mumbled while putting the ink into a new casing.

"Don't want to go back to the shop and tell Perry you accidentally almost blew up the dorm… again?" Arty laughed.

"Yeah, if you want me to tell her what happened to that Nova Dust mix that we picked up last week. How much of it did you spill when you tripped on the way to the airships? Remember how you blew a chunk out of the sidewalk?" Roland put a new fuse and pin on the casing, "Do you remember running away and hoping that no one saw us, Arty?"

"It's not my fault your tail got in the way!"

As the two partners continued bickering, Cayenne leaned over to Sepia. "So… who's Perry? Is that someone I should know, because she sounds like someone I'd like to know."

Sepia held up her scroll once again, ' _The Dust shopkeeper that supplies them with their dangerous Dust mixtures,'_ she thought for a few moments, ' _And no. I will not get you any Nova Dust or any other weird mixture. Not a Magma and Fire mixture either.'_

"Drat…" Cayenne snapped her fingers, "You know me too well already, Seps…"

The excitement slowly began dying down within the lounge. Curie and Sepia kept playing games, Titian and Epazote watched, Cayenne kept dancing as always, and Arty and Roland went back to making explosives. It was all quiet and peaceful despite their rapid heart rates.

The peace was broken when there came a knocking at the main door.

"Guys! There's someone at the _doooor_!" Curie yelled, her eyes glued to the screen.

"We heard, Curie. Roland? You mind getting that?" Arty was staring intently as he gently filled the plastic shell of a paintball with yellow paint, "I would, but I don't want to fry my fingers off."

"Right…" Roland set a grenade filled with yellow and red ink right in Arty's field of view, "Careful with the pin on that one. It's a little… loose," he began heading for the door.

"Har har." Arty added sarcastically.

Roland pulled open the door, "What's u-" he froze.

"Are you alright?" Dante stood in the doorway with a pile of books in her arms, "I was just coming to drop off your mother's books, and to tell you that Father's shipment has arrived…" she nodded to a massive wooden crate resting on the sidewalk.

Silence fell over the two once again. Neither quite knew what to say. It had been months since they had seen each other in person, but there still hadn't been a heartfelt reunion between them. Quite the opposite, actually.

"Right, sorry for being a little shocked that the sister that has refused to speak to me for six weeks suddenly decides to show up at my dorm building with my things," Roland settled a glare on his sister. Every time that he even attempted to talk to her since the beginning of the semester ended with her rushing off.

Dante pushed the books into his arms, "Is that any way to greet your sister?" she stepped past him and into the lounge with the other students. Unsurprisingly, she was decked out in her full battle attire down to the red cloak over her monochromatic plate armor, "I found your teammate, Timbre, with some of your other friends. Apparently her, some girl named Roma, and another named Alicia are going down to Vale for a spa day. A nice, calm weekend would be good for you too, Roland. She said that you were still at the dorm… and that you seemed upset with me."

"You mean Rime and Alice…" Roland dumped the books on the table in front of Arty, "Look, can we take this somewhere private?" he glanced to the others, "It's awkward for them."

He looked to Arty, who normally would've introduced himself and welcomed the new addition to the group, but it was obvious that he could feel the tension in the air. Ever since her match with Shorla, Dante and her bizarre Semblance had been spoken about throughout Beacon. Understandable given the fact that the first-years in the Vytal Tournament all watched her hold her own against a girl who could virtually teleport. Looking around the room, Roland noticed that everyone else had stopped what they were doing. They must have felt it too, most notably Cayenne and Epazote.

"Take what somewhere private? I would love to just make friends with your friends now that I'm not so busy." Dante stepped up behind the couch to watch Sepia and Curie play their game, "And I would hate to miss out on this… game…"

As Dante stepped around to take a seat, Epazote and Cayenne tried to hide their faces and avoid eye contact with her as much as possible. Despite going to the same school and being in the same year, Team SPCE and Team READ never really… got along very well. Besides that, Epazote just thought Dante was scary.

"Um… Girl in green, what exactly is the goal in this ga-"

"Shh."

"Excu-"

"I said _shhhhhhhh_. Don't break my groove! I might actually beat Sepia this ti-MOTHER-!" Curie threw the controller again. Luckily for Titian, she wouldn't have to go far to retrieve it as it imbedded itself halfway into the wall.

"How did it not… break…?" Titian mumbled as she gingerly began tugging at the controller. With a bit more force, it popped out of the wall in a small _poof_ of drywall and paint chips.

Dante pat her knees while thinking about what she should say next, "Um… well then… I'm sorry…" she looked to Epazote, "It's good to see you again, Episode. How are things?"

"Um… Uhhhh…" He stammered, frozen stiff from fear as he eyed the small book attached to her waist.

Cayenne cautiously made her approach, "H-hey… Dante… how's it going?"

"Hey! Pepper! How are you today?" Dante stood up and went to shake Cayenne's hand.

"I… I'm Cayenne… not Pepper…" Cayenne lowered her gaze.

"Right! I-I knew that! I was just testing you to see if… if… you knew your na-" Dante bit her lip, "That's not believable…"

As Titian handed the controller back to Curie, she rolled her eyes to Dante, "You'll have to forgive this one. She rages quite a bit when she hits a losing streak," she held out a hand and tried out her new customary greeting, "Hi, my name's Titian Mars. I'm from Atlas. I'm a first year. I'm in Team MTLC. My Semblance can dissolve things. How about you?"

As Dante reached her hand out, Arty spoke up, "Is that a good idea?... Won't your Semblance... you know, melt her hand off?"

Curie let out another exasperated sigh, "It's not _melting_. It's not _disappearing_. It's not _dissolving_. It's not _anything but oxidizing_! Unless you are made of _metal_ you shouldn't be too _worried_. _GOD_!"

"Don't let them scare you. Besides, I have complete control over my Semblance. Thus why I'm still able to wear so much metal," she began to laugh, "Imagine if I was in the middle of a fight and all the sudden all my armor rusted off!"

"I would prefer not too…" Dante shrunk up a little at the thought. She quickly shook Titian's hand, "It's nice to meet you, Titan."

Titian's smile waned a little bit. "Thanks… but it's… _Titian_."

Dante's face turned bright red, "I'm sorry! It won't happen again, Trisha…"

"Tee-shun." Hopefully slowly enunciating every sound in her name would help.

"Treason, right. Got it."

It only made it worse.

Titian gave up. "It's okay. We'll get there one day…"

"I'm sorry…" Dante turned to face the girl in brown's back, "Anyway… You must be Soapa! How are you today?"

No response came.

"I've heard a bit about you! Roland speaks very highly of you!" Dante went on.

Still no response.

"Um…" Dante ventured a glance back at Roland.

Roland sighed, "I also mentioned that she's mute… and that her name is Sepia… on multiple occasions."

Dante's eyes widened, "Oh! I'm so sorry! I didn't mean to-" she bit her lip and stood from the couch. She made her way over to Arty, "You… you… must be… Burnie…?"

Arty looked to his partner, holding his hand up to his mouth to block Dante's line of sight. "She's _really_ not good with names… is she?"

"Or people. My sister is extremely awkward outside of combat. Thank you for pointing that out, Arty," Roland pinched the bridge of his nose. This trainwreck was going on for far too long, "Now that you've sufficiently embarrassed yourself, how about you come help me with my delivery, sis?" he snatched up a book from his mother's pile, "Come on."

"Right! Of course! Happily!" Dante followed him closely, "Father said that you would be thrilled to finally get her back!"

And with that, the Wells kids left the dormitory lounge. Silence once again fell over the students.

Titian watched the game continue, nodding and smiling as the door closed behind her. She took a deep breath. "I _really_ don't like that girl." She said without losing her smile.

Curie huffed as she struggled in what was either her eighth or ninth game against Sepia. She'd lost track. At this point, she wanted to win, no matter how many losses she suffered. "You and me both, Titian... she made me continue my losing streak."

"I don't think that's anyone's fault but yours…" Cayenne pointed out from behind the couch. She winced when Curie died again, "Like that time…"

Curie pointed sternly at Cayenne, "Speak again, and the next time I lose I'm aiming for your face!" She began to snarl at the screen, "COME ON! ELEMENTAL SYNTHESIS! CHARGE THE HUNTSMAN CARD! _DAMMIT!_ "

.

"Why are you here?" Roland stomped towards the positively massive wooden crate outside the dormitory. His fingers fumbled around the spine of his mother's book. Once he found the cardboard tab at the top he tugged on it lightly. The binding of the book separated so that a single page could flutter out of the front cover. Just like all of CiCi's books, this one was ready for use and reuse in battle.

Dante hastily pulled her cloak closed, a tick that she developed early in her childhood. Already, she could feel a knot inside her chest forming, "I brought you your things. I just didn't want to see you empty handed-"

"Please just stop," Roland waved the page in the air to form a miniature crowbar, "Shirley isn't here. Be real with me."

"I am being real with you! How can you accuse me of not…" her voice trailed off, "I'm sorry, that's not believable either…" she snatched the crowbar out of his hand and shoved it between the boards of the crate, "I need to compose myself, so give me a hand here while I do that. Is that real enough for you?"

"Better than before," he waved his hand to pry off a board with the crowbar between Dante's clenched fists.

"Hold on… Let me just…" Roland waved a hand to move the crowbar out of his sister's hands and to the top of the crate, "Let me do this. You just figure out your words."

"Right… got it…" Dante stepped away and began pacing the length of the slowly deteriorating crate. The splintering of wood and snapping of nails gave her a rhythm to put her mind to. Whether her brother was doing that on purpose or not was anyone's guess.

The crate fell away to reveal a mass of hay with bits of glittering silver and violet shining through here and there. Roland's guess was right. Underneath all of the hay was a freshly waxed café racer motorcycle with black text scrawled across the bright violet paint job. Resting right behind the bike was a violet and silver sidecar with the same black text scrawled across it. The frame attached to the side of the bike allowed him to quickly detach and reattach the sidecar, which had come in handy a few times when he, Epazote, and Cayenne had all gone just over the mountains to hang around the city of Mistral.

Dante took a step back to look over the bike, "Father made sure to have it cleaned up. Fresh coat of wax, redone paint job, touch ups on the ink, a deep cleaning of all of the parts, and a lot of other things that went over my head."

"So she runs better than before, huh? I could only do so much work on her by myself, but I've got nothing on the people Dad got to fix her up," Roland put a leg over the seat and turned the key that was already resting in the ignition. The dials flashed to life with a purple glow. Everything was just as he left it, except for the tiny silver hatch right below the speedometer. It looked vaguely like a locket.

"That was my touch. Open it," Dante gestured towards the bike, but didn't seem to pay much attention. She was still thinking of a way to say what was on her mind. The more she prolonged it, the more lightheaded she began to feel, as if she wasn't getting quite enough air into her lungs.

Roland flipped open the little hatch. Right underneath the silver lid was a black and white photo of a beautiful woman with grey streaks running through her hair. Her glasses rested near the tip of her nose, much like a librarian might wear.

"Mom…" he murmured, "You shouldn't have…"

"I mean, I can have it taken out if you want..." Dante clutched the sleeve of her cloak, "I just thought it would be a good way to… you know… cope."

"Thank you," Roland managed a smile, "I only fixed up this bike because I wanted to be like her, so I think that it's appropriate," he slowly closed the locket, "As for coping, I'm really alright. I'm a lot better than when I left."

"Oh, Mother made it sound like…" she bit her lip, "She told me to just leave you be. That's why I've been avoiding you. She said that I might set you off by saying something wrong or… you know how I am… I don't want what's wrong with me to make things harder on you, you know?"

"We grew up together, sis. I think I know how to talk to you, and you to me," Roland stepped off the bike, "If you want to hear it from me, I'm alright. I've been doing a lot better after the last time you, Dad, and I talked. Couldn't you have just asked me?"

Dante's breaths slowed as she tried to regain her normally cold composure, "Mother has your interests at heart, Roland, whether you want to believe it or not. She wanted me to give you space, and so I did."

"Seriously? Mother this, Mother that. Who cares what Shirley wants? Don't you think that it's a little screwed up that she told you to avoid your own brother?" Roland crossed his arms. Shirley had always had her claws sunk into Dante more than him, but this was just ridiculous, "Look, I'm just sort of… lonely, I guess. Ever since Mom passed, I don't feel like I have much family. Besides Dad, you're the only other family that I can honestly say I care about. I'm fine, but that doesn't mean that what happened didn't change me, you know?"

"Yeah, I get that…" Dante lowered her gaze, "I'll talk to Mother about-"

"Dante! It's great to see that you found Roland!" A woman in polished blood red plate armor jogged towards the pair of siblings. Metal clanked on the armored hoop skirt around her legs, their polished plates glistening in the noon sun. Red curls danced around her face as she ran along. Her round cheeks came down to a sharp point at her chin, just like her daughter. As well put together as the woman looked, her frosty blue eyes could send a shudder down anyone's spine.

"M-Mother?!" Dante froze in place, "I-I'm sorry. I just wanted to drop a few things off to Roland. I meant to be on my way, but you know how t-talkative we can be!"

"Really…?" Roland glared at his sister then back to his stepmother. Blood boiled behind his eyes at the sight of Shirley, but he tried to keep his cool, "Shirley. As always, your timing is terrible."

The headmistress of Haven Academy looked sympathetically to her stepson. She had expected that Roland wouldn't be too happy to see her. She tried to ignore his poor temper, "It's so nice to see you again, Roland! I see you've gotten to your bike. Henry told me you might like to have it for the time you're here in Vale. I wanted to make sure it got here safely, so I brought it with me personally on the boat from home."

"You might find that my time in Vale ends up exceeding my time in Mistral, so I appreciate having my bike. I'll have to make some modifications for a few trips to Vacuo, but I don't see myself having to transport it across an ocean anytime soon," Roland wrinkled his nose at Shirley. Her cheery demeanor did nothing more than gross him out, "I'm so sorry I didn't come visit Mistral during the short break between semesters. My schedule just didn't work out."

Shirley nodded. "That's probably for the best. Your father and I have both been very busy with our work and all. I mean, that's why I just got here. There was a lot of reports and mission statements to file and sort through." She put a hand on her daughter's shoulder, "I was sad when I couldn't escort my students onto campus when they first got here." She smiled and made a fake pout, "But. Work is work and it must be done before we have any fun. Isn't that right, Dante?"

Dante nodded quickly, trying to keep her breathing under control, "Y-Yes, Mother. I guess that I should probably head back to my dorm and finish the homework that Professor McGouran assigned us. I'll just be on my wa-"

"Or hang out with me and my friends for a bit longer. We might head down to Vale and pick up some supplies. Arty and I need to pick up some more Nova Dust," Roland passed a glare to Shirley, "It'd be nice to reconnect with my sister a bit."

Shirley just gave a warm smile, "That's fine, too. You've been working hard. You deserve a little break. Just as long as you get your work done before it's due." There was a sudden chime from a pocket on the side of her skirt. She looked down to her scroll and her smile faded. "Oh. It's Professor Matsuri. Apparently a small fight broke out between some of the Mistral and Vacuo students." She waved to Dante and Roland before turning to head down the sidewalk to the main courtyard. "I'll catch up with you two later! Maybe we could grab dinner! I think I heard Vale has a great fish market. Maybe we could find you some clams, Roland."

Roland's fists balled up at the mention of clams. All the memories that got dredged up by Shirley's passing thought might not have been intentional, but they stung, "Since when the hell did you care about getting me clams, huh?!"

Shirley was taken back, "Since you were my son…?"

Just hearing her call him her 'son' made him feel sick, "You think you're anything like her to me?!"

"Hey," Dante put a shaking hand on his shoulder. She could see the bead of sweat tracing down from his forehead, "Calm down. She's just trying to be nice."

Roland shoved her off and took a step towards Shirley, "What makes you think I care to be around you?!"

Shirley looked towards Roland's dorm building, where his group of friends were peeking through the door and windows upon hearing the commotion. "Roland, what has gotten into you? You're starting to cause a scene. Can we talk about this later after you've calmed down?"

"Me calm down? Around _you_? That's hilarious!" Roland let out a haughty 'Ha!' and grabbed the paper crowbar from underneath the packing hay, "Since I have your attention, I'm really curious as to why you told Dante to stay away from me. Please. Enlighten me."

Shirley frowned. "Roland that's not something I want to talk about right now. Now, please, I have a fight to break up."

"And I have a fight to start," the crowbar morphed into a small ice pick, "Now as I said before, please enlighten me."

"Roland?!" Arty ran out of the dorm towards the feuding family members, followed closely by the rest of the hangout group minus Sepia and Curie, who were still stuck in their virtual war, "What the heck are you doing?"

"I'm having a _pleasant_ conversation with my _wonderful_ stepmother. What does it look like?!" Roland waved his ice pick at Shirley, "You know, the one that made my home life a living _hell_!"

Arty stopped in his tracks. The woman in the red armor standing before him couldn't have been the Shirley that Roland had talked about. She looked, if she wasn't being threatened by Roland, very kind. Her way of dressing, in his unfocused mind, looked like a combination of Alice and Titian's normal outfits. He shook his head, forcing himself to get back on track. He remembered the promise he made with Roland, "Roland, are you seriously threatening a… a…"

"Headmistress?!" Epazote finished Arty's sentence in a panic, making sure to hide at the back of the group with Cayenne.

"No, I'm threatening my stepmother! _Huge_ difference," Roland clutched the ice pick tighter. Maybe threatening a headmistress with a deadly weapon wasn't a great idea. Taking this into consideration, the paper ice pick unfurled into its original state. The page returned to the book, and it was passed off to Dante.

Dante sighed, the tension in her chest loosening, "Thank the gods that you're coming to your sens-" her fingers went numb as she saw her brother dart forward, "ROLAND WHAT ARE YOU DOING?!"

Metal rang when Roland's fist connected with the bracer on Shirley's forearm. Had she not deflected it, he would have driven his fist into Shirley's nose, "Why did you tell my sister to stay away from me?!"

"Because she knew you might lash out like this!" Dante shouted, but it didn't seem like her brother even heard her.

Roland reared back and drove another fist into Shirley's other forearm.

With her Huntress training, Shirley could have easily drove Roland into the dirt. She refused to do that to her stepson. "Roland!" she blocked another blow with her arms, "Stop this!"

"You want me to stop?!" Roland shouted and shoved Shirley back. For the first time since he and Alice had made amends, he was out of control, "How about you stop meddling in my life! I left Mistral and here you are _still_ trying to make me miserable!" he drove a fist into her side, but it glanced off of the metal plating.

As Roland continued throwing useless punches against Shirley's armor, his friends could only stand by and watch. They were scared to jump into the middle of the fight for two reasons. First, Roland was involved. Second, a fully-trained Huntress was also involved, and for a bonus, she was also the headmistress of one of the four Academies. She was probably one of the last people you'd want to start a fight with, no matter what she did to deserve it.

Arty tried to reason with himself. He'd made a promise with Roland, but that was when his mental image of Shirley was of some evil witch of a stepmother. With her standing before him, that image was shattered. He figured that the only way to hold up his promise and not get his team expelled was to jump in.

Arty ran up and with a forceful push, shoved Roland to the ground and held his hands out defensively in front of him, despite the fact that Shirley had done nothing but block Roland's attacks. "Hi. Hey. I'm… sorry about him… Mrs. Wells. I'll just be taking him back to the dorm now."

"No you aren't!" Roland shouted and held a hand out towards the book that was still in Dante's hands. It exploded into a mass paper and ink, "Stay out of this, Arty!" he pulled a broadsword out from the whipping blizzard of words. He shoved his leader away and began pulling himself up, "Shirley, I swear that I'll… I'll…"

A single page fluttered down from where the book exploded. It landed facedown on the sidewalk. Roland knew every word in the book that had become his newly formed sword down to the copyright date. Not one page should have gone unused. Even the cover was somewhere inside the blade. Normally he would brush it off in a situation like this, but there was something off about the fallen page. Despite straying from the sword, it still felt somehow familiar.

Everyone in the little crowd fell silent. No one wanted to set off a verbal landmine.

Roland released his control over the ink in the sword. It fell apart to form a pile of paper and condensed ink between him and Arty, "What is that…?" he gestured to the piece of paper at Dante's feet.

Dante wiped the growing tears from the corners of her eyes and bent down and snatched it up. Her brows furrowed at the hastily drawn circle on the underside of the paper. An eight-segmented wheel drawn in pen took up the majority of the page, "Um…" she pursed her lips in thought and turned the page around for Roland and Shirley to see, "I… don't know what this is…"

Ice shot down Roland's spine, "That's…" his eyes widened as they traced every line of the image, "That's what… that's the wheel… that..."

Shirley let her hands fall to her sides. She wasn't even winded after protecting herself from Roland's attacks. Even after he threatened her with his Inkheart weapons, she had a look of sympathy on her face. Her light blue eyes watching him closely as he stared at the page. "Look… Roland. I can tell you still have some things to work through, so I won't fault you for taking your anger out on me. I suppose after everything that's happened, having people from Mistral suddenly coming back into your life may… trigger some things. I won't tell your professors about this, but if it happens again, then I'm afraid I won't have any other choice. I've seen all of the discipline slips that come in the mail." She turned, her boots clacking on the cobblestone, "I really must go now." She stopped, seeming to think things over for a moment. "Dante, dear. Why don't you stay here and spend some time with your brother for a little bit? I think a family connection would do him some good… as long as it's not me, that is."

"I agree," Dante knelt down to help her brother the rest of the way up. Once Shirley was out of earshot, she glared at him, "What were you thinking?! She says _one_ thing that could possibly allude to your mother and you just go off on her. I get that you don't have the greatest relationship with Mother, but really…?"

Roland shrunk back into a sitting position with his arms tucked close to his chest, "I'm sorry if I'm a little sensitive to _her_ trying to act like my late mom…" he seemed to avoid looking at the page in her hands, "Just… give me some space and get that _thing_ away from me."

"She didn't mean it that way, Roland…" Dante stood back up and looked at the page, "What is so frightening about this wheel, anyway…?"

Before Roland could respond, he found Arty standing over him, glaring down at him.

"What the heck was _that_?!" He questioned forcefully, gesturing down the sidewalk where Shirley had walked off.

"I-"

"You attacked a _headmistress_. A _headmistress_ , Roland!" He held his hands up to his temples, "I told you I had your back with her but I said that thinking that _she_ was going to start things with you, not the other way around."

"Can I handle him, Burnie? Please? I understand that you're upset with him too, but this is an issue between our family. Would you mind if he and I went down to Vale to calm down and talk about what happened?" Dante pulled Roland up by the arm despite his wishes.

Arty wanted to continue his rant, but he'd seen what the poet before him could do in a fight. He'd gotten somewhat used to Roland's brand of anger, but he didn't really want to have the wrath of any more of the Wells family aimed his way. He conceded, "Okay, fine. You win." As upset as he was with Roland, he knew there was something bigger going on with him. No matter how much he wanted to deny it, he was worried about him. He lowered his voice "Just keep him from punching more teachers, okay? For his sake?"

"Oh, you don't have to worry about that. The only person that I know of that he truly hates is my mother. They have never had a good relationship. I'm sure that Episode and Pepper can explain," Dante pulled Roland towards his bike.

"It's Epazote and Cayenne… not Episode and Pepper…" Cayenne corrected with her eyes still on Roland. As concerned as she was with him attacking her headmistress, she understood why he would have from the way that he always spoke of Shirley. He hated that woman long before Cayenne had first met him.

"I'm sorry..." Dante folded the page and tucked it under Roland's vest, "Are you good to drive?"

"Yeah, I'm alright... I'll be fine…" Roland strapped his hat to the back of his bike and picked up the two helmets that had been placed neatly on the seat. He put one on and handed the other to Dante with a shaking hand.

He paused after she took the helmet, "Hey, Arty…"

Arty looked to his partner, "Yeah?"

Roland pulled the page from his vest and handed it to Arty, "Put this on my bed. I'll look into it more later. It's that symbol I told you, Timbre, Sepia, and Sofaira about…"

Arty took the page hesitantly. Subconsciously, he was probably scared Roland would suddenly deck him. "What? What are you talki-"

"It was on the wall when I found Mom dead. I don't want to see it right now, okay?!" Roland snapped and kicked up hay while getting onto his bike.

Arty shoved the paper into his jean pocket. "Right… Will do." He slowly turned and began herding everyone back inside the dorm building.

"Thanks…" Roland nodded for Dante to get on, "Can we talk about this over coffee, sis…?"

Dante nodded and put her helmet on, "Yeah, of course. Whatever helps you relax-"

Glass shattered as a gaming controller shot through one of the windows near the entrance.

"Whatever helps you relax," Dante looked to the shattered window and listened to the wall of profanity coming out of it, "Which also means that you should get us out of here as quickly as you can."

As the engine roared, the Wells kids set off for the airships.


	35. V2Ch7: Faunus Clique

Meeting impossible standards was the first step of gaining admittance to Atlas Academy. The price of retaining the privilege of attendance was surpassing those standards. Shatter the bar that has been raised to the unreachable height that no normal human or Faunus can ever hope to reach. Perfection is not enough. The redefining of perfection is the standard at Atlas, and this ideology is expected to be mirrored in the blood that runs through the veins of the general's children.

Ray Léon exemplified what it meant to break the impossible standards set before him. He could run faster, punch harder, and perform better than any other student enrolled at Atlas, even without a conventional weapon. Perhaps he even outmatched those of the other academies. By the beginning of his third year at Atlas, all feared even the utterance of that wretched name as his ego led him to abuse his status as the eldest child of the leader of the Atlas military and headmistress of the Academy.

However, it was from Ray's shadow that grew another name that all at Atlas feared.

.

"Okay, so hear me out. No one here cares about that last name of yours except for the Atlas kids. New friends from home might be hard for you, but you have to look at the bigger picture here," though Fenix's layered uniform made him look suited for even the most frigid day in Atlas, his tanned complexion and saltwater damaged hair told of a man that preferred a day at the beach. He revelled in the early light that graced the path to the cafeteria as he waved his arms out to all the students that stood before them.

Beside him walked an olive complected girl who struggled to keep the poorly fitted stockings of the Atlas Academy uniform from sliding down her thigh. Her curly cocoa brown hair had once been pulled back in a bun, but most of it had come loose and hung down in her face. This beautiful Vale morning was going perfectly awful, "I just don't know. What if I never make any friends here?" her golden eyes grew puffy and became mottled with tears, "It's been eight whole weeks since we got here. I can't just expect to make some friends out of thin air..."

"Well, maybe it's not everyone else that needs to change. Maybe you're the one that needs to." He suddenly realized what he said, "Not in the… usual way for you, I mean. I meant that maybe you should try to be more open! Go and try to talk to people and let them get used to you instead of expecting them to come to you. There's still a whole group of people that you haven't even tried to connect with. You've got to get back to your roots," Fenix gave a light tug on the lion tail hanging low from underneath the girl's skirt.

Silvery blue flashed into her eyes the moment that he so much as touched her tail, " _How dare you put that dirty hand on me like that!"_ she hissed without so much as a hint of sorrow left in her, " _If you think that I have forgotten anyone that I might have had any interest in so much as looking at-"_

"The Faunus," Fenix pointed out as they neared the cafeteria, "A lot of the Faunus from all around have started sitting at their own table to hang out at meals. You should try hanging with some of them this morning. It'd be good for you to at least try making some friends instead of sticking around the hired help all day."

The stocking ripped at the hem from the iron grip that suddenly took hold on it. Blood red shimmered into her irises as she threw the piece of fabric up into the air. The stocking fell, but the girl didn't seem to care, " **YES! HOW COULD I HAVE BEEN SO BLIND?! I SHALL FIND MY KIN AND MAKE MERRY WITH THEM!"**

"That's… that's the spirit…" Fenix rubbed his forehead to fight off the headache that his partner's whiplash personality was giving him, "Go have fun. I'm sure your mother won't get too upset if we aren't right next to you for a meal or two. If anything bad happens, we won't be too far behind, yeah?"

" **YOUR WARRIOR BLOOD WILL SHOW YOU THE PATH EVEN WITHOUT MY EXPERTI** -" she shook her head violently to get back to grips with reality. Her eyes flashed back to their usual shining bronze color, "Sorry, I'm seriously out of whack this morning… I guess the stress is getting to me a little bit. Maybe you're right… this will probably be good for me. There aren't too many of us Faunus back home after all."

"Good to have you back, Khimera. Text one of us if you freak out. No pressure, though," Fenix held the door open with a smile plastered across his face, "Be yourself and you've got this in the bag. Just keep a level head and you won't have to worry about shifting colors on them."

"To think you used to just be a simple bodyguard… now here you are trying to be my _friend_."

"That's how things work, Khimera. Can't help how things go once you meet someone."

As the door closed behind her and she was left in a loud room full of rowdy students, all she could think was that _she_ shouldn't be the one worried about her shifts, but everyone _else_ around them.

.

" _ **YOU'RE GOING DOWN, BRO!"**_ a grey-haired wolf Faunus with massive scruffy ears on her head had a white-knuckled grasp on the hand of a sandy-haired Wolf Faunus with a tail.

Her opponent strained to keep his arm for being thrown down. He was at least three times her size, but she was certainly giving him a run for his money. Right when he seemed to be making some headway, the girl slammed his arm down. The arm wrestling contest was over, and the puny Faunus girl was the winner.

"How…? Just… How…?" Hati rubbed his forehead while trying to decipher what exactly had happened.

"I might have let a little of my Lunacy out for a bit. I might have gone totally savage had I not won so quickly!" Yamuna showed off her razor sharp teeth with an icy grin, "Who wants a crack at me?"

The remainder of Team ASHS shrunk back in fear of their sister.

Set slapped his brother on the back, "Nice, bro! Pretty sure you're 0 for 10 now against our _little tiny baby sister_."

"And you're 0 for 163 against me when it comes to sparring," Yamuna's eyes widened in predatory curiosity at her brother, "Something makes me think that an arm wrestling match won't be much different, but what do I know?" she propped her elbow on the table and wiggled her fingers for Set to take, "We'll see who's the ' _little tiny baby sister'_ out of us."

Set's pointed red ears drooped. "Dude… not cool, sis…"

A sickening pop rang out as Yamuna cracked her knuckles as she looked to the group sitting around her, "Anyone else from 'Mini-Menagerie' wanna take me on?" she whipped her head to get a look at her cousin, "Fido?"

Turf glared at her while suckling the barbecue sauce off of the gnawed remains of a rib bone. He simply shook his head and picked up another bone from the pile on his tray.

"I'll take that as a no," Yamuna turned her head to a girl in a loose red shirt, "How 'bout you, Birdbrain?"

The girl raised an eyebrow. She shook her head to get her bright blue bangs out of her eyes. The blue, black, and white feathers mixed in with her hair bounced along with the rest of the tangled mess on her head.

She popped a few sunflower seeds into her mouth and giggled, "I'll pass on that one."

"Alright…" Yamuna looked to the purple cowboy on the end of the table. He seemed too busy reading whilst cracking a clam on the stone that he held so dear to care, "Probably not Roland… Maybe another Mistrali? Eden?"

"Gosh, you're making me a deer in the headlights…" a girl with dark green hair knocked on one of the deer antlers protruding from her skull. She looked ready to go camping with her khaki vest and mint green tank top, "Mistress Wells has us all on a short leash, so I'm not going to take any chances."

Khimera watched on. She had been silent since she sat down. These students definitely didn't act obedient and orderly like everyone did back home. She tugged at her skirt. She already felt out of place in her uniform. Now even more so that she ripped the hem of her stocking.

 _Fenix was wrong…_ she thought to herself, _I have no hope of fitting in with these…_ she looked over and watched as the larger set of Wolf Faunus twins tackled each other to the ground and began wrestling over what was apparently the last chocolate chip muffin, _People..._

Yamuna looked over all of the Faunus at the table. She had questioned everyone that she knew reasonably well. There was one newcomer there that seemed to stand out in her Atlas uniform, "Yo, Lionbutt! Get over here and take me on!"

Khimera jolted to attention as Yamuna called to her, "Um, what did you-"

"I said get over here! Arm wrestle me! Everyone new has to! It's tradition!"

"But-"

Yamuna slammed her hands on the table, " _ **IT IS T-R-A-D-I-T-I-O-N."**_

Being part of the same Vytal-Preparation Sparring class with the other second year teams, Khimera had seen how the Luna children… behaved. "I'm sorry… I don't think I."

The black-eared twin from the more rambunctious team leaned over the table towards her. She swore she could see a vein bulging in his forehead. "She's lying. There's never been a tradition. She's just trying to show domina-"

Yamuna grabbed him by the back of the head and slammed his face into the table, rattling all the plates and glasses nearby. " **HOW'S THIS FOR DOMINANCE, LEFTY!"**

Khimera reeled back a bit. She had to grip the table and concentrate on her breathing in order to keep her aura from shifting to yellow. "I'm sorry… what is-"

"Lefty," the small wolf Faunus lifted her brother's head and pointed to his left eye. "See the tattoo of the eye _around_ his eye? That's why I call him Lefty. It's the only nickname that doesn't piss him off."

"Yeah, right Anu?" Set laughed.

"Shut up, Righty." Yamuna snapped back.

"No that's…" Khimera felt the migraine coming. Every time her emotions began to be conflicted or she was overwhelmed with sights and sounds or, as in this case, caught in multiple conversations with strangers, her aura began conflicting with itself. She didn't know _why_ this was the case, she just knew that that was what was causing the throbbing in her head.

As the group of Wolf Faunus siblings kept bickering and the bluejay and deer Faunus laughed, the pain in her head reached a crescendo.

One of the colors won out.

As her brow furrowed as her irises flooded with a deep blue color. She slammed her palm down on the table in front of her. " _Will you all shut up!"_ She wasn't particularly loud, but the harsh hissing in her voice could be heard throughout the dining hall.

Three beats of silence followed. No one made a sound.

That is, until the Faunus with the otter tail decided to speak up, "How about you cool it instead?" he pushed his hat up to get a look at Khimera, "I get it, being a Faunus from Atlas probably means that you don't get to be a Faunus all too much, but that doesn't give you the right to be snippy with us when we include you."

Brown-eyed Khimera would've backed off and been quiet to prevent any shade being thrown towards the Léon name later, but brown-eyed Khimera wasn't here. " _I'm sorry, but was I talking to you?"_ The calm harshness in her voice in this state was usually enough to get people to back off, but the boy with the otter tail before her didn't look like he wanted this to end any time soon.

"I'm sorry, but do I look like I care that much?" Roland slowly stood from his seat.

The human boy seated next to him pinched his sleeve. The boy, Epazote, motioned for Roland to sit down. Despite not actually being a Faunus, he found that he typically fit in with them having been raised by a Spider Faunus all his life, "Dude, chill. Don't go trying to start anything. You're just cranky because you barely had enough sleep the past couple of weeks."

Roland went on, "Your tail looks familiar. You're the general's daughter, aren't you? Or maybe you're her granddaughter? That hag looks like she's getting up in her years," he gave her the same cruel grin that he would give any enemy.

Khimera's lip curled up into a sneer. She was about to snap back, " _How_ dare _you,"_ but a small twinge of pain hit her skull again. _Dammit…_ she cursed to herself as she felt the cold anger of her blue aura slowly draining away and being replaced with the much more cowardly yellow. Her steeled and smooth stance melted away as her shoulders slumped. Her eyes now showed slight fear instead of malice. Shakily, she held her hands up defensively, as if the other Faunus was going to hit her. "H-h-hey… I'm s-s-sorry… I d-didn't mean to-"

"Hey, ignore him for now. He likes picking fights," Yamuna cut in. She smiled kindly at Khimera. The shifts in her eyes reminded her of her own Semblance, which told her that the situation might need to be dealt with carefully, "You can beat him up later. We have a cross-class sparring session later this week. You can pick him out of the crowd and pummel him. I'm friends with Professor Maple, so I can make sure you get a spot, okay?" she winked, "But for now, let's just arm wrestle. It'll give us an excuse to get to know you. Is that okay?"

Khimera looked around to the other Faunus at the table. Earlier, she was looking at them as if they were the strange ones. Now, in her skittish disposition, she felt all eyes drilling into her. "I-I…"

"You haven't said a word all breakfast. I'm sure we've all been worried about you. You just sat down without saying a word!" Eden nudged Khimera on the arm playfully, "I know those Luna boys were giving you quick little looks when you were staring at all of us. They'd loooooove to get to know you. Especially Anubis."

Khimera looked to the boy with the black dog ears. Though he was still rubbing his sore nose, his bright golden eyes were trained directly at her. He averted his gaze when she caught him staring. She chuckled, her eyes shifting to their normal golden brown. "Sorry to break it to him, but I'm spoken for."

As she returned her gaze to Yamuna, her eyes turned a deep blood red. She forced her hand out towards her, slamming her elbow into the table, ready to start their little 'duel'.

Yamuna latched on, "Awesome! I knew you'd come around!" she readied herself to teach Khimera who the alpha at the table was, "On the count of three. One… two… three!"

Before Yamuna could even begin to push, Khimera slammed her opponent's arm down hard enough for a web of cracks to form in the table, " **IS THAT ALL YOU'VE GOT?!"** she shouted at the tops of her lungs.

Everyone at the table froze.

Yamuna seemed to be the most stunned out of the bunch. Her hand still throbbed from the blow, but what was even more concerning to her was the fact that she had lost, "I… I… w-what…?"

Khimera's triumphant hearty laughter boomed. " **NO OPPONENT, FRIEND OR FOE, SHALL SURPASS ME! NOT A FELLOW FAUNUS, NOT MY CLASSMATES, NOT THE GRIMM BROTHERHOOD, NOR ANY OTHER SCUMMY CRIMINAL THAT STANDS BEFORE ME, THE GREAT KHIMERA LÉON, DAUGHTER OF GENERAL KHIDNA LÉON!"**

"Woah! Woah! Calm down!" Neila, the Blue Jay Faunus with feathers in her hair, raised her hands defensively, "We're not in the midst of battle he-"

"What did you say about the Grimm Brotherhood…?" Roland stared at Khimera with nothing but pure rage in his eyes. The mere mention of that name made his blood boil.

"Dude, knock it off…" Epazote whispered harshly. He didn't feel like breaking up another fight involving his best friend. After 1,289 fights broken up in the totality of their friendship, he didn't want to add another to make that number 1,290.

After effectively going through her entire aura spectrum, it finally settled back on brown. She sat down, blushing from her outburst. "I'm sorry. I didn't mean to let that… side of me out."

"Yeah man, give her a break," Turf waved for Roland to sit down.

"I said..." Roland stood up and stepped right up to Khimera, "What did you say about the Grimm Brotherhood?"

Khimera dusted off her uniform. "Look, I'm sorry we got off on the wrong foot. One thing you should know about me is that you probably shouldn't take anything I say when I'm 'not myself' seriously," She pointed to her eyes, "I tend to say some pretty outlandish things when I'm in the red or blue. That's why I tend to wear so much aura-sensitive materi-"

"DAMMIT, ANSWER MY QUESTION!" Roland slammed his fist down on the table right next to Khimera's hand, "I COULD NOT CARE LESS ABOUT WHATEVER IS WRONG WITH YOU. JUST TELL ME WHAT YOU KNOW ABOUT THOSE MURDERERS!"

Every student in the room seemed to shift away from the raging Otter Faunus. Khimera, now in her calm base state, kept her eyes trained on the volatile student in front of her. She knew she had to play things cool. "Look, I don't know what murders you're talking about. I can tell you've been through some things, but in my end of Remnant, the Grimm Brotherhood is some criminal ring. Organized? Yes. A threat? Yes. But are they manageable? Also yes." She put a hand on his shoulder, telling him to sit back down using a bit of the commanding authority she'd seen her mother use on her soldiers. "My team, Team FNKS, along with some of the other upper-year teams have gone out and faced these guys. Some tried to get weapons from Atlesian storehouses. Some robbed Dust shops. Some just seemed to be causing mayhem by bringing Grimm into the city." She narrowed her eyes at him, "Other than that, I don't know much about them, but I'm honestly not too worried. If they had anything to do with any murders, it wasn't the piddly groups we've been dealing with in Atlas."

"Tell that to my team," Roland snarled, "We fought for our lives against one of their operatives, a woman named Oro. She nearly killed me, and her lackeys did a number on my friends. Then they brought in a Trex to finish us off. No, we didn't mistake it for a big Ripper. It was without a doubt a Trex," he slapped her hand away from his shoulder, "If you think they're piddly, then it doesn't sound like you know a _thing_ about those monsters."

"That's impossible," Neila spoke up, "My team and I discovered the Trex last year while on a search and destroy mission to the mesas in central Vacuo. Those things are _way_ too big to cross large distances, and I'd say that making a trek across Sanus would count as a large distance."

"I… I heard it. I was incapacitated for most of the incident, but I know that whatever made that roar couldn't have been any native Grimm," Turf piped up. The mere thought of that night still made him feel nauseous, "That thing sounded like a freight train."

Neila's face went white, "That's… that's impossible… it couldn't get from Vacuo to Vale. That's just straight-up impossible!"

"My team fought and killed the thing," Roland told the group without taking his eyes off of Khimera, "You're the general's daughter, as you so kindly confirmed. Has she told you anything that might interest someone who wants those monsters taken out?"

Khimera felt the blue rising within her. "Look, even if she had told me anything, it's none of your-"

"We ran into them on a mission too. They stole some fossils from the museum back in Vacuo," Neila cut in, "We ran into someone that called themselves Trex when we went on a mission to retrieve those same fossils. They didn't seem piddly then either. I had my doubts before, but now I know that they have, or at least had, access to a Trex. That's nothing to sneeze at."

"Why would they need fossils…?" Turf asked from across the table.

Neila shrugged, "Heck if I know. That's why they're really freaking us out. They keep doing so many random things that there's no telling what they'll do next."

"If I may say one thing," Eden piped up, "It almost sounds like they're different groups. Or at least under different management." She looked to Khimera, " _Your_ Grimm Brotherhood are little weaklings that a few Huntsmen in training can take out no problem." She turned to Neila, "Yours sounds like a bunch of… I dunno, crazies." She turned to Roland and Epazote, "Our Grimm Brotherhood…" she lightly put a hand on Roland's shoulder, "has caused a lot of damage and fear across Mistral." She looked to Turf, "Vale's Grimm Brotherhood sounds like the only ones that have a real plan. Why'd they'd target a first-year team, I don't know. But if they brought a Trex in all the way from Vacuo to a location near Beacon and attacked Koruss Stadium, they _have_ to be planning to do something here, right? But… they all don't sound a thing alike… I can't tell if it's some monicker used by different raider tribes or some sort of new slang. Heck, maybe they are all under one leading power, but it's weird when they're all so distinct. Thieves, wannabe thugs, murderers, and terrorists..." She rubbed her forehead, "Now that we've been talking about it… it's all… very weird…"

Roland took a deep breath, "Since you mention the Grimm Brotherhood back in Mistral…" he gritted his teeth at the thought that he was about to share with the group, "Who all remembers the massacre that happened in Mistral last summer?"

Epazote visibly cringed. A few of his mom's clients were killed in the incident, and her best friend, CiCi Oscura, did as well. Most of the residents of Mistral still felt uneasy after the ordeal.

"A whole apartment complex of Faunus killed and stripped of their traits. It might not have gotten around between the humans, but I'm wondering if all of you heard about it." Roland looked around the rest of their table.

"We all did. Everyone back in Menagerie is still shaken up over it," Anubis looked around the table for any sign of recognition, "It was a big enough deal that Mom and Dad considered taking us out of Beacon for the time being, but it always struck me as strange that I didn't hear much about it from the media."

"No kidding. My parents called me to check on me the day that it happened. No one at Shade except for the Faunus brought it up after that. It still sends shivers down my spine…" Neila twisted one of her feathers between her fingers, "Someone managed to get their hands on some of the photos from the incident. I couldn't hardly look at them…"

Epazote squeezed the edge of the table, "Roland…"

He ignored her, "Do you remember that day, Khimera?"

She looked back over to him, his deep violet eyes filled with rage and pain, "I… I don't. I didn't hear about that until the Grimm Brotherhood started popping up in Atlas more and more. My brother, Ray, and I got a briefing from my mother about the violence towards Faunus in the other kingdoms. She used that as a sort of anecdote," she sighed, "It's hard to believe that something like that was carried out just because we can't control what we're born as."

"Yeah, especially when that violence takes your mother away," Roland slowly pulled his hand off of the table, "Those monsters are known for violent crime back in Mistral. Human, Faunus, it doesn't matter. It really makes me wonder if it was them that took her away, and I'd really like to find out if that is the case so that I know who needs to pay," his arms folded up against his chest. Sure, he was holding back tears, but he was managing to stay composed, "If you know anything that I don't about them, I want that information. I don't care if me getting it from you means that you hate me for the rest of your days. I'm fine with making new enemies. I just want to know if it was them who killed her."

As he looked to the foreign Faunus sitting in front of him, he grew ever more annoyed as she shook her head.

Just two weeks prior, he and his sister had discussed the mystery surrounding CiCi Oscura's death.

* * *

"I know that it's connected to your mother, but how can you be so sure it's them?" Dante asked with a mug of steaming coffee right below her lips, "If you found the wheel in her book just now, then why couldn't it be someone specifically after her? Maybe she was aware of someone that wanted her… you know."

"Because the symbol doesn't match perfectly with what I saw," Roland set his mug back down and crossed his arms to think it all over. Just as promised, they were getting coffee down in Vale right after he tried to take Shirley on right outside the dormitory. It was here that the idea of the Grimm Brotherhood taking CiCi Oscura's life seemed less unlikely.

"Filling in one space doesn't mean much in the grand scheme of things. It was a lot of blood, Roland. It might have just dripped down the wall," Dante set her mug down in front of her. She couldn't drink with that gruesome image in her mind. Had she lost her mother the same way, she might have been every bit as obsessed as him, but she was in a position to look at it through a more logical lens, "What if they found it in her book and drew it to throw the police off?"

"There was no blood in the book," Roland pointed out, "They couldn't have had time to look through her things too closely. I heard them leaving the scene through a window before I got to Mom-" he clenched his teeth as the memories flashed through his mind, "I didn't see any footsteps in the blood. They had to have painted the wheel when she was still alive, finish her off, and leave right after."

Dante watched as the color drained from his face, "You don't have to talk about thi-"

"Yes I do. You're the only one that I can talk to about this. I trust you," Roland loosened the bandana around his neck, "It couldn't have just been the blood dripping. If it were dripping that much, then the other seven spaces would be filled in more, but they were clearly blank to begin with. The top one was almost fully filled in. Before you question whether or not I am remembering it clearly, I assure you that I could write a book about what I saw in that room. I took in every detail that I could like we were trained to do in preparatory school."

"I mean…" Dante stared down at her dark reflection in her coffee, "With as violent as the Grimm Brotherhood's been in Mistral… it's plausible."

"And if it was them, then does that make the wheel their symbol? On top of that, what connects the one that has a section colored in, and the blank one in the book? If the blank is the base, then what does the red mean?" Roland thought out loud, "Even then, why did Mom have it all tucked away in her book…?"

"But think about this: the top eighth was what was filled in," Dante mixed in a bit of sugar to her coffee to make it a little bit more palatable, "It was at the apex of the wheel, so that would mean that it would have the most drip down into its space. I think that the priority here is the symbol itself. It's undoubtedly connected, I'll give you that, but focusing on that one eighth could only muddy the waters for the other seven sections. Figure out the wheel, and…"

"The rest comes naturally… right," Roland clenched a fist as the image appeared in his mind again, "It's still the same basic symbol as the one in Mom's book, so anything extra might have been the killer's touch…"

At least her brother was thinking a little more logically about it all, "Just don't get too obsessed over this… I worry about you, you know."

* * *

Roland pulled the page out from under his vest and held it up for Khimera to see, "What do you make of this?"

Khimera's eyes widened with recognition.

"They tagged the museum with it…" Neila scooted back in her chair. The fact a seemingly simple museum robbery she had tried to stop was tied with a massacre made her eyes go wide in fearful confusion, "That means that they really are all connected… doesn't it?"

"But why do they all have such different styles?" Roland held the page closer to Khimera. If she knew what it was, then she had been holding back at least some information, "I think that the general's daughter has a better idea than me, but she says that these people are just piddly little rascals. It's a little strange that her eyes light up at the symbol that has appeared at a robbery and a mass murder that could possibly be tied to the Grimm Brotherhood." He leaned in closer, "And I bet you more than anything that the Vale authorities are holding out on giving details to the public about the attack during the Timbre Forté concert at Koruss Stadium. One such detail _might be this symbol appearing somewhere in the chaos._ " He jabbed his finger into the page with every word, emphasizing his claim. "Well? What is it then, princess? You holding out on us?"

She quickly shot to her feet, her eyes flashed blue as she looked down to Roland, " _I knew this was a mistake. You can pry all you want, but anything I don't know from personal interaction is strictly confidential unless otherwise noted by the general._ "

Blue. That seemed to be the colors that appeared when Khimera got particularly nasty. Roland had deduced that much. If she wanted him to stop prying, then that meant he was onto something, "Then the general seems alright with sharing confidential information with her kids. That's a breach of security, unless you're somehow involved in the case. Of course, that's just my summary of an Atlesian book on military conduct that I read last month. The copyright date was just last year, so I doubt that the content has changed all that much. In that case, it would be a shame if the general got some bad press so close to the Vytal Festival."

Khimera's eyes flashed to yellow, "Wha-what?"

The Faunus around them just stared on in shock.

"Hey, Roland," Epazote reached out to him, "Maybe you should-"

"Let me make it very clear that I am not above blackmail if it means that I can find my mother's killer," Roland's nose crinkled up in a snarl, "What if they killed your mother, huh? What then? What lengths would you go to make sure that they paid for it?"

Khimera had never been one for conflict, especially with the few other Faunus she knew. Before this spat with Roland, the only other Faunus she'd been this furious with was her brother, and he would upset her just to make her aura flare up and switch on her until it wore her out. With the shifts she was going through now, she was starting to feel a bit fatigued. "L-look. Of course I-I-I'm involved with fighting the G-Grimm Brotherhood back home. My mom's m-m-mentioned talking to authorities and s-soldiers in the other k-k-kingdoms, but she hasn't told me a th-th- _thing_ , I swear. All I know is what's going on b-b-back home in Atlas."

"Do you know this wheel from that, or do you know it from something else?" Roland pushed even further with his line of questioning, "Your eyes lit up at the sight. This isn't your first time seeing it, and you didn't mention seeing it at another scene like Neila did. Tell me about that. Now."

Khimera closed her eyes and took a deep breath. Her panic and fear faded away. When she opened her eyes again, they were back to their original brown color. She shot her hand out and grabbed him by the collar of his vest, dragging his ear close to her mouth so the others couldn't hear, even those with sensitive canine ears. "Listen. If anyone, _anyone_ knew I was about to tell you this, it would get me in more trouble than you could ever imagine." She had to get him off her back, and the only way to do that was to tell him enough to satisfy his little 'search for the truth' he thought she could help him with. "Those 'piddly' Grimm Brotherhood members may not be their most skilled, but we're starting to think that it's all a facade. That, or they've recently come under new leadership. Shortly before my mother left Atlas to bring the students participating in the tournament here, they managed to steal a few airships from some outposts out on the glaciers. Small ones, but enough to move a good-sized group of people and supplies. They were seen a few days later heading off for Vacuo with a bit of new flair." She tapped the page with the wheel symbol, "Painted in black on both sides. Big enough to see from three-hundred feet below." She pushed him back, harshly, and made her way for the exit. "It was nice to meet most of you. I hope we get to chat again on more… pleasant terms."

"Hold on," Roland grabbed her by the shoulder and handed her his scroll, "Send me a text and we'll keep in touch."

"Oh, so you can continue threatening me with _blackmail_?" She tugged against his grasp. "No thanks."

"It's in both of our best interests. If those monsters were willing to kill a teacher like my mother, then I think that they would revel in killing someone with as much power as yours," Roland said flatly, "Neither of us want more people to die, especially not family. Say what you want about my conduct. All that matters to me is that they are stopped sooner rather than later, and I'll do whatever it takes to see that through."

She stewed over his words for a moment. He was right, she didn't want anyone else to die, but she was doing her part and letting more skilled and… stable people deal with the more important and sensitive pieces of the puzzle. She took his scroll and entered her number, "Fine. But don't expect me to be at your every beckon and call. I may just be a student, but I am a busy person, and my team and my mother don't appreciate me disappearing for long lengths of time. Capiche?"

"Believe me, my girlfriend wouldn't be too happy with me hanging out with some other girl one on one. If she saw you were a Faunus, then she'd really be on our tails, and you don't want her on your tail," Roland took the scroll back and sent her a text so that she would have his contact too, "I'll keep you updated on what I find. You've got family in this too, after all. Let's keep this between us, though. I'd hate to get too many people involved, if you understand."

She turned around and continued on her way without another word. She just wanted to be back to her team.

"Great," Roland waved goodbye to the other Faunus on his way out through the doors on the other side of the cafeteria. Naturally, he picked up on Arty jumping out of his seat and running to catch up with him. Another scolding was exactly what he needed.

Arty kept pointing back and forth between his partner and the Lion Faunus that was storming away towards the main courtyard. "Roland?... D-did you just?"

"Have it out with the your dad's boss's daughter? Yeah." Roland pushed open the doors to head back to the dorm, "I have a lead on Mom's killer, so that's great. It was probably the Grimm Brotherhood. Big surprise, am I right?" he tried to keep himself a few feet ahead of Arty, "That damn wheel keeps popping up wherever they are, and what magically popped up in the apartment that my mother died in, Arty? The wheel."

"Roland, you're starting to obsess. Are you sure this isn't something you're seeing when there's nothing there?" He rubbed his temple, "I… you just argued with Khimera Léon… Her family already hates me! Oh man… if her mom found out my partner pissed off her daughter." He grabbed his friend by the shoulder. "Roland, what exactly did you do to make her storm off like that?"

"I blackmailed her and her mother," Roland yanked away from his hand. He pulled his hat down low to cover his face and held the page with the wheel out to Arty. Now that he was away from everyone, his composure wavered, "But she knew the wheel, and apparently the general does too. I bet anything your dad does, too. My mother apparently did, and so has anyone else who has come in contact with the Grimm Brotherhood. The place that I saw it was my mother's apartment, but it was drawn in blood. Who the hell do you think is the culprit then, Arty?!"

Arty was taken aback. Roland was beginning to fall apart again. He didn't want that to happen again, not just for his team's sake, but for Roland's as well. The obsession and pain from holding in so much had almost destroyed him. He remembered the conversation he had overheard with the girls, how Carmen was so desperate as to suggest that Professor Alabaster kick Roland out of the school due to his behavior.

Arty pulled out his scroll and began going through numbers. He finally found the one he was looking for. _Well… there's no way he's going to listen to me at this point._

Roland overheard Arty's side of the conversation, "Hey, Dante. It's me, Arty… Burne?" he sighed, "Burnie? Yeah. I'm outside the cafeteria with Roland. Do… do you think you can come talk to him? Great. Thanks."

"You think I'm hysterical, don't you?" Roland pushed his hat up to look Arty in the eyes. Tears streamed down his cheeks, but this wasn't the first time Arty had seen him cry, "Your mother is a very kind woman. I enjoyed the time that we all shared in the cafe on Family Day. If someone killed her, how would you feel, huh?"

"I imagine I'd be in the exact same place as you. I'd be obsessed over it and want to find out who did it by any means necessary. But you know what, Roland? I'm not. That's not the place I'm in. That's why I called your sister. Because I know she's the only person you're close enough to to talk about these things with without exploding. My position right now is trying to help you out, believe it or not. I just want to make sure you're obsessing over facts and not fantasy." he sighed, "Wouldn't you rather go years without finding the truth instead of chasing lies?" Arty moved ahead and began walking back to the dorm. "I know you don't believe me, and I know I'm not the most competent of people, but I'm just doing what I think will help _me_ help _you_ in the long run ."

"I have a lead, Arty. I could end all of this madness if I figure this out. Everything could be okay if I could just figure this out, and this wheel is my best shot right now. It's about the only shot that I have right now, and now I have the Atlesian general's daughter in this fight. I've got you, Sepia, Timbre, Dante, Epazote, Cayenne, and every Faunus on campus by my side to do this. It's not like I'm going at this alone," Roland folded up the page and put it back in his vest, "If you don't want me to obsess, then help me out with this by finding out what you can about the symbol. I mean, I'll obsess still, but I'll obsess for a lesser amount of time if I have some help. That, and I just don't want more people to die by the hands of those monsters," he looked at the new contact in his scroll, "And I'm not the only one worried about that. I know Khimera is. I also know you are."

Arty nodded. "You know I am. That's… kinda why we blew up that big lizard a few months ago."

"So don't act like I'm crazy for getting bent out of shape about all of this. I want to be a Huntsman, so I'm going to act like one. I'm going to get this job done, find out what I need, and put an end to all of this," Roland put away his scroll and wiped his eyes dry, "Dante and I will find out what we can around Vale, and you can figure out whatever you can. I'm sure that Khimera will be more willing to fork over information that she shouldn't know now too. Does any of that sound too crazy to you?"

Arty thought for a moment, "Yeah. Pretty much all of it, but I've been on board for crazy before."

"Great," Roland looked back just in time to see Dante rushing out, "Glad to know that we're on the same page with this now. Let's get to work."


	36. V2Ch8: Interjection

Papers flew around the dorm of Team ARTS like a miniature blizzard. Thousands of newspaper clippings, articles, and photos zoomed around the room at subsonic speeds, some freezing in the air for a moment before continuing their hellish ride around the room. This normally would have tired Roland out, but the thought of exhaustion had disappeared from his mind days before.

"It's gotta be here somewhere. I felt it earlier…" Roland paced around the room while snatching papers out of the air and tossing them back like minnows, "Where is that article on the robberies…?" he blinked his dark ringed eyes one at a time.

A light across the room turned on. Arty's desk lamp helped light up the rest of the room, much to Sepia's disappointment. Instead of a violent outburst, she just buried her head in her pillows. Even she was too tired to move much.

"Roland?..." Arty said groggily, his hair a mess of bed head, "We have our mock mission in Forever Fall for Grimm Combat in three hours… If you're gonna cram for a pop quiz, can you at least do it with the lights off?..."

"I have the entire textbook memorized. I'm fine," Roland flicked his wrist.

A book flew into the lamp beside Roland's bed with a crash. The lamp laid on the ground in shambles. The broken lightbulb made a vain attempt to still burn its filament and live out its purpose, but it slowly gave up and began to dim. Roland went on with his search in the paper storm, "Better?"

Arty wanted to retort with the usual 'Roland stop breaking things,' but he was so exhausted that he decided to leave it alone. "Okay, thanks..." He turned off his own light in a less violent fashion and fell back to his sheets. Within seconds he began to snore again. Team ARTS's shared dislike of McGouran's teaching methods wasn't unknown, and preparing for an outing to fight Grimm with the visiting teams was a breath of fresh air compared to the usual intense fights with Grimm in the classroom. Knowing McGouran, he'd still find a way to make it miserable and draining, and he didn't need Roland's sleep-deprived attitude to make it worse.

Sepia slowly looked up from her pillow. Even in the dark, she could make out Roland's hate-filled eyes. As much as it worried her, it also made her even more frustrated with him. She slowly reached up and snatched a piece of paper out of the air. Once the rest of them froze in place, she ripped the paper in half and threw it off the side of her bed.

"Seriously?!" Roland shouted from across the room, "Again with this, Sepia?!"

Sepia looked over to Timbre, who'd been the only person she'd been willing to confide this issues with. Even in the dark, she could see Timbre's headphones perched around her head, blaring music into her ears as she snored. She obviously wasn't going to be of any help this time around. Unless…

Her hands shot down to the MP3 player hanging by a cord off the side of Timbre's bed and yanked it. The cord came out of the audio jack with a 'pop'.

The sudden ending of her tunes wasn't what woke Timbre up, it was the sudden jerking of her headphones to the side. The force made one of the ear pads land on and effectively cup her nose in its cushioning. "Wha-what the?!" She stumbled, gripping the end of her bed to keep from falling onto the floor.

Sepia pulled up her scroll to use as a light and started signing, ' _Roland and I are about to have another fight about this symbol thing...'_

 _Oh no_. Timbre groaned as she threw her legs over the side of the bed, removing the headphones from her face. She stretched, using it as cover to sign back in the dim moonlight flooding into the room. ' _I know you must be mad. You wanna borrow my headphones to try and tune him out for a little bit?'_

' _I just want you on standby for if this comes to blows…'_ Sepia slowly stood from her bed and flipped on the lamp by her bed. She met Roland's seething glare. This was the fifth time this week alone, ' _Listen. I just want you to get some sleep. That's it. Please.'_

All of the papers began stacking themselves around his bed, "Sepia, please don't start with this again. If I need sleep, then I will sleep. I'm okay right now though. I am functioning. Do you have any idea how close I am to finding something else new?!"

' _You've been saying that since you blackmailed the general's daughter last week,'_ Sepia rolled her eyes, ' _Go to bed. Now.'_

"No. I will not be going to bed. Quit acting like you have any idea what I need and don't need to do. I don't need you watching out for me every second of every day!" Roland shouted at her from across the room.

' _Maybe if you actually gave me a reason to think that you were fine, I'd get off your tail about it! It's been three weeks since we've actually been able to sit down and watch our favorite show together, and Rime keeps spoiling things for me! I have to sit there and tell her that everything is, in fact, fine between us, and I don't think it is right now! I thought that your obsession was bad after you found that symbol, but that's nothing compared to all that's turned into!'_ Sepia franticly signed.

Arty groaned and held a pillow to his face. Either he'd drown out the noise of the one-sided conversation or smother himself. He would welcome either gladly, whichever of the two came first.

Timbre stood and put her hands on Sepia's shoulders. "Okay, Moviemaker. Obviously you two need some cooling down time." She nodded towards the door, "How about you and me go ahead and get ready. Get some breakfast, enjoy the sunrise… you know, before we go off killing Grimm."

' _You know what? That sounds great.'_ Sepia grabbed her choker and tied it around her neck, ' _I don't need to deal with this right now. I'm going to end up saying something about how much he's acting like his stepmother.'_

"Excuse me?!" Roland stomped over in front of Sepia and glowered down at her, "You cannot be serious with me right now. It is four o'clock in the morning. I get it. You're not a morning person, but that was below the belt."

' _Right, because you're the most civil person in the room, huh? You know what you're talking about, and us three are just being unreasonable for telling you to calm down. Blackmailing and manipulating people is all fine and well as long as you're the one doing it, right?'_ Sepia pushed past him and stormed out of the room, slamming the door behind her.

Timbre looked to Roland. She wanted to be angry, but at that moment she was just concerned for her partner. The door slammed again as she followed after Sepia.

Arty groaned in annoyance again, "Guess it's time for me to _get up finally!"_ He slumped out of bed, looking like a disheveled mess. "I'm going to get my shower and I'm going to ask for the Rhea Special Caffeine Deluxe." He turned to Roland before closing the door, "Can you please try not to make this morning any harder than it already is?" He gestured to the papers scattered around the room, "I told you I'd help, but it's kind of hard to do that when you can't even help yourself and get some rest."

"I've been so close, Arty. I just got new information from Khimera yesterday… it hasn't gone anywhere, but it will eventually. I also keep finding things," Roland held up a piece of paper from the floor. On it was an article from a cooking magazine with the first letter of every sentence highlighted, "Look at this. The first letters of the sentences of the fifth paragraph spell out 'GRIMM', Arty. They might be syphoning money from whoever prints this. They could be _anywhere_ , Arty! What if someone in the school is with them, huh?!"

Arty cocked an eyebrow, obviously concerned and a bit frightened. "Roland? You… _really_ need some sleep, bud." He pointed to the third sentence, "That's an 'N', not an 'M', by the way. So unless there's another group called the Grimn Brotherhood out there plotting to steal cakes and cookies across Remnant, I don't think you're finding anything here." He sighed, "Remember what I said about chasing facts instead of fantasy?" He took the magazine from Roland's hands and held it up, "This right here sounds pretty out there to me."

"Then how about something you've dealt with first hand?" Roland grabbed a sheet of paper with a photo of an illustration from a book, "This is one of the pictures that you had to redraw after that night with Yamuna. I know this for a fact. It's an illustration of one of the major battles in the Great War," he pointed to one of the banners depicted in the image, "What do you see there?"

Arty had to redraw so many images his mind was a blur. Unlike Roland, he couldn't remember every individual detail of his preferred art form.

The picture on the page before him was of four armies of soldiers, two against two, fighting in the sand dunes of the deserts of Vacuo. On one side, Vacuo and Vale, on the other, Mistral and the defunct kingdom of Mantle. They all had old-fashioned basic weapons raised, ready to strike.

"Roland, what am I supposed to be see-"

"The banner! Look at the banner that Vale soldier is carrying!" Roland shouted at his partner, "Right there in black and white is it!"

Arty had to squint to see it, but sure enough, among the hundreds of soldiers was the symbol Roland had found in his mom's book during his scuffle with his stepmother. "Wait… this is a drawing of the end of the war… the Vacuo campaign when Mantle and Mistral tried to cut off their enemies' Dust supply by taking over the mines in the kingdom."

"And the king of Vale came in and personally helped kick everyone's asses, yeah. And here's the kicker. This book was written _immediately_ after the treaty was signed at Vytal. This is even a first edition that was printed _on the island_!"

Arty leaned against the wall. It was still way too early to be thinking this hard. "So… wait… why was a symbol from the first storybook about the Great War in your mom's book? Why would an artist put that there and what does it have to do with the Grimm Brotherhood? The Grimm Brotherhood can't be _that_ old… can they?"

"If they are, then it explains why they seem to have so many resources. They've had time to get money and infiltrate businesses and the like! This could be huge, Arty!" Roland threw the paper back down and went back to pacing, "They must go way back. What if they're hatching some kind of crazy plan or something?! Another Great War! What if they started the first one?!"

Arty felt the headache coming, "Roland… I was following you for a bit there, but now you're starting to sound like one of the conspiracy nuts back home that think the military tried to brainwash people with drugs and video games about twenty years ago. The Great War was building for years. No _one_ power could make something like that happen. Not then and not now." He continued on his path to the bathroom for his shower, "I know you have facts here Roland. I really do. Just don't go screwing them up and making them some lunatic fantasy."

Roland looked at him with disbelief, "But the symbol, Arty! It is everywhere they go, and now it's magically here! Don't you get it?!" he slowly sat down, "I just… I…" he hung his head down, "I want to be done with this… Last week told me that it wasn't just about Mom… The wheel keeps coming up in places completely unrelated to her. I just… I need something that ties what happened to her with everything else. I just need… some kind of closure on this…"

As Arty was about to close the door, he couldn't help but pick up on the weariness in Roland's voice. "Hey, Roland. Why don't you stay here today? Catch up on your sleep. You can't be going to class and fighting Grimm like this. You'll end up getting hurt."

"Believe me, if I can shake off a hit from Oro long enough to help you guys get a solid hit in on her, then I can handle a few Grimm…" Roland lifted his head up to look at Arty, "I'll be fine. It isn't like McGouran is throwing us at Rippers or anything."

Arty noticed Roland was having a bit of trouble keeping his eyes open as they occasionally fluttered before he stopped himself and opened them again. "Two things. One, you can barely stay awake right now, which is pretty different than getting hit with a crazy weapon that completely bypasses aura. Two, that's _exactly_ what he's doing to us today…"

"Wait, what?"

"The Rippers thing. That's exactly what he's doing. Although I think I remember him saying there might be a few Echos and Camolurkers thrown in there… along with the usual Beowolves, Ursas, and Nevermores thrown into the mix. Point is, it's dangerous to go up against those things in the state you're in. I've never doubted that you could hold your own, but… right now… I'm not so sure."

"So what? You're just going to tell McGouran that I'm sick? What am I going to do all day?" Roland's head bobbed after finishing his question, but he managed to bring it back up.

"I'd _like_ to believe that you'd catch up on your sleep and clear your head of all the crazy that's apparently stuck up there, but I know you'd probably keep doing…" he gestured to the cooking magazine again, "this… I'd also like to think you'd use the time to figure out how to make things up to Sepia. I know I'm not big on the whole emotional stuff, but I can tell when someone's upset and right now, that'd be her."

"I… I guess…" Roland grabbed his scroll, "I'll tell Khimera and Dante that I'm taking an easy day… I know Khimera wouldn't mind some breathing room, and Dante's probably worried…" he finished off the texts and threw his scroll back onto his nightstand, "If you need me to, I can jump into class later on. It'll be hard fighting Rippers and stuff. Who is the backup team for us, again…?"

"McGouran made the mistake of pairing us with my friends in MTLC. I know you're not a big fan of Midas and Titian, so maybe this is a win-win for you."

"Send Curie and Ledning my regards…" Roland rolled his eyes and pulled his blanket over himself, "Don't get killed. Take some Nova Dust with you just in case. Maybe some of the Nova and Gravity mixture that we've been too scared to try out."

"Yeeaaaaah… no. I'd rather do some testing with that _outside_ of class. I've gotten better with Nova, but that Gravity stuff is… objectively more dangerous. Not sure it's a good idea to use it around, y'know, _people_."

"Yeah, okay. I'll give you that much," Roland shut his eyes, "Go get ready. I'm just gonna try and… and… ge…" and with that, he was out.

Arty rolled his eyes and closed the bathroom door. He could already tell it was going to be a long day for everybody.

* * *

The baneful light of day burned through the curtains of the Team ARTS dorm and right into Roland's eyes, "What the…?" he mumbled.

Upon sitting up and rubbing his eyes, he snatched up his scroll to check the time, "It's… it's three in the afternoon…?"

"Yeah, you've been out for about eleven hours according to Burnie," said someone who must've been sitting on Timbre's bed just to his left.

"Wait… Dante?" Roland looked over to the source of the voice, "How did you…?"

"Roland? Did you really skip class today to sleep and work on your conspiracy web?" Another voice came from over by his desk.

Roland turned around to see Epazote inspecting the various articles pinned up on the walls, "Arty made me stay behind because I apparently haven't gotten enough sleep."

"By that, you mean to say that you haven't slept in a week," Dante sat with her arms and legs crossed. She clearly wasn't happy with the situation, "You know, I thought you were obsessive when you left Mistral, but this is a whole new level."

"I'm actually getting closer. When I left Mistral, I just got mad and hit people to solve my problems. I know how to get information out of people, Dante," Roland grumbled and fell back down against his pillow.

"You're starting to act the way that you always accuse Mother of acting towards you," Dante shook her head, "You're getting manipulative."

"I am _not_ acting like Shirley." Roland shot back.

"Well you're definitely not acting like… _you_ , either, dude." Epazote noted as he picked up a stack of cooking magazines. "Look… I get why this whole Grimm Brotherhood deal is getting to you. It's scaring a lot of people back home, too, but I doubt there's a huge conspiracy going on here."

"The general's daughter says otherwise," deciding that this intervention wasn't going to stop anytime soon, Roland slid out of bed and stood up, "Keep this on the down low, but I've been told that the Grimm Brotherhood stole some airships from the Atlas military and painted that symbol on the sides," he pointed to the page from his mother's book that served as the wall's centerpiece, "Last time I saw your mom, I told her about it. It was in my mom's apartment on the day of… you know."

"Then it's also the tag that they use when they stage robberies in Vacuo," Dante sighed, "You've gone over this a thousand times…"

Epazote nodded, "Yeah… that too. Look, Rol. We're all worried and want to know what's going on, but we're also just first-year Huntsmen-in-training. Why can't you just leave it to the authorities and _real_ _fully-trained_ Huntsmen? Try to enjoy the time you have here before the world really tries to bite you in the butt?"

"It's already nipped at him a few times, so you can't blame him for getting this paranoid," Dante explained while her brother got ready, "I'm more worried about his conduct, Episo-... Epazote. Sure, this obsession is an issue, but he has a bit of a point. Between what they might have done to Professor Oscura and what they have done to the Mistral Trading Company, it seems like they've struck way too close to him."

Roland froze in the middle of buttoning his shirt, "What about the company?"

"The attacks on the shipments across the kingdoms. Has Father not told you? The Grimm Brotherhood has been stealing goods from us for months now," Dante absentmindedly twisted a stray curl of hair, "We're losing shares because people don't trust that we can make shipments like we used to, and now we can't afford the needed security because we're losing money so fast," she thought for a moment, "Don't let that leave this room, Epazote. Father's been going through a lot of deals in order to prevent the news getting out and causing the worst PR nightmare of the century."

Epazote seemed shocked to hear that those carrying out the string of 'Mistral murders' were also successful bandits. The Mistral Trading Company had some of the best defense and transportation tech in the world thanks to its ties across kingdoms. Atlas mechs and security systems were on every train and every boat. If those didn't work, there was always a spare Huntsman or two hired as head of security for the more sensitive and expensive shipments. "Wait… so…" Epazote looked at the papers surrounding him, "I mean… I get it, there is something going on, but like I said, why can't the authorities handle this? Your dad's talking to the cops in Mistral, right?"

"He has Huntsmen on it. Mother thinks that word might get out more if we get the police involved. It's more of a Huntsman's job, anyway. With as much ground as the MTC covers, we'd have to deal with law enforcement all over Remnant and hope that they would work together," Dante tossed Roland his hat, "I'm not supposed to tell you that part either, so you keep this all between us as well, Roland."

"Right…" he finished buckling his belt and threw his hat onto his head, "It's all really concerning, but…" he looked over to all of the notes posted on the walls, "Listen, my team's worried about me. As much as I want to go into this further with everything that is apparently going on with the company, I do need a break before I just completely crash…"

"Then do that. I mean, you've already cut class. Why not try to relax a bit?" Epazote suggested with a smile, "Maybe we could go to that Dust shop you're always talking about? I'd definitely like to meet the lady that's always doing the crazy Dust combinations. She sounds psycho, but a fun kind of psycho, like Cai." At this point, he was trying to think of anything to get Roland's mind off of the Grimm Brotherhood.

"Or we could head over to the CCT and look at news stories from every kingdom. It would be a relaxing way to keep getting more information," Dante suggested.

Epazote looked to his best friend's half-sister incredulously. "Um… what about an actual _break_ , Dante?" For the years he'd known the Wells family, Epazote had learned that, besides Roland's biological parents, Dante was the primary source of support and concern. Why was she egging this unhealthy habit on?

"If we help him get this done faster, then this madness might come to an end. He's going to obsess either way-"

"Not right now," Roland shook his head, "Look, Sepia and I are spending most of our time together fighting right now. A lot of it is because I won't leave this all alone for even five minutes… that was made clear this morning."

"Well," Epazote checked his watch, "She should still be with your team out in Forever Fall with your Grimm Combat instructor."

"Seriously?"

"He told you guys that it could end up being an all-day deal."

"Hold on, I'll text her," Roland typed out a message and sent it. A response came within seconds, which he read aloud, "She says that she's busy talking to… her auntie-mom."

"Auntie-mom?" Dante raised an eyebrow.

"Her aunt raised her, so she calls her that instead of Aunt Aubrey. Apparently Sepia ended up skipping class too, though," Roland shrugged, "Look, how about we just head down to Vale and try to relax? Go to the Dust shop, the cafe, and maybe somewhere that I can pick up some flowers to beg for forgiveness? A break honestly sounds better and better every time one of us mentions it."

Epazote clapped his hands and nodded, "Great! Yeah! Like I've been saying! Let's go look at Dust and _take a break_." He said, glancing over to Dante.

Dante went to retort, but was cut off by the door to Team ARTS's room opening.

In the doorway, a heavily battered, soaked, and somewhat crispy Arty stood, Palette to his side and his clothes covered in scratches and rips. He obviously wasn't very happy.

"You… you look worse than I did earlier…" Roland looked Arty over from head to toe, "Looks like the Rippers had a field day with you…"

"Not just them Roland…" Arty grumbled as he dropped his weapon on the floor and flopped onto his bed.

Epazote, Dante, and Roland looked to each other with a look of concern.

"So… what else almost made a meal of you?" Epazote asked, trying to lighten the mood and start Roland's 'break'.

Arty groaned, "Well… first it was just McGouran's Rippers. Of course he had to give a twenty minute speech about how they were special ordered from Vacuo and delivered with the help of that Vincentas guy's team, you know, that anger-management coach slash Huntsman that followed you around last semester and almost killed me with a door? Yeah, so it was them at first, but then the Echos showed up, and I hate, and I mean _hate_ flying Grimm… But then, oh, it got _so_ much better. Right there, near the end, our caravan gets to the river and McGouran had a little _surprise_ for us like he _always does_."

Roland looked at the others in hopes that they might say something. When it was clear that no one was going to say anything, he decided to take Arty's ensuing rant head on, "Was it the Camolurkers…?"

Arty scoffed, "I wish! I love it when he tells an eensy weensie tiny white lie like 'oh you'll be fighting Camolurkers as well, have fun' but then it turns out that there's something I hate _more_ than flying Grimm!" He sat up, a look of bewildered frustration across his scratched and singed face, "Aquatic Grimm! As Alice would probably say, they're _pretty_ _bloody_ _horrible!_ You know, living in the frozen wasteland of Atlas means that most of the Grimm I'm used to are tiny and usually land based. Nobody takes a trip to the beach on a glacier. I've never dealt with anything likes this, and it didn't help that I was _the only one on my team to show up for the mock mission_."'

"I know that Sepia didn't come along, but Timbre didn't either?" Roland was taken back. He and Sepia had ditched plenty of times, but not once had Timbre tagged along. She was always the one to preach about setting a good example and keeping a good attendance record, "Did she say where she went?"

"Yeah, she started feeling pretty bad, too. She said something about going off to talk to your mom today at the clinic downtown about her nightmares," Arty said, pointing a yellow-paint covered finger towards Epazote. "I said that would be fine. I don't want my team fighting if they don't think they can handle it right now, but that was still at the point when I thought Sepia would still be there. When I showed up at the airship to meet up with McGouran and MTLC, I was so surprised to find out she was gone too!" Arty held his face in his hands, "I'm all for trying to get over issues, but I just have to say it wasn't too fun finding out the day of that I'd be the only one on my team going out on a mission representing our _entire grade_ for an assignment. I don't know if you've noticed, but I'm kind of the biggest screw up on this team and the _last_ person you should leave an entire project to."

"I wouldn't say that, Burnie. You wouldn't be a leader if you were a screw up," Surprisingly, it was Dante to offer words of encouragement to someone other than Roland, "Look, us three are about to go down to Vale and relax. You can come with us if you would like."

"We might even run into Timbre again when we're down there. The clinic that Mom's temporary office is in isn't too far from the airship docks," Epazote pat Arty on the back, "Besides, you look like you need a break too…"

"Thanks, but no thanks," Arty said as he reclined back on his bed, wincing from the soreness in his body, "I'll stay here and… recover for a bit. You know, let the aura stew around a little bit and get these cuts and scrapes taken care of."

"Right…" Epazote headed out the door with Dante close behind, "Feel better, Art."

Dante waved goodbye, "Yeah, take it easy, Burnie."

Roland started to leave, but stopped in the doorway, "Sorry that I started this mess. If I hadn't gotten so bent out of shape, then maybe I wouldn't have started fighting with Sepia. Then maybe Sepia and I wouldn't have added to Timbre's stress on top of her nightmares, and we might have all been in class today."

Arty held a hand up, "No… honestly, I don't mind at all. You guys have stuff you're trying to get over. So do I. I'm still trying to get over my crap too, but the only way I can cope with it is making sure you guys are okay and at your best." He winced again, "I'd be telling you the same thing if I had come back without a scratch and feeling like a truckload of Lien."

"Then if you're not pissed at us, then you should at least meet up with us later tonight. If we're all down there tonight, then Sepia is bound to come down too. Hanging out with everyone and attempting to believe that everything is okay doesn't sound bad, you know?" Roland went to close the door, "I'll buy."

Arty gave him a thumbs up, "Yeah… sounds good. Just let the fight between my lungs and my heart stop first and I'll be down later."

"Sound's good," Roland shut the door only to see Epazote and Dante waiting, "Let's grab my bike and attach the sidecar, and we'll head out."

* * *

"Listen, just make sure that you never take a Dust mixture from a girl with dark brown hair with a red streak through it. The first request that she'll probably give is for a Fire and Magma mixture, then the Nova Dust mixture that Rol always speaks highly of," Epazote pointed to a picture of Cayenne that was resting on the glass counter of the 'Bite the Dust' Dust shop.

The shopkeeper, who Team ARTS was now on a first-name basis with, raised an eyebrow at Epazote and the picture before her.

"Okay?..." Perry said as she tied her bright green hair back, "Is she like… a criminal or psycho or something?"

Epazote leaned in close, "Close. She's my girlfriend."

"Ohhh… Oh!" Perry jumped back, "Sorry, I didn't mean to insinuate-"

"She's a raging pyromaniac that has 'accidentally' burned down buildings inside Haven Academy. We have a permanent ban on fireworks on campus because of her," Epazote explained further, "She has an issue, but it works really well for killing Grimm." He glanced to the racks of Dust-infused clothing at the other side of the shop. "I'd also hide the cloth if she comes by. She has a knack of sewing that stuff into _all_ of her clothes… even her uniform and casual wear."

"Right…" Perry slowly took the picture that Epazote had, "I'll keep this for reference in that case. I don't want the shop burning down… and exploding."

Roland leaned on the counter, "Not to interrupt, but how is that modified Nova Dust mixture coming? I haven't gotten a chance to try those samples because Arty's too scared to, but I was wondering what the guy that mixes this stuff has experienced when working with it."

Perry fell into a fit of laughter that lasted for an uncomfortable couple of minutes. When she was done, she wiped a tear from her eye, "Yeah… I don't know why, but every time you ARTS guys come up with something, my friend has to end up rebuilding his workshop."

"Wait, this has happened before?" Epazote stepped away from Roland, fearful that some of Cayenne's pyromaniac tendencies might have rubbed off on his best friend.

"Hey, we just order the stuff. Chill," Roland waved off his concern, "So did the workshop _**ex**_ plode or _**im**_ plode this time?"

Perry thought about a way to word her response. "Can I say both?"

"Oh gods…" Dante said wide-eyed.

"Yeah," The shopkeeper began scrolling through some images on the monitor in front of her. "Turns out adding Gravity to the explosive nature of the Nova's plasma kind of… creates a…" She showed them a picture of what appeared to be a crater. Around the crater was a wide clearing carved out of the trees and rocks nearby, almost as if a large sphere of matter were simply removed from the area and everything around it was pushed outwards. "Black hole type-explosion that drags everything inward before exploding outwards… He actually ended up getting stuck in it. Got banged up quite a bit and then launched into the road nearby when the pent up energy was released." She chuckled, "Don't worry, he's fine. He's gotten caught up in a lot of explosions before. He actually finds it fun at this point. He says that high concentrations like the vat he was working with is _very very very_ dangerous, but should pack a punch without causing too much collateral damage if used in small amounts like say, your team leader's paintballs or in a few lines of text in your typewriter."

"Right on," Roland nodded, "Think you could infuse a few dozen pieces of paper with it? Maybe some Nove Dust paper too? I think that stuff would work great with my sister's Semblance."

"If you get me a vial, I think I could recite a poem from memory to use, but… I don't know if that's a good idea with the way that Dust mixture works…" Dante looked at Perry pleadingly, "If you would like to know, I can use poetry to strengthen my allies or weaken my enemies, and I can add Dust to that for various effects. Would you like to see a demonstration?"

Perry put her elbows on the glass counter and perched her chin on her hands, "Heck yeah! I love to see what you Huntsmen-in-training are working with."

"Roland, some of that Lightning Dust that you purchased. Please," Dante held a hand out to her brother, "I'm about to make Epazote my guinea pig."

Epazote shook his head, "Wait what?!" He watched Dante as she took a small vial of bright yellow powder from Roland. "I didn't agree to this! I actually don't think I was asked in the first place!"

Dante walked a few feet away, creating some space between her and Epazote, "Relax. I'm buffing you, not debuffing you. You'll just feel a little… tingly…" she broke the vial of Lightning Dust in her fist, "Let's see… how did it go…?"

"Are you thinking of that one about bringing light?" Roland asked.

"Ah, yes! I think I remember it now. Stand still, Epazote," Dante took a deep breath to begin her spell, "Bright light to the bleakest night," she tossed the Dust into the air to form a yellow mist in front of Epazote, "To end the struggles of this plight."

The Dust began to glow bright, which made Epazote's heart race. He had only ever experienced a debuff from Dante, and that certainly was one of the worst experiences that he had ever had, "Can we talk this over a little more…?"

"Strike down those that stand too high," Dante's aura seemed to shimmer around her as the spell neared its completion, "And flash bright like the stormy sky."

Epazote felt a jolt pass through his body, but as the initial stinging pain passed, he felt as if he had drank a full coffee-shop's worth of espresso. Running a few miles seemed like no challenge all of a sudden. He bounced up and down on the balls of his feet, unable to hold still anymore. " _Wowee_!" He shouted, shaking his head, running his hands through his hair, which was now standing straight up on end, the green streak in his bangs looking like a makeshift unicorn horn. He couldn't help but laugh at how great he felt.

"Don't touch him. You'll get a bit of a shock if you do," Dante warned, "I considered debuffing him for demonstration purposes, but I didn't want to hurt your business with the screaming that would ensue from the uncontrollable muscle spasms he'd experience."

"Glad you… considered that…" Perry took a step back to put some more distance between her and the witch, "So did you inherit that Semblance like Roland did, or…?"

"I developed it when me and Roland were fighting as kids. I remember shouting a poem from a book that we read together because I thought it sounded really mean at the time. Then he sort of… doubled over in pain," Dante passed a glance over to her brother. It was clear that the incident still bothered her.

"Then I got to be your test dummy when trying it out with Dust. Good times…" Roland picked up one of the vials of Nova Dust, "So, is it possible to get this stuff into paper without the paper exploding?"

Perry pulled out a few containers full of powdered Nova Dust. "I mean, yeah. Possibly. I mean…" She looked confused for a moment, "Maybe? I don't know, I've never made paper with Dust and I've only sewn Dust into cloth a couple of times, but I guess I'll see what I can do." She didn't sound too particularly sure of herself.

"Don't worry about it. I'll just mix the Dust with water and soak a notebook in it. If I get the water-to-Dust ratio right, it should soak it into the paper. I wouldn't mind breaking out a Nova Dust debuff in a fight with a particularly strong Grimm… or in the tournament... or Ahab if he acts up again…" Dante tapped her Lightning Dust coated finger against her lip. After a third tap, her face contorted into a wretch, "Gods, Dust really tastes awful…"

Perry reached over and pushed Dante's hand away from her face, "Yeah… I _really_ don't recommend eating the stuff… I know how the urban legends and stuff go, but it's r _eally_ not good for you… So, is there anything else I can do for you guys today?" She looked over and saw Epazote bouncing and jittering around, his smile wide and his pupils dilated, "Like maybe call a doctor for Sparky the Spaz over here?..."

"He'll be fine. His mother works in… health," Roland shooed Epazote out the door, "Dante, keep an eye on him."

"Right. Got it," Dante led Epazote out the door and towards Roland's bike.

"Alrighty, see you around, Perry. Arty might come by later," Roland packed up the newly purchase supplies into the violet satchel he had brought along, "If you see Sepia, tell her to meet up with us at the cafe. She's not responding to texts, so her scroll might be dead."

Perry smiled and gave a small salute, "Will do, Roland! See ya around!"

As they exited the store, Epazote excitedly grabbed Dante by the shoulders and began bouncing, almost throwing her off balance. He certainly wasn't making it easy to push him down into the sidecar.

"Epazote?! What-" bounce, "are-," bounce, "you-," bounce, " _doing_?!"

"C'mon! Let's go try to make Nova Dust paper! I wanna see what you could do to buff me with that stuff!" He let go of her and began running down the sidewalk towards a small local park, cheering and trying to high five random people that he passed by.

"I am not going to buff you with Nova Dust, Epazote!" Dante shouted. She held her arms close to her chest and hurried after him, "I have two options for you! Control yourself and wait for the buff to wear off, or I will punch you hard enough to remove it!"

" _Good luck catching me, sister! Woohoo!"_ He jumped and latched onto a lamppost, nearly taking off a young Faunus couple's heads as he used it to swing a full 90-degrees around the corner and quickly out of the Wells kids' line of sight.

"Damn, I don't have any Air Dust…" Dante ran to catch up with him.

The roar of an engine made her whip her head around. While she didn't have anything to cast a mobility buff, she did have a brother with a 150 horsepower bike. That typically made it easier to catch up to people.

Roland rode up next to her, "Come on. I'll punch the Lightning Dust out of him when we get to the park," he held a blood red helmet out to her. Somewhere between researching that stupid symbol, he had made time to special order a helmet for her with a 'Dante' scrawled on the side in calligraphy, and with her favorite poems all written out along the domed surface of it. It made her smile when he passed it to her for when they were making their way to Vale, and it made her smile again now.

"Sounds fair enough!" Dante pulled the helmet on and hopped on behind him. She hadn't wanted to simply enjoy the time that they could have in Vale at first, but racing after Epazote with her brother at her side reminded her of far simpler times. If only she could've gone back to that.

* * *

"C'mon! Do it already!" Epazote chittered impatiently as he sat in the grass in front of Dante.

"I need to think of a poem…" Dante stared at the vial, "It is a lot harder to use a poem that I come up with on the fly. It makes for a far less stable buff or debuff."

"Hey guys… what's going on here?..."

Watching Dante from a nearby picnic table, Roland hadn't even seen Arty walk up. Night was slowly falling on the city and their small section of the park was lit by a single light-post.

Roland's senses were still out of whack from not sleeping for so long, "Hey Arty. We're seeing what happens when Dante uses Nova Dust for a buff."

Arty looked around to the people enjoying the late afternoon at the park. Some ran around playing, some were enjoying a late picnic, a few couples were even sitting out to have a romantic moment while watching the sun set over the ocean. "In a public park?..." He knew he'd made some mistakes blowing stuff up in places where he shouldn't before, but this seemed to be a new level.

"Yeah!" Epazote said excitedly, "Now shut up and watch! I wanna see what happens!"

Arty was confused as to why Epazote was so jittery and... seemed to be sparking. "Did you guys already hit the cafe? Cuz it looks like he's had a bit too much coffee."

"Lightning buff. Dante didn't have her spellbook, so he got a little… too much Lightning Dust," Roland explained, "We saw Perry, made sure that she wouldn't sell Dust to Cayenne, and talked about the new Dust mixture that we thought up. By the way, it _**ex**_ plodes and _**im**_ plodes at the same time apparently."

Arty took a seat on the same table, "Huh…"

Roland thought that something didn't seem right about his leader. He looked a bit jittery or nervous. For the time being, he just associated it with witnessing somebody else having their first run with Nova Dust. As he tried to gauge his partner's mood, he noticed a familiar grip sticking out of his backpack. "Why do you have Palette with you? You never bring it into town."

Arty looked back at his backpack with concern, as if he'd been caught making a mistake. "Oh… I just… wanted to take it down to see if I could get a… a..." he snapped his fingers as he found the words, "a shoulder strap! Yeah. Palette's been weighing my bag down, especially since I've started carrying spare ammo and stuff for you guys. Thought I could clear up some room if I could just have her resting at my side, you know?"

Roland nodded, unconvinced, but he remembered how exhausted Arty was earlier. He was also an idiot who was bad with words at times, so that could've been another explanation. He turned his attention back to his sister.

"Alright, here goes nothing…" Dante crushed the vial in her hand, "Keep clear of the area. Burn like th-"

A surge of plasma rippled out from her hand. The air suddenly smelled strongly of ozone, and then a wave of heat crashed through the area. Trees were stripped of their leaves, the grass directly around Dante's feet vaporized, and a thunderous boom shook the very ground around the park. When the light faded, Dante laid in the epicenter shaking.

"Dante!" Roland shot up from his seat and ran to his sister, "Are you alright?! What the heck just happened?!"

Dante slowly leaned up, coughing a few times as she did so, "I think… I think I just made a little star around myself… and it exploded…"

Arty looked at the singed edges of Dante's cloak and the dark soot coating her face. It reminded him of how he looked most days after class. "Wow… that… could've gone a lot worse."

"Woohoo!" Epazote cheered. "That was _awesome_! Did you hear that explosion!? You blew up so bad the ground shook and now there's smoke from blocks away!" He pointed over some nearby rooftops, where pillars of black smoke towered into the now darkened sky.

"That… that wasn't me…" Dante's eyes widened at the sight of smoke. There were at least three pillars of black smoke stretching into the sky. Either something was burning, or… "Bombs…"

Roland froze while staring at the rooftops. In the moments that he took his eyes away from his news articles and bits of hair-brained 'research', an attack on Vale had begun. He stood and looked onto the pillars of smoke, listening to the waves of screaming beginning to pour through the streets.

Vacuo saw the Grimm Brotherhood as thieves. In Mistal, they were killers. To the north in Atlas, they were merely a growing nuisance. Now they were further cementing a name for themselves in Vale. The Grimm Brotherhood were about to be known across Remnant as they were known in Vale: terrorists.


	37. V2Ch9: Anachronism

The caravan slowly made its way along the beaten dirt path as dozens of red leaves gently drifted down from the canopy above . Three wooden carts loaded with supplies were being drawn by bronze robotic horses, which, apparently, Victor McGouran had built himself for this practice mission. The goal: protect the mock caravan from Grimm attacks as it made its way to a set destination on the other side of Forever Fall as Huntsmen would on a real escort mission. The problem: three of the eight students that signed up for this particular practice mission had failed to show up. All four members of Team MTLC had showed up while only one member of Team ARTS was present.

While Midas Ankara, of course, took to the front of the caravan, Curie Geiger took the rear, Ledning Coyle took the left, and Arty Umber took the right. Titian Mars, on the other hand, rode on top of the middle cart to act as lookout.

For the time being, they had a bit of a break from fighting Grimm, both the native populations as well as McGouran's specially ordered foreign monstrosities. As he walked alongside the caravan with Palette at the ready, Arty couldn't get one word out of his mind: ' _Anachronism'_. An anachronism is when an object, person, place, or event is incorrectly associated to a time period in which it does not belong.

Arty imagined a soldier during the Great War calling Mantle by its newer name 'Atlas'. Being an artist, he knew one version of anachronisms well. Practicers of the visual arts would occasionally use anachronisms in their works, either on purpose or unintentionally, when creating a scene. One specific instance came to mind. He was showing Curie a painting that was his interpretation of Mantle created after doing extensive research into the defunct kingdom. She pointed out that, while the painting was good, the model of Dust-powered streetlamps he had added to the scene weren't invented until forty years after Atlas had risen from Mantle's ashes.

Sepia and Roland were others that knew anachronisms well, due to their preferred arts. There was one movie night when Sepia got angry and threw a bowl of popcorn at the projection screen when a random gun was pulled out during a scene that was supposed to take place in the age of early-civilization. Roland would occasionally grunt whenever he noticed an object or person in a historical fiction book that wasn't supposed to be there, finding it more entertaining than Sepia did.

The reason Arty began thinking about anachronisms was the illustration Roland had shown him earlier that morning. Why was the symbol the Grimm Brotherhood was using in a book that was almost a century old when they had only recently become active? He knew that one possibility was that they could have adopted an older symbol, but why? What did it mean? It was only an eight-spoked wheel, nothing too complex, but definitely something detailed enough to where he was certain he'd never seen the exact same pattern copied anywhere before. He tried to remember if he had to redraw the symbol in any of the other books in the Beacon library, but he had to fix so many books after Yamuna's Lunacy incident that there was no way he could remember each individual drawing, especially if the symbols were as tiny as the one in the history book. There was only two possibilities. Either the symbol was brand new and he had copied the symbol from a newer version of the book that had the Grimm Brotherhood's symbol for some reason, or the Grimm Brotherhood was much older than they seemed. _How old are they?..._

"Yo, Umber! Watch your six!" Midas called out as he drew his golden weapons.

Arty shook himself out of his train of thought and aimed his gun off to the red trees behind him where Midas had told him.

Nothing was there.

A heavy object slammed hard into his back, sending him to the ground. Palette slid out of his reach underneath the middle cart of the caravan.

The large black lizard pinned his arms, holding him to the ground on his stomach as it roared at him. It's front claws tore into the wood and cloth of the cart, costing the group some points in the assignment, but right now, Arty had bigger worries as the Ripper began rearing a leg up, ready to slice down his back. Even with one arm free, Arty couldn't do anything to defend himself.

"Midas you _idiot_!" Curie yelled as she made her way up from the rear of the row of carts, Alternator in its melee form. "Watch your six doesn't mean 'watch your back'!" She jumped towards the creature, the tesla-coil of her weapon aimed downwards. She planted her feet on its back, careful to avoid slicing herself on its bony back spikes. As the coil made contact with the monster's head, it began to shudder and twitch violently as electricity coursed through its body.

Arty could barely see the Grimm's claw coming down on him out of the corner of his eye. He watched as it slammed into the dirt mere inches from his face.

Curie slammed her weapon down again into the Ripper's side closest to the caravan, launching it out from under her and into the trees nearby. After her feet reconnected with the leaves coating the path, she held a hand out to Arty, "You okay, Umber?"

As he got to his feet, he looked off to see the fried Grimm begin to stir, obviously ready to get back into the fight as it shook the pain out of its skull. "Never better…" he grumbled.

"Good, now crawl under the carts and get your weapon before it gets up and calls for backup." She explained while reconfiguring her weapon into its gun form.

"But what about y-"

" _Go_ , Umber!" She pushed him towards the cart, almost making him slam face first into the robotic horse pulling the last cart of the caravan.

As he dodged the heavy bronze legs, he could hear the loud zaps of electricity as Curie shot in the direction of the injured Ripper. Clouds of dirt and leaves getting kicked up by the wheels made him cough, but he managed to duck to the ground and roll under the relatively slow-moving cart. It was hard to see, but he caught the glint of orange and silver metal.

It seemed no matter how much electricity she filled the Ripper with, it just wouldn't fall. _Dammit… I guess those guys who work on_ Huntsmen's Requiem _really did their research when they made these things resistant to electricity-based attacks_. Judging from the sounds of fighting, some of the Ripper's friends had already decided to show up and were giving the rest of her team some trouble. She was on her own for this one. Alternator's coil was aimed at the ready. There wasn't time to shift it again now that the Grimm was charging right for her, its jaws wide open.

It lunged, its claws and teeth ready to dig into her. Another blast of electricity didn't do a thing.

The explosion that tore it apart did, however.

Curie was shocked as black glowing bits of fading dinosaur Grimm rained down on her. She spun around and found Arty standing there, giving her a cocky grin.

"I'm a better shot than I was when I left Atlas, huh?"

She rolled her eyes, "Shut up and use that 'better shot' to help the others."

As the last cart moved past him, the sight of Midas and Ledning fending off three more Rippers on the other side of the path was revealed. "Right… got it." He aimed Palette towards the scuffle. "Midas! Ledning! Duck!"

"There are duck Grimm in Vale?!" Midas shouted in panicked confusion as he looked around for the demonic waterfowl.

Ledning grumbled at his cousin's stupidity as he planted a hand firmly on the top of his golden head and dropped them both to the ground.

Arty had begun trying to plan the order of his shots ahead. Sometimes it worked, sometimes it didn't, but right now, he knew that he needed to pull the trigger and hope for the best. He watched the three Rippers lunge towards the two cousins, surprised that Ledning trusted his shot enough to listen to his order. He pulled the trigger, managing to hit each Grimm in the chest square between their skinny front arms. The first two had their lower halves frozen solid by dark blue paintballs. The third avoided being stuck in place due to Arty planning for a Lightning Dust paintball being useful in his ordering system.

The Grimm screeched and turned its attention to Arty and Curie.

Arty examined his gun, thrown off by the sudden misstep in his planning. "Oh man… what was next? I swear it was supposed to be Magma - Ice - Ice - Magma, not Magma - Ice - Ice - Lightning!"

"Umber," Curie said, stepping backwards with him, "I've been telling you forever that you needed individual chambers for different types of Dust, but right now, I'd rather you just keep shooting until that thing is dead!" She twisted the barrel of her gun, causing arcs of electricity to spark. It was a vain attempt to ward off the monster.

The Grimm charged. Arty and Curie both raised their guns, unable to shift them to their melee forms in time before the Grimm got to them.

A bright red beam light sliced through the Grimm vertically through its torso. Its front half fell limply to their feet, the glowing inside of the Grimm exposed by the clear cut through its body. Black flakes of mist filled the air as it dissolved.

Titian stood before them, whistling and twirling her glowing oval-shaped blade as she watched her kill fade, "You two ought to be more careful! That thing almost had barbecue and energy drink for lunch!"

"Barbecue?..." Arty grumbled.

"Energy Drink?" Curie rolled her eyes. "Whatever. I guess I'm just glad your weapon can actually help out a bit more than the rest of us in this situation, Titian."

"Uh, guys?"

The three turned back to Ledning and Midas, who were back to their feet and standing next to the two half-frozen Rippers as their top halves struggled to free them from their frosty prisons.

"Can we kill these things and get back to the caravan before it gets destroyed?" Midas suggested as one of the Rippers snapped towards him.

Arty watched the back of the last cart as it disappeared further into the forest. The angry screeches and roars of more Grimm echoed from the same direction. "Oh yeah… right… Get to it then!" He dashed off, followed closely by Curie.

"You heard him, get to it!" Titian winked to the MTLC guys before running off as well.

Midas tapped the bracelet on Ledning's left wrist, turning it a bright gold. He laughed and gave a sly grin, "Gotta be quick if we're gonna catch up to them."

Ledning rolled his eyes as the golden lead bracelet began to extend into a long flat blade, "You underestimate me, cuz," he sliced horizontally, decapitating the Ripper closest to him while Midas fired a Semblance-charged shot into the other's face.

"Right, let's get back to it then."

* * *

A few hours later, the caravan came to a bridge crossing a deep crevasse. Deep down, there was nothing but black. McGouran had warned that this was the three-quarter point in their mission. On the other side of the narrow gap was yet another bridge, this one much shorter as it crossed a river.

"I'm starting to miss the tundra and ice now…" Ledning griped.

"Just keep an eye out, there's no telling what could come out of there," Arty warned as he jumped on the back of the middle cart since the bridge was too narrow to walk alongside the caravan. He looked to the cart behind him and saw Curie huddled up in the middle of the supply pile. He afforded another glance into the cavern below and figured out pretty quickly what was happening. "Hey, Curie. We're gonna get through this soon. Just hold out for a few minutes."

She looked back over. Behind her glasses, her neon green eyes were wide with fear. It sounded like she was trying to say something, but nothing came out. She just nodded quickly instead before curling back up and shutting her eyes tight.

Arty was concerned, but he knew that as long as nothing went too particularly bad, she'd be fine. After the disaster of fighting Rippers with electricity, Arty took the time to siphon out the yellow paintballs from his gun, leaving only Ice, Magma, and some Nova. Considering the unknown depth of the ravine, he thought Gravity and Air Dust might also be a plus, especially if any of them fell off the bridge in the event of an attack.

Titian laughed as she spun her oval-shaped blade in her hand while leaning against the cargo of the same cart. "Wow, Umber. You look and sound so calm and at home here. I never would've guessed you were from Atlas had these guys not told me. Well, that and had I not put two and two together and came to the conclusion you were related to Sergeant Tuscan Umber."

The whole comment made him feel weird and the mention of his father's new ranking didn't help. His whole life he'd been Atlesian, and here this girl that took his place on his old team saying he seemed Valian. The word 'anachronism' came back, but he shook off the association since there was never a real _time_ associated with him being from Vale. _Guess that's as far as I can get from being in the military_. "Um… thanks? I guess."

"No problem! I guess." She mocked him jokingly.

They suddenly had to grip the canvas covering the supplies in the caravan as the bridge began to shake beneath them.

"Um…" Midas looked around wearily from the front cart, "Arty? Your Vale training helping you figure out what the heck that was?..."

Arty looked around. His short attention span decided to rear its ugly head. He examined the ropes and wood making up the bridge. The rope was nowhere near frayed and the boards looked smooth and brand new.

He realized that the bridge wasn't old at all. In fact, it looked brand new. Thinking back to previous assignments in Forever Fall, he couldn't recall there ever being a bridge crossing such a chasm. "Dammit McGouran… You planned this didn't you?" he muttered as he afforded a quick glance back into the ravine below.

"What do you mean, Umber?" Ledning snapped.

"McGouran changed the path. This bridge isn't supposed to be here. He _wanted_ us to cross this chasm. We're following the path _he_ programmed into these robots." As he stared into the deep blackness, he was able to catch the quick movement of something moving quickly beneath the bridge. _Oh crap_. He managed to think to himself just as the whole bridge began to shake and whip back and forth. Had their horses been real, they would've panicked and began running in an attempt to get across the bridge faster. But because they were nothing but simply-programmed machines, they continued on their peaceful trot along the rippling boards of the bridge.

Curie felt like she was going to pass out. Even though she was staring up into the bright blue sky, she knew that beneath her was endless blackness. Her fingers dug into the canvas and her pulse was running a million miles an hour. She wanted to help Arty and Midas figure out a plan, she was the tactician of Team MTLC after all, but right now her entire strategy involved screaming and praying she didn't fall into the ravine.

The shaking suddenly stopped.

Midas laughed, "Well, at least that-"

Large forms that rivaled that of the individual carts shot up into the sky from the cave below. The new Grimm began to flap their wings, hovering over the students, glaring at them with their molten red eyes. They resembled bats, their wings made up of thin bony structures and dark membranes that glowed eerily from the sun behind them. Smaller ones began to swarm around them, circling the caravan like a dark tornado.

They began to screech in unison. Pain shot through the five students' ears as the high-pitched cries echoed through the forest and seemed to resonate out of the chasm.

"Oh, Turf and the Lunas would _not_ be happy right now!" Arty complained as he gritted his teeth and held his hands over his ears.

When the larger Grimm finally stopped screeching, they all looked up, minus Curie, who stayed sunken into the supply pile.

Titian held her blade in front of her with both hands. Mechanisms shifted within them, letting the blade open up and split in half into two smaller handguns. The half-blades had folded out, letting them act as double-edged cutting blades as well. A bright red energy source, the same that edged the blade in its melee form, glowed brightly at the ends of the barrels "What are these things, Arty!?" She began whirling around, firing erratically into the storm of bats.

Arty shifted Palette into its bat form as one of the car-sized creatures began swooping towards him, its feet drawn out and ready to grab him. "They're called Echos!" He swung, launching the Grimm back into the abyss with a large blast of fire. "Big bats. Not fun and much more annoying than Nevermores!"

"Awesome!" Midas laughed as he swung and shot at the ones that got close to him. "So how do we kill them all and get these slow hunks of junk over this bridge?"

Arty watched as the large Echos began clawing at the canvas covers. His eyes widened when he saw one manage to slice through one of the ropes holding the bridge together. Strategic thinking concerning the mission at hand and trying to keep him and the others alive conflicted with one another. Every swing of his weapon restarted his thought process as he tried to think of a way out of their situation.

 _Slow hunks of junk_. The words stuck out in his mind, and this time, nothing was breaking the thread he was following. "Curie! You have to get this things to move faster!"

"What!?" She yelled back incredulously. She wasn't moving anywhere anytime soon. It was taking everything in her to keep her trigger finger held down on her weapon, keeping the jumping arcs of electricity going. Every time an Echo got too close, one would launch out and zap them. It was enough to kill the smaller ones, but it did nothing but aggravate the larger ones. "I'm… not… moving… _anywhere_ , Umber!"

"Curie, please!" He yelled back.

The bridge teetered as another rope snapped. This time, the bridge swayed too far.

Midas yelled as he fell off of his cart and right off of the bridge.

"Midas!" Curie yelled as she watched the golden boy fall helplessly into the cavern below.

Without even thinking about what he was doing, Arty jumped after him.

Seeing her two best friends disappear into her greatest fear got her brain in motion.

"Curie!" Ledning slashed blades and threw kicks at the swarm, "You heard him! Get to that steampunk lunatic's ponies and get their butts in gear!"

"Yeah!" Titian jumped up, landing on one of the larger Echos, riding it as if she'd done it millions of times before as it carried her in a circle around the caravan, giving her much better shots of the other threats, "We'll keep you covered!" She held both guns against her ride's head and fired, blowing it apart before jumping to another.

As she jumped up and made her way towards the first cart, Curie had to keep her eyes trained on her feet to keep from panicking. Bats swooped and grabbed at her hair, but her mind wasn't caring too much about that. _They have aura. They have weapons. They can survive down there. Arty has a plan… I think. NO! Stop that, Curie. He obviously has a plan. He'll get them out of this. Just do your part._

When she got to the spot where Midas had fallen, she looked down to see the bronze horse in front of her. She gripped her chest when she saw the solid black between the boards just past the horse.

 _Stop it Geiger. You're not helping anybody by panicking._ The bridge shuddered again as another rope broke.

"My fault! Sorry 'bout that!" Titian yelled as she yanked on the ears of her current mount, causing it to clumsily veer to the right. "Trying to learn how to fly one of these things! Probably not the time… right? Yeah…" She fired a blast into the Echo and let it fall down.

* * *

The whipping of the air as it ran past him brought tears to Arty's stinging eyes. _You moron! What were you thinking?! You just jumped head-first into a hole and you have no idea how deep it is!_

 _I have to save my friend, he's nowhere near as mobile as me!_

 _Yeah, but he's probably already gold paste at the bottom, and you're gonna be next!_

 _Shut up, me._

 _No you shut up._

Arty saw Midas just below him. He straightened himself out to lower the air resistance, allowing him to catch up to his friend. He reached out and some of the panic disappeared as his hand connected with Midas's wrist.

"Yo, watch the suit, dude!"

"Now is really not the time, Midas!" Arty reached for the vials at his belt.

Another large object slammed into him, making him lose his grip on Midas and his aim on his paintballs. A headless Echo, slowly fading but mostly still solid, had shot down from above. It was a miracle that it somehow managed to hit them in such a wide-open space.

Arty felt the sunlight begin to disappear. He didn't have much time. He began to reach for the bright white paintballs that had gotten him out of these sorts of situations before, but then he realized that he was already too deep, and it looked like the bridge was in big trouble as boards began to shake loose. _Dammit_. He didn't want to. He _really_ didn't want to, but he fought against his better judgement and gripped the vial of bright swirling yellow and red paintballs.

Snow boots connected with the rock face of the cave as he kicked off of it. He had to close the distance between him and Midas fast. He slammed into him, grabbing him tight.

"Midas, don't talk. You're not gonna like this. Just try to use your Semblance on us as much as you can!"

"Wha-?!"

"Just do it!" His eyes now catching the little bit of light hitting the bottom of the crevasse, Arty could see sharp stalactites lining the cave floor of the Grimm lair. He threw the vial.

Midas gripped Arty's backpack with one hand and the scabbard at his own hip with the other. Gold began to spread across their clothes right as the glass shattered below them.

* * *

Curie was just finishing up with the first horse when the entire chasm lit up with a bright white light.

"What the hell?!" Ledning shouted as the shockwave ripped through the bridge. Luckily, it only dislodged a few boards instead of completely destroying the entire structure.

"Whoa!" Titian was almost thrown off of her new Echo by two shiny yellow objects shooting out from the chasm. She squinted, trying to figure out what it was, but that gold sheen was unmistakable. "Okay, I was wrong, this _is_ the time!" She yanked the monster's left ear, hoping that the trend she'd seen in the past ten or so Grimm stayed true here. Thankfully, it swiveled around. It bucked, trying to throw her off, "Hey!" She kicked it hard in the side, "Stop that and go!" It struggled to throw her off, but in its struggle it still drifted towards her target. "Close enough."

In her shaky movements, Titian reached her hands out to catch Midas and Arty as they reached the peak of their arc. She watched as the gold color began to vanish. She knew that if they hit the ground after that explosion, or worse, fell back into the pit, their aura wasn't going to help them much. "C'mon… C'mon!" She grabbed onto both of them, snatching them out of the air, "Gotcha!"

As Arty and Midas dangled by their collars in Titian's gauntlets, they began yelling and punching the Grimm she was riding as it snapped at them with its long pointed fangs.

"Titian!" Midas yelled, "Let us down let us down let us _down!_ "

"Oh… right… forgot this thing still kinda wants us all dead..." She slammed both feet into the Echo's body, forcing it to screech, much to the displeasure of the two boys in her grasp. As it's torso seemed to cave in from the force, it slowly glided down towards the bridge. She jumped, landing softly on the middle cart as the Grimm fell past them.

Midas and Arty were still smoking and singed from their explosive launch.

Arty coughed. "Well… that went better than expected."

"I _love_ aura…" Midas lamented as he wiped soot off of his face.

"Oh thank god," Curie sighed with relief as she saw the two idiots getting back into the fight against the swarm. "Now back to business." She slammed the compartment door closed on the back of the bronze horse she was riding. The adjustments she made should do the trick.

As she jumped from the front cart to the middle, the first horse let out a blaring whistle as steam spewed from between the metal plates and from the nostrils. The legs began to move faster until its slow trot became a full on gallop, quickly making its way to the end of the bridge.

Titian and Ledning made their way up and lunged at the last second to the front cart.

"You get to the other horses! We'll keep this cart safe!" Titian saluted as their cart sped off.

Curie nodded before returning to Midas and Arty. She wrapped her arms around the singed morons. "Oh, I'm glad you guys are okay!" She then realized what she was doing and let them go. To fix her embarrassing show of emotion, she threw a jab at both of their shoulders. "Don't you two _ever_ do anything like that again!"

"Sorry that gravity seems to be upset with me today…" Midas griped as he rubbed his shoulder.

"Yeah… although I kinda just screamed back at it." Arty chuckled.

"I'm just glad you didn't knock out any more teeth with that stunt. Now if you'll excuse me, I'm going to get the last two horses fixed up so we can get done with this mission."

Arty gave her a thumbs up, "Coolio. We'll keep you covered."

After a few more fear-filled leaps, Curie landed on the back of the second horse.

"Just to make sure that that McGouran guy didn't make these any different." Curie held her palm flat against the side of the horse and closed her eyes. A bright green shimmer emanated from her hand and seemed to soak into the metal. In her mind, the entire makeup of the contraption was laid out before her. Every gear, every wire, every piston. To her relief, it was exactly the same as the first. She opened the access panel on its back, exposing the circuits and gears inside. The style of the machine was certainly odd as it combined old-style clockwork and modern circuitry, but it wasn't too much of a problem. Curie reached back and pulled one of the electrical wires she used to tie her hair back. She always tried to tell people they wasn't they weren't for fashion, they were for situations just like this. "Just have to connect the navigating system to the power source so the fluctuations in power will bypass the speed control and…" a loud zap sent sparks past her fingers as she connected the wire to the horse's mechanisms.

"That's two!" She yelled back as she began cart-hopping again, moving right past Midas and Arty. "Hold on to something! I don't want you two falling again!"

Like the first horse, the second let out a loud whistle and released steam before speeding up. Prepared for the boost, Midas and Arty braced themselves as the cart sped up.

"Haha! Atlas for the win!" Midas yelled triumphantly with his weapons raised as the wind whipped past him. "You know… not the military, but us… cuz we're from Atlas?"

Arty rolled his eyes as he kept firing into the now thinning swarm of Echos. "I got what you meant, Midas. You'd rather die before you complimented the military." He looked back to Curie, who was now many yards away, but when he saw what was behind her, his heart jumped. "Curie! You have company!"

Curie looked up from the circuits of the last horse back the way they had come. She saw three dark shapes moving incredibly fast towards her. Rippers.

She turned back to Arty and Midas, shaking her head, "I can't fight them off! My weapon's useless against them and I have to work on this horse!"

Midas turned to Arty. He gestured with his sword. "Well, go on. She's your girl."

Arty blushed. "N-no she isn't."

Midas rolled his eyes and jumped down from the high-speed cart and began making his way back across the bridge. "Either way, dude, she needs help!"

Arty could feel the bridge shake as the Rippers began running across the boards. "Dammit!" He jumped down and ran after Midas. Arty didn't know what Midas was planning, but he had his own goal.

The cart left no room to go left or right, so Arty went over. "Curie, don't worry, we'll handle them! Just focus!"

She nodded nervously as Midas leapt past her as well, "You heard your boyfriend, we're golden!"

Despite the danger, she blushed, "Shut up, Goldilocks!"

Arty didn't even bother slowing down when he came to the pack of Rippers. The one in the lead opened its jaws and roared, its claws ready to strike. Arty ducked low. Unable to slide on the uneven rough boards, he rolled under the first Ripper. As he came up on the other side, he brought Palette up, slamming one of the other monsters with a blast of fire, which was just enough force to send it soaring over the bridge. It's body connected with another rope, snapping it easily with its sharp spikes.

Arty turned just in time to block the other monster's claws with his bat.

The first Ripper turned back around, ready to lunge at Arty while he was distracted by its partner.

A shrill whistle came from further down the bridge, causing the Ripper to snap its attention towards the sound.

"Yo, ugly!" Midas scoffed as he walked backwards, keeping up with the cart, "Why don't you make this a fair fight!"

The Ripper hissed and chased after its new target. It wasn't even concerned with the fact that the boy in gold wasn't running or trying to escape. In its soulless mind, all it was thinking was 'free kill'. It ran, faster and faster, each step slamming into the now-rickety bridge. It was closing in on Midas. It was only a matter of seconds before it had him in its jaws.

"Midas!" Arty shouted as he saw the other Grimm rocketing towards his best friend. He let his guard down too much, giving the Ripper he was fighting an opening to swipe with its claws, clear across Arty's chest. The wounds weren't deep thanks to his aura, but they still stung like crazy.

"Don't worry about me, Umber! I got this!" Midas backed up against the cart, his gun and sword held against the wood. "I got this…" He kept his eyes equal with the Grimm's. Twenty feet. Fifteen feet. Ten feet. Five feet. He gazed into the glowing maw of the monster, and right as its fangs would've dug into him, he swiveled his hand against the back of the cart, pushing himself up into the air over the Grimm. He made sure to have enough contact with the cart to turn its entire base wooden structure gold, cementing it in place and allowing it to withstand the impact of a Ripper running full-force into it.

It was as if the Ripper had run straight into a brick wall. It's head was the first thing to be crushed by the force of slamming into the strengthened cart. The shock continued down its body, shattering the spikes running down its back, crumpling its torso, and eventually powdering the bone plates on its legs and tail. When it fell to the ground, it looked like a pile of black and red jelly with a light dusting of white.

Midas landed and marveled at his kill, letting out a loud _whoop_ of celebration as he did so. "I've been wanting to use that on something for a while now! Just don't have anything speedy enough back home!" He laughed. "Yo, Umber, you need help?"

Arty swiped his bat side to side, every time it connected with his Ripper, brightly-colored energy sprayed out in elemental bursts. Fire and Ice continuously fought each other across the Grimm's inky black skin until finally, Arty got to the right paintball.

He reared back, holding onto his bat with both hands. He was going for a full-on swing.

The Grimm's top half exploded as plasma jolted out in every direction.

As Arty turned to make his way back to the cart, Midas ran up and gave him a high-five.

"Home run! Nice!" He cheered, but his positivity soon vanished as he looked back across the bridge. "Um… Arty?" He pointed.

Arty followed his finger and cursed to himself when he saw the mob of various Grimm running towards them. Ursa, Camolurkers, some low-level Kokonatsu, Beowolves, Boarbatusks, even a few more of McGouran's prized Rippers all charged towards the bridge.

They turned and ran. They were obviously outmatched. "C-C-Curie!"

"I almost got it guys!" She yelled back, unaware of the threat coming up behind her. She felt the jolt of Midas and Arty jumping into the cart now that the gold had worn off. Arty grabbed her shoulder and shook her. "Oh my god, what is it Um… ber…?" She felt the already low amount of color in her face drain when she saw the mass of black running towards the bridge, their glowing red eyes glaring towards them. It looked like one large mass of pure unspeakable evil. She jumped back to the panel, frantically working at the wire to get the horse moving.

"Come on, Curie!" Midas panicked when he saw the first Grimm set foot on the bridge.

"Almost… got it!" She slammed the panel shut and jumped back onto the cart just as the hot steam blasted towards her. "Hold on!"

The cart rocketed off, but it wasn't fast enough to completely get away from the stampede, which was now shaking the whole bridge, threatening to collapse it at any moment.

"We're almost there!" Midas shouted when he saw the other two carts ahead. The modifications Curie made had apparently done their job and worn off as they were back to their casual trot. Ledning and Titian sat leisurely on the back of the middle cart chatting. Apparently they hadn't seen much action on that side of the chasm yet. "We're gonna make it!"

"Titian!" Arty shouted, "Titian!"

She snapped her head up and out of her conversation with Ledning, "What is it, Arty!?" That's when she saw the Grimm. "Oh crap…" She jumped down and ran towards the speeding cart.

"No! Don't get on the bridge!" He shouted back.

"Arty, she's the best shot of us," Curie explained, "she could take some of them out and keep them back long enough for us to get the caravan to the rendezvous point."

"Yeah, but she could take _all_ of them out and let us relax a bit if we do this right." He cupped his hands around his mouth, "I need you to dissolve the main support beams!"

"This bridge is wood and rope Umber, she can't-"

"Not the main support beams." He shot back, "The ones on the other side were metal, so I bet these are too. McGouran would've known something like this would happen, so he wanted to keep things going as long as possible. He made the supports out of metal so it could support all this weight across this wide gap."

Curie looked back and forth, taking in what Arty had just explained. "Titian! Do it!"

"But you guys are still on the bridge!" She protested.

"Just start working at it!"

Titian groaned, but complied. She held her hands against the first thick metal pillar that acted as the supports on her end of the ravine. Focusing her Semblance, little pockets of holes began to spread from her hands across the metal's surface, followed by a dark brown color. It wouldn't take long for her to eat through the metal. She just hoped that they had enough time to get across. Arty and Midas barely survived their first dive into the pit. She doubted they'd survive a second.

The left beam tumbled with a loud crash, followed by the snapping of the remaining ropes on that side of the bridge.

Curie, Midas, and Arty held on tight to the cart as it listed hard to the right, threatening to tip over and fall. They were so close, but Titian had barely started working away at the second support, and the Grimm horde was catching up fast.

"We're not gonna make it! We're not gonna make it!" Midas shouted.

The bridge began to creak and sag under the weight. It wasn't going to hold much longer.

The cart's rear wheels hit dirt just as the remaining support broke apart from rusting.

The four of them watched as the bridge fell, sending the multitude of Grimm falling into the darkness below, where they wouldn't be a problem for them anytime soon.

The three passengers in the cart fell to their backs, exhausted from all the screaming, panicking, and being thrown around by a souped-up robot horse.

Titian climbed up into the back of the cart as the horse slowed down, "Glad to see you guys made it!"

"I… hate… Professor… McGouran…" Arty griped through his short breaths.

"You and me both, bud…" Midas added as he wiped the sweat from his brow.

"Let's just get over the river and get this mission over with." Curie added while her knees trembled.

* * *

The rest of the mission had gone relatively fine, until Arty got snatched by a Gnile Grimm and dragged into the water. The large crocodile-like Grimm had grabbed him by the backpack and thrown him into a death roll. Had it managed to bite onto any other part of him, he could have likely died, or lost a limb. With Team MTLC there, they managed to kill the monster and let Arty go home with nothing more than a dizzy head and soaked clothes on top of the scratches and burns he'd already gotten throughout the mission.

After saying goodbye to his friends in Team MTLC and suffering through some of Professor McGouran's playful jabs, he went to head back to the dorm for a well-earned nap.

"Umber? Yeah, he's here." The airship pilot said into his scroll. "Hey, kid."

Arty groaned and turned, "Yeah?"

"Professor Alabaster needs to see you in his office. Says it's pretty important and can't wait."

Arty fell to his knees and stared up into the sky with his arms spread out. "Onyx, why do you do this to me?!" After the day he just had, all he wanted to do was crash.

The airship pilot raised an eyebrow as he watched the beat-up student screaming into the sky. He shook his head, "The kids they let into this place nowadays…"

* * *

The elevator dinged as it reached the headmaster's office. Arty had gotten some strange looks as he made his way up the CCT. One worker had attempted to call the infirmary, but Arty had to insist that he had to see Professor Alabaster _now_. For what reason, he didn't know.

As he opened the large doors into his office, Arty let out a loud groan, "Look, Professor, I hate to be a bother, but can we do this some other time? I'm… really not in a good place rig-" He stopped himself when he realized he wasn't alone with the headmaster. Near his desk were three chairs, two of them occupied. The one in the middle by Frost Aurora, the one on the right by Alice Crims. "Wha- what's going on?" Arty asked.

" _Bloody hell_ , Umba. What in Remnant happened ta you?" Alice said as she looked over Arty's cuts and scrapes.

He held a hand up to stop her, "It's… a long story."

Onyx Alabaster sat behind his desk. "Well, it seems Victor still likes to play rough with the visiting students on their tandem mock missions." Though that was normally something he would say jokingly, his usual laid back demeanor was gone. He gestured to the empty chair next to Frost. "Mr. Umber. Please, have a seat."

Arty reluctantly took a seat "Look, Professor, I didn't do anything I swe-"

"This isn't about anything you've done, Arty."

The three team leaders sat in silence as Professor Alabaster pulled a box out from behind his desk. He slowly reached inside and pulled out a length of torn black cloth with a dull red pattern coursing across it. Alice and Arty felt cold when they recognized the fabric. Frost stayed still, understanding the gravity of what was being shown to them

"That's…" Alice began.

"One of the cloaks that Oro and her minions were wearing." Arty finished, "How did you-"

"It appears that one of the Grimm Brotherhood lackies got a bit too close to their Trex." Alabaster continued. "At first, we didn't believe you all when you told us the Grimm Brotherhood had attacked so close to campus, much less with a Trex close in tow. We found this cloak near the clearing where Team ARTS encountered the Grimm Brotherhood agent known as Oro and combatted a Trex."

Arty remembered how he had watched one of the cloaked figures get snatched up by the dinosaur Grimm and thrown around like a ragdoll. He shuddered at the mental image of their mangled body being thrown into the trees.

"There wasn't a drop of blood found on the cloak, nor was any found nearby."

"That's impossible!" Arty shot up, "That thing _mangled_ that guy!"

"That's why I brought you three in here, today." He laid the cloak down on his desk to where the three of them could see it in better detail. "I don't know how, but whoever was wearing this cloak survived their attack. From the accounts that your teams gave us, it seems that the Grimm Brotherhood operatives in the forest that night were very skilled and had combat gear that far surpasses that of an average student and even the average Huntsman. The weapon they had that could completely bypass Mr. Wells's aura, which is arguably one of the strongest auras among you first years, when turned on Oro barely seemed to make a scratch. We honestly don't know much about these people, but we do know that they are dangerous and unpredictable. Who's to say that one of them couldn't survive a mauling by a Trex and walk right back to class as if nothing happened?"

The three leaders were taken back.

Alice was the first to speak. "Professa… what are you saying?"

"You think that the Grimm Brotherhood has infiltrated the school?" It was weird hearing Frost speak up. She had been silent ever since Arty got there. Her cool demeanor seemed to be cracking a small bit.

Professor Alabaster nodded solemnly. "There was no record of anybody coming into the infirmary or any of the clinics or hospitals in town or any of the nearby villages in fact of anything resembling the ferocious bite of a Trex." He took a sip of juice from his wine glass. "I want to ask you three a question. How did Oro and her… people know you would all be out in the Emerald Forest that night? From my understanding, it was a very last-minute decision to have your little game. They couldn't have begun preparing the Trex when you arrived at the cliff. It must have been ready long before."

Alice, Frost, and Arty looked to each other with worried glances.

Arty was the first one to come to a realization. "They wanted us out there."

Professor Alabaster nodded.

"But why, sir?" Alice was nearly bouncing out of her seat. There was a lot of information being thrown at them and it was making her anxious.

"From what you all told me, it seems that they've been keeping an eye on you all. A special interest, if you will. They knew things that are only known to either those in your teams or among your peers. For some reason they seem interested in _your_ teams specifically, all from the same orientation group. Why? I don't know, but what I do know for certain is that there are eyes and ears within our walls, and if I'm correct," he jabbed a finger at the cloak, "whoever was wearing _this_ is back to keep watching and listening."

"Why are you telling us this?" Arty blurted out.

Professor Alabaster leaned back in his chair, "Because, Mr. Umber, I want you three to pay close attention to those around you. I made you three leaders for a reason. I trusted your instinct and frames of mind. I have no doubt that you three truly are who you say you are. I don't want you to look for my theoretical infiltrator. What I _do_ want is for you to keep your teams safe from them."

"Do you think the infiltrator is in one of our teams?" Frost asked bluntly.

She only got a shrug in response. "That's up to your discretion. You know your teams better than anybody."

"There is _no_ bloody way that anyone in my team is with those _monstas_!" Alice sounded offended, as if Onyx were insinuating that she was tied to this mysterious individual.

"Same here." Arty agreed, "Roland's been devastated by these guys already. You know what happened to him… he's hell-bent on _destroying_ the Grimm Brotherhood, not helping them. Timbre's actually been attacked by them before, so that crosses her off. Sepia's… well, Sepia. Just look at the credits of her films. It's not like she would even have time to be involved with those guys."

Frost sat by and tapped her foot on the tile floor. "They did target _all_ of us that night… nobody was safe from their attack."

Alice nodded to her, "So you agree that our teams _have_ ta be all okay? It's somebody _else_ watchin' us?"

Frost shook her head. "I don't know."

"Like I said," Professor Alabaster stood and began walking to the door, "I don't want you to find the infiltrator… heck… I don't even know for one-hundred-percent certainty that there even is one… I just want you to keep an eye out. Be vigilant."

He opened the door to his office leading out to the elevators, "You may all get back to your day. I don't want you all obsessing over this. I just want my students to be careful and out of harm's way."

"We undastand Professa." Alice curtsied as she exited the room first and pressed the button to call the elevator.

Arty stepped into the elevator with her, his mind reeling from exhaustion and uncertainty.

As Frost went to leave, she was stopped by Professor Alabaster.

"If I may, Ms. Aurora, may I have another word with you? I have a few more questions for you specifically."

Frost nodded, "O-of course Professor."

Alice and Arty watched as both sets of doors closed in front of them.

"Now what was _that_ all about?" Alice jeered.

Arty kept his eyes on the multitude of numbers above the door as they slowly counted down to the ground level, "What do you mean?"

"First he calls us up hea and shows us that cloak, and then tries to tell us that there's a mole in tha school?"

"Yeah?... And?"

"Isn't the timin' a little weird? I mean, we're halfway through tha semesta, we're surrounded by tons of students from tha visitin' Academies. We were attacked _months_ ago."

"Does that change anything?"

Alice shook her head, "Something _must_ 'ave happened recently for him to bring this all back up so suddenly. The General or some of the visitin' Huntsmen must've shared information with him."

"Information like?"

"I don't know… the Grimm Brotherhood plannin' somethin' hea in Vale? The Vale branch targeted _us_ , Umba, but you've heard the stories from tha otha schools. They've attacked people from all ova. Now we're all collected hea… like one big present with bows strapped to our heads."

Arty scoffed, "You're starting to sound a bit like Roland."

Alice stomped her boot, "I'm _serious_ , Umba! _Somethin_ ' is goin' on."

The elevator dinged as it reached the ground floor. Arty dashed out quickly, ready to get back to the dorm and stew in his own thoughts. "Yeah, probably. They're not done yet, but you forget we're _surrounded_ by Huntsmen and Huntsmen-in-training from all over! Not to mention the Atlesian military! If anything, Beacon is the safest place in Remnant right now!"

Alice slowly followed after him, "Wow… you… you're right, Umba… I didn't think of it that way…"

Arty gave his cocky grin, "Yeah, I know. I'm surprised that I realized it myself considering everything I've been through today. Now, if you'll excuse me, I _really_ want a shower and a nap." He turned and ran off towards the dorms, "See ya, Queen of Farts!"

"Oi! I thought we moved past childish name callin'!"

* * *

Exhausted, Arty made his way to the ARTS room. As usual, the hallway was freezing from the air conditioning seeping out of Team FREZ's room. Over the course of the semester, it had grown tolerable. Though his clothes had been given a little time to dry, they were still soggy enough to make the cold miserable. He reached for the knob, "Can today get any worse?"

* * *

Arty laid in his bed, eyes closed ready for a nap. Roland had just left with his sister and best friend, and the room was finally quiet. No papers rustling. No frustrated grunts. Just complete silence.

He felt his eyes fluttering. Despite his damp clothes, cuts, bruises, and burns. He felt like he could sleep for days. That was, until there was a knock at the door.

"Whyyyyyyyyyyyyy!?" He cried out. "Can you come back later?! If you're on my team, you have a key! If you're not on my team… _go away!_ "

The knocking continued.

"Son of a-" Arty grumbled and cursed his entire way to the door, making sure to stomp his boots with every step. He swung the door open, "What is it!? What do you-..."

Before him stood an olive-complected girl with flowing chocolate-colored hair held back by a gold and bronze headband. A toga clipped with a gold pin flowed out from under a long dark red coat with lots of fluff the same bronze as her headband around the collar and sleeves. Out from underneath her brown pants were dark brown sandals, an odd choice for somebody from somewhere so frigid. Flickering out from behind her was a gold-furred lion tail.

"Kh-Kh-Khimera Léon?..." Arty was in shock. Here standing before him was his dad's boss's daughter. Member of the famous Team FNKS, known for not only rising from the ashes in a battle like their namesake, but conquering those before them as they came back stronger than before. Her older brother, Ray Léon, had bullied him relentlessly back home during preparatory combat training. He felt the color drain from his face.

"Well… Hello to you, too, Burne."

"Wha-what are you doing here?!" He swore she was going to flip out and tear him in half. He knew about her unstable aura well. It had gotten her, as well as others, in some serious trouble before. Considering how much her mother hated him, he was sure that she held the same discontent towards him and all of her shiny bronze would turn bright azure at any second.

"I was hoping to speak to your friend, Roland… I have some… information I need to share with him."

Arty shrunk back a little, wanting to avoid any and all contact with the girl his partner was blackmailing, "He went into town with some friends. He's kinda taking a break from the whole… Grimm Brotherhood… wheel… symbol… cookbook insanity."

She suddenly pushed past him, looked out into the hall to see if anyone was coming, and shut the door.

Arty really wanted to die. " _Please don't kill me! I'm fragile and I just got done fighting Rippers, Echos, Gniles and a whole lot of other horrible things!"_

"Listen, Arty. I know you're probably terrified of me like everyone else, but this is serious."

"I know it is! I've seen what you can do!"

She rolled her eyes, "Arty, I know how my mother makes things seem, but I'm not like her… or my brother. I don't care that you blew a hole in Atlas, I actually thought it was hilarious seeing my mother's face when she started screaming at two in the morning when she got the call. Made my summer really! But listen, I'm trying to help Roland, and you, and the school, and pretty much the whole city right now."

Arty raised an eyebrow, "Um… what… what do you mean?"

"I can't say where I got this info, but…" she ran over to Roland's desk and began shuffling through some of his papers. She pulled out a map of the kingdom and bumped up next to Arty in order to show him. She could hear him whimpering from being so close to her. "Look, Roland's been marking out all of the criminal activity in Vale over the past decade or so. It seems the Grimm Brotherhood started with quote-unquote 'smaller' things like robberies on trading lines which, he somehow didn't realize were mostly his dad's, further away from the capital, out in the country and around the villages. As time went on, they kept up this activity while also drawing closer to Vale and going bigger. During that time, villages in their path were being destroyed and raided, which isn't unheard of, but they had to be at fault for some of them but they weren't attributed to the attacks due to a lack of…" she looked to the page from Roland's mom's book, "that." She returned to the map, "Recently, though, ever since the foreign students got here, they've been getting a bit more ballsy. Robberies in the city, attacks on students like you, that kind of stuff."

"Yeah… and?... It's like that across Remnant isn't it?"

Khimera was beginning to lose her patience. Arty panicked when he saw a slight flash of blue across her body. "Look, Umber. I _really_ can't tell you how I know this, but all of this is leading up to something, and it's all centered around Beacon Academy."

Arty shook his head, "No… no no no. I just got done talking to Professor Alabaster. He has a theory, a _theory_ , that there could be the _possibility_ that there's a Grimm Brotherhood agent infiltrating Beacon, but that's it. They're just watching us… for… some… reason."

"Yeah, they're gathering info because they're planning to _take_ people and Team ARTS is included in those people."

Arty was starting to think that Roland was not the only one going off the deep end. "Why do they want to _take_ people, Khimera?"

She let out a grunt of exasperation, "I don't _know_ , Umber, but you have to listen to me! They've already tried this before, twice, to be exact."

"Twice?"

"First they attacked your teammate, Timbre, at her concert last summer. She's told you hasn't she? They wanted to _take_ her."

"Right… And the second?..."

" _Last semester, Arty_. Roland told me everything about Oro."

Arty shook his head, "No way. Oro seemed more ready to _kill_ us than take us prisoner."

"That's the point! The Grimm Brotherhood seems to be very focused on a few certain individuals. _Your team_ are four of those individuals! She was _testing_ you guys for some reason. I bet she was planning to come back for you guys after you tired yourselves out fighting the Trex, but a big fat monkey wrench was thrown into that plan when your teachers showed up in the airship to pick you up."

"Wait… so… why are you telling me this right now?..."

"Because my info also tells me that something is going to go down _tonight_ , and we're the only ones that can do anything to stop it."

"Why… us?..."

"Because I'm the only one with the full story and if I told anybody else then I'd get in huge trouble for having the half of the story from Atlas! Nobody has what Roland's figured out except for him. I'm the only one that's been helping him because, I'm sure he told you, but he's kinda holding the fact I know so much to blackmail me and I do _not_ want my mother to know and pull me out of the tournament because I _know_ I'd never hear the end of it."

"That's kind of a weird reason to hide stuff that could potentially save lives."

Her body became detailed with blue as she picked him up and slammed him into the wall. " _Look, Umber… I'm not playing around. You know as well as I do that the Atlas military doesn't play around with its intel. Everything I'm telling you could get me expelled. Now, if you're otter friend is already down in Vale, that's already a problem that could turn into a blessing if we get down there and help_."

Arty whimpered and pawed at the blue fluff at the end of Khimera's sleeve. "Okay! Okay! I get it! Just please don't hurt me…"

" _I'm not the biggest thing you should be worried about right now. I don't know how, but I have a bad feeling that Roland and his friends won't be enough to prevent him from being taken and whatever the Grimm Brotherhood is planning to do tonight. That's why we need to get down there and help stop them_."

"Okay… okay… I'll go. Can… can I at least get a shower and restock on paint first if we're gonna be fighting and all that?..."

She rolled her eyes as the blue faded from her. She let go of him and held her hand to her forehead. "Yeah… just… just go. Please. We need to try to hurry."

As he headed for the bathroom, she stopped him.

"When we get down there, Arty. I want you to act normal. You can't let on to anybody that we know something's going to go down. We don't need Roland to panic and rush off on his own."

"What about the girls?"

She shook her head, "They're targets too, Arty. Calling them and telling them to stay away from town is giving away too much. Like I said, we can't let on to anybody that we know anything. Best case scenario is that they're staying put up here at the school, but if they're already down there, then they have no choice but to fight or fall into their hands."

"Wait… but, if all of Team ARTS are targets, then aren't we just kinda giving them what they want by me going down there?"

She shook her head again, "You don't understand, Arty. You may be on their list, but you're one of the only people I can trust with this information." She looked at him pleadingly, her golden brown eyes piercing into his, "I'm a target, too, but that's not going to stop me from doing what I can to help."


	38. V2Ch10: Crescendo

Timbre landed hard on the curved dome roof outside. She tumbled over herself, rolling away from the hole before finally coming to a stop only a few inches from a twenty-story fall to the lake below. The night sky twinkled above her, the broken moon taunting her. In the distance, the spires of Beacon Academy glowed.

 _Would I be dealing with this right now if I were already there?_ She thought to herself.

"How _dare_ you..."

Timbre turned back towards the hole she'd flown through. Slowly stepping towards her was the group's leader. They had their gun pointed at her, not wavering even a fragment of an inch away from her face. "Now, stop being so much _trouble_ and come along. I can't promise I won't hurt you anymore because you've really, _really_ made me," they lifted their gun to slam it against Timbre's head, "ANGRY!"

She watched as the butt of the rifle flew towards her. She shut her eyes and reached her arm up to shield her face. The world was about to go dark for a little while, or it might have, at least.

Before the gun could meet Timbre's face, a flash of white slammed into the leader's side.

A woman dressed in a long white coat slammed the leader against the dome. While they were down, she drove her foot into their chest.

"A Huntress?! Seriously?!" the leader shouted. They grabbed the woman's ankle and threw her off. Before she had a chance to recover, they dug their heels into the ground and tackled her at the waist.

They both went flying, tumbling down the curved dome until they eventually slid off of the roof. Seconds felt like days as Timbre waited for any sign of life from either of them, then she heard a splash.

A few more moments of silence passed, "Why must you ruin a perfectly good show?" the woman broke the silence. She poked her head up from the edge of the roof, but the mass of orange curls on her head obscured her face. Thankfully, she had caught herself and dumped the attacker in the lake below.

She pulled herself the rest of the way up, her shoulders sagging in disappointment. Her fingers ran through her hair, straightening it enough for Timbre to see the face of her heroine, "How are you doing, Timbre? Rough night?" she held her hand out to help her up.

The woman who stood before the singer was familiar. Timbre knew her well. Very well. "Carmen?!" she took her hand. She wrapped her arms around the Huntress, hugging her tightly.

"What are you doing here?! Is dad okay?" she stuttered. She could hear the sirens of police cars and ambulances from the parking lot below.

Carmen held her at arm's length and smiled, "He's fine, and I couldn't _not_ be here for your last performance," she smirked, "Your mother would've never let me live it down if I did, you know?" she began tapping her toes on the tiles, "I guess the more _appropriate_ answer would be… 'I'm a Huntress, it's my duty to protect people. I'm a teacher, and I have to pro-"

A loud crack rang out and Timbre felt something warm spray over her face.

Carmen stumbled backwards, holding a hand to her stomach. When she pulled her hand away, it revealed a dark red fluid flowing from her midsection.

"C-Carmen?" Timbre felt cold. She didn't want to believe what she was seeing. But there it was.

Carmen had been shot right through the back.

"No no no no no oh god please no!" Timbre reached out to catch Carmen, but she was already falling and stumbling off of the sloped roof of Koruss Stadium. She could only watch helplessly as her family friend, the woman who helped raise her, fell to the ground below.

"Now to finish you off…" the dark altered voice growled from down the roof.

Timbre snapped her head up, tears streaming down her face as she cried. The leader of the terrorists that had attacked her concert stood before her, aiming their rifle at her. "No… please…"

"Nighty-night, pop star."

* * *

Timbre shot up out of her bed when the music blaring into her ears suddenly stopped and something jerked her head to the side. Confused and scared from being woken up mid-nightmare, she looked around the dark room. "Wha-what the?!" She stumbled, grabbing her bed frame to prevent herself from falling to the carpet.

She felt her eyes sting when Sepia held up the bright screen of her scroll up, ' _Roland and I are about to have another fight about this symbol thing...'_

 _Oh no_. Timbre groaned, still reeling from her nightmare as she threw her legs over the side of the bed, removing the headphones from her face. She wanted to push out the fear she felt in her dream and was glad to have a bit of a distraction. Unfortunately, that distraction came at the expense of her close friend. She stretched, using it as cover to sign back in the dim moonlight flooding into the room. ' _I know you must be mad. You wanna borrow my headphones to try and tune him out for a little bit?'_

' _I just want you on standby for if this comes to blows…'_ Sepia slowly stood from her bed and flipped on the lamp by her bed. She met Roland's seething glare. This was the fifth time this week alone, ' _Listen. I just want you to get some sleep. That's it. Please.'_

All of the papers began stacking themselves around his bed, "Sepia, please don't start with this again. If I need sleep, then I will sleep. I'm okay right now though. I am functioning. Do you have any idea how close I am to finding something else new?!"

' _You've been saying that since you blackmailed the general's daughter last week,'_ Sepia rolled her eyes, ' _Go to bed. Now.'_

"No. I will not be going to bed. Quit acting like you have any idea what I need and don't need to do. I don't need you watching out for me every second of every day!" Roland shouted at her from across the room.

' _Maybe if you actually gave me a reason to think that you were fine, I'd get off your tail about it! It's been three weeks since we've actually been able to sit down and watch our favorite show together, and Rime keeps spoiling things for me! I have to sit there and tell her that everything is, in fact, fine between us, and I don't think it is right now! I thought that your obsession was bad after you found that symbol, but that's nothing compared to all that's turned into!'_ Sepia franticly signed.

Arty groaned and held a pillow to his face. Either he'd drown out the noise or smother himself. He would welcome either gladly, whichever of the two came first.

Timbre stood and put her hands on Sepia's shoulders. "Okay, Moviemaker. Obviously you two need some cooling down time." She nodded towards the door, "How about you and me go ahead and get ready. Get some breakfast, enjoy the sunrise… you know, before we go off killing Grimm."

' _You know what? That sounds great.'_ Sepia grabbed her choker and tied it around her neck, ' _I don't need to deal with this right now. I'm going to end up saying something about how much he's acting like his stepmother.'_

"Excuse me?!" Roland stomped over in front of Sepia and glowered down at her, "You cannot be serious with me right now. It is four o'clock in the morning. I get it. You're not a morning person, but that was below the belt."

' _Right, because you're the most civil person in the room, huh? You know what you're talking about, and us three are just being unreasonable for telling you to calm down. Blackmailing and manipulating people is all fine and well as long as you're the one doing it, right?'_ Sepia pushed past him and stormed out of the room, slamming the door behind her.

Timbre looked to Roland. She wanted to be angry, but at that moment she was just concerned for her partner. She slammed the door behind her as she headed down the hall after Sepia.

"Ugh… Why does he have to go and give me a reason to like him, and then turn around and give me a reason to hate him? Oh, look at that! He's trying to connect with the Faunus here to help heal and stop being a prick! Wait, no. Please. Please stop going nuts over all of this. Come on, think of us!" she ranted to herself while jogging down the stairs in her pajamas in the direction Sepia had gone, "Jeez…"

Upon reaching the ground floor, Timbre caught up to her partner. Wide awake from the jolt of her nightmare and concern for Sepia, she found the energy to catch up to her. After seeing the sheer hostility between her and her boyfriend, she wanted to do anything she could to help. "Are you going to be okay, Sepia?"

Sepia raised her hands over her head to sign back, ' _I'm okay, as always. I just want to cool my head. If I'm not at the mock mission today, don't worry. I'm really okay,'_

Timbre reached her arm out. She didn't know what else to say to her. At this point, the only thing she could think to do was give her friend a hug, but before she could give her that bit of comforting consolement, the short girl ran straight out of the main doors to the dorm and out into the early morning light.

"Sepia!" but it was too late, she was already gone. Timbre sat alone in the lobby area of the dorm, the dim fluorescent lighting making the usually active sitting area look lonely and sad. With Sepia gone, the details of the nightmare came flooding back. The cool night air blowing through her hair. The bright lights of the city shining in the dark night. The blood pouring from Carmen after she got shot by the Grimm Brotherhood leader the night she was attacked. Despite telling herself that it wasn't real, tears streamed down her face.

This wasn't the first time she'd had this same dream, though. Ever since her nightmares had started back, she'd gone to sleep blaring music through her headphones. It had helped dampen the horrific images of her mom disappearing into shadow, but recently, the dreams began centering more on herself. The most common imagery involved the night of the incident at Koruss Stadium.

Timbre sat down on the couch and held her head in her hands. She was tired of these nightmares. She was tired of the fear. She wished there was something she could do to stop them.

Looking across the lounge, she found herself staring at the chair that Epazote's mom, Sofaira Weaver, sat in on the night she had a sleep-paralysis induced hallucination of someone sneaking out of her room.

 _No. There_ was _someone sneaking out of my room_. She told herself for weeks that Sofaira was right, but the more she thought about it, the more she found herself unable to accept it as truth. Thinking about that long talk they had had with the Spider Faunus that night, Timbre remembered what she had told her, her team, and the Rhea sisters: "I'll be working out of a counseling center in downtown Vale while I'm here."

"Maybe I could use some counseling right now… Everything's such a mess right now..." She was tired, but didn't want to go back to sleep. Looking out the window, the sun had fully risen over the horizon. Had she really been sitting there that long? She decided that she'd given enough time for the temperament in the room to calm down. Her clothes and stuff were up there after all. She couldn't go all day in pajamas.

After unlocking the door, she slowly pushed it open in order to gauge the conditions inside. The lights were still off, but a good stream of orange light poured in, coating the carpet in a soft morning glow. She could hear the shower in the bathroom going. At first she thought it had to be Roland, but she quickly learned that that couldn't be the case when she heard heavy snoring coming from the Faunus's bed.

 _About time he got some sleep._ She reached down to the floor, where her MP3 had fallen after Sepia yanked on her auxiliary cord. Upon looking at the screen, she noticed that the song that was playing when she woke up was paused.

 _Has that always been in my playlist?_

One of her most well-known songs, "One More Notch" was displayed along with the cover art of her debut album "Downtown Blitz" where she was smiling as she walked down the nighttime streets of downtown Vale. The same album art was on the poster Sepia had over her bed. Timbre had listened to her own music tons of times before, but ever since her final concert, the only time she'd heard her own voice singing was when it came over the radio or when she caught Sepia dancing to it. She swore she had removed all the songs from "Downtown Blitz" off of her MP3, but apparently she missed one. _No wonder I had a nightmare of that night. The music must've gotten my mind thinking of it…_

Putting the device back on the bed, she half considered getting back under the covers and going back to sleep, but she knew she had to get ready for the mock mission.

Just as she had finished pulling out her clothes for the day, the bathroom door opened. Arty stood there in nothing but a towel around his waist. "Oh jeez!" She giggled, averting her eyes as Arty let out an embarrassed shout of surprise. Even after a full semester, there were still some awkward moments about sharing a co-ed dorm room.

"Timbre!?" He sputtered, quickly running back into the bathroom. He felt his face flush, "I thought you and Sepia went to get breakfast?!"

"Shhhh," Timbre could barely hold in her laughter as she looked over to Roland, "You'll wake Cranky." She walked up to the door and placed her back to it to continue their conversation without making too much noise, "We were going to, but she's… pretty upset, Arty. She ran off without telling me where she was going."

"Well… that sucks…" She could hear him getting dressed behind the door.

"Yeah…" She bit her lip, scared to ask the question on her mind. "Hey… Arty?"

"Yeah?"

"I've been having… problems. With my nightmares… They've been acting up again." She looked to the papers scattered around Roland's desk, "I think all this tension has been getting to me and… would you mind if I went to the clinic where Ms. Weaver's working from? Get some help since she seems to know more about dreams than anybody else?" She was scared she'd make Arty mad. He already had Roland flaking on the mission and now she was asking to do the same.

"Um… yeah. Sure. Go ahead."

She was surprised, "Are you sure? I can wait until after we get ba-"

The door opened again, this time Arty was fully dressed and smiling, "Timbre. I said it's okay. I don't want my team putting themselves in harm's way if they don't think they can handle it." He pat her on the shoulder, "Go talk to her. Sepia and I should be able to handle Team MTLC and the Rippers."

In a short burst of thankfulness, she wrapped her arms around her leader, "Thanks Arty. I'll find out a way to make it up to you!"

He uncomfortably pat her on the back, "Um… no… problem?" He wasn't good at the whole 'showing emotion' thing.

"Tell me all the details later! I'm gonna go to breakfast and find Lurida or Xannie. I've lived in Vale my whole life yet I have absolutely _no_ clue where any counseling center would be. They probably know which one Ms. Weaver's at."

Arty picked up his pocket sketchbook."They've been on a mission for the past couple of weeks. A follow-up check on Mikado since the… well… you know."

Timbre felt crestfallen. She didn't want to bother Team GLXY if they were off on a mission.

"But, if anyone other than the Rhea's would know, it'd be Frost. With all she knows about emotions and stuff, I wouldn't doubt that she knows where all the offices are in town. Heck, maybe Alabaster introduced her to Ms. Weaver since they seem to have so much in common!"

She shrugged, "Maybe. I'll find out though. Good luck today! And sorry… again…"

Arty rolled his eyes, "I said it's _fine_ , Timbre. Now go get ready before I wake up Roland and blame it on you."

"Thanks, jerk." She laughed as she closed the bathroom door.

* * *

"Hey… Everest, can you _please_ save some bacon for the rest of us?" Rime grumbled as she watched her mountain of a childhood friend scarf down the mound of bacon in front of him.

Watching from the other end of the table were a couple of the foreign Faunus students from the new 'Faunus Clique' that had formed shortly after the Vytal participants arrived. Eden, a Deer Faunus from Mistral, and Neila, a Blue Jay Faunus from Vacuo, had grown to be pretty close over the previous weeks. Both were friendly towards everybody and had an interest in meeting people from the other kingdoms. It wasn't a surprise that they'd hit it off quickly.

"Does… does he always eat like this?" Neila asked as she snacked from a bag of sunflower seeds.

Rime laughed nervously as she pat Everest's back, "Haha… yeah… he does."

"Hey, Rime!"

"Timbre!" Rime perked up when she saw somebody that already accepted her and Everest's eccentric dispositions. She jumped to her feet and gave the international pop star a hug. "I heard the screaming from your room this morning. Roland at it again?"

Timbre winced as she reflected on the morning's events. "Um… yeah. He's taking an off day today."

"But aren't you guys going on your mock mission with McGouran today?"

"Well… yes, and no. I'm not going either. I was wondering if you've seen Frost."

Rime thought for a moment, "Last I heard from her, she was going to the library. I thought it'd be funny if she was actually going to check out some of the secret romance novels we found there last semester, so Zero went to see if that was the case. She'd apparently already left when he got there. So… I don't think she was going for the romance novels, unfortunately..." She realized how much she was starting to ramble, "In other words, no. I have no clue where she'd be."

There was a small clattering noise from behind them. Dozens of sunflower seeds spilled from Neila's mouth and clattered to the wood of the table.

Timbre saw that the two Faunus girls were gawking at her with wide eyes. She gave a pleasant smile, "Oh god, not again…"

"So Dante and Roland weren't lying?! When they said Timbre Forté they meant _the_ Timbre Forté?!" Eden laughed as she jutted her hand out, bits of rope wrapped around her wrist. "I've heard so much about you from my partner… she's Roland's half-sister. We're both _huge_ fans of yours. I'm Eden Green, Team READ of Mistral. It-it's an honor to meet you in person!"  
Timbre took her hand and shook it, "It's nice to meet you too, Eden. I'm sorry to say but… Roland hasn't really talked about his siblings' team that much, and I haven't really been around Dante a whole lot..."

Eden waved it off, "I'm not surprised. I understand how the Wells kids can be." She crossed her eyes and stuck out her tongue, "They're all a bit crazy. It's fine."

The Blue Jay Faunus pushed her bag of sunflower seeds towards Timbre, "Can you sign my seeds!? I don't have any paper… but I would love to have your autograph!" She made an awkward chirping noise, which startled Timbre and Rime.

"She apparently does that when she's nervous." Eden laughed.

"Guys. Guys. You don't have to be so formal about it." Rime began to lead Timbre away from the table. "You have the rest of the semester and the tournament to talk to her. Remember, she's not a celebrity here. She's like the rest of us. A normal, everyday, Huntress in training being taught how to fight and kill monsters."

"Neila here's a bit of a celebrity too, you know." Eden added quickly.

The sky blue feathers in Neila's hair ruffled up, "Eden… shut up. I'm not a _celebrity_."

"Right, you're just one of Vacuo's most well-known up-and-coming archaeologists nad a member of the only team in history to manage to discover a new variety of the Creatures of Grimm in their _first year of training_."

"Hey! It's _paleontology_ not, _archeology_. Paleontology is fossils, archeology is people. Get it right! And Team DINO discovering the Trex back then was a fluke!" She snapped back, "Damascus and Oliver are the only ones that really like to soak up the limelight for doing that."

"T-Trex?..." Timbre stuttered quietly.

"Yeah!" Neila rolled her eyes, "It was your normal everyday basic-level search-and-destroy mission out to the ruins of a village around one of the Vacuo oases. A Grimm herd was getting a bit too close for comfort to a settlement, so we signed up to go take them out. We began to drive the swarm out towards one of the nearby mesas and all of the sudden BAM! Giant Tyrannosaurus Grimm! We had no idea what we were fighting but, of course, Damascus managed to take pictures with his scroll and Oliver was able to take a _bunch_ of notes about its mannerisms." She sighed and smiled as she looked off into space, as if remembering a pleasant time, "Almost died that day. Good times. Good times."

Timbre felt the images of the night with Oro flash into her mind. "I'm sorry… I… I have to go." She began to run off. Rime stayed on her heels.

"What? Was it something I said?" Neila called after her.

She was suddenly hit by bits of bacon as Everest chomped down on a particularly crispy piece.

"So…" Eden began, "Do you eat like… _any_ fruit or vegetables or anything?"

"VERY. LITTLE." Everest boomed with a full mouth.

* * *

"Hey, Timbre!" Rime grabbed onto Timbre's red sleeve. "What's going on?"

"I'm sorry, Rime. I didn't mean to look… crazy, in front of your new friends."

"Timbre. C'mon. We're all crazy around here."

"I might be a bit worse than that, Rime!" She realized how loud she was being. She took a deep breath and tried to calm down. "Rime, you're my friend, right?"

She shrugged, "Well, I like to think that I am."

Timbre took a deep breath and began to tell her the truth, "I've been having… pretty bad nightmares… about a lot of things. My mom dying. The attack in the Emerald Forest. That night at Koruss Stadium..."

Rime grabbed Timbre for a hug. "Oh man… Timbre. That's rough…"

"But now… they're getting worse. This morning I woke up after having a dream where Carmen died trying to protect me back at Koruss, right before I got shot myself."

"Holy crap, T…" Rime thought for a moment, "That's why you were looking for Frost…"

"Well, not to just _talk_ to her about it. I was more hoping to ask if she knew where Ms. Weaver from Mistral was working. She's a counselor from Sanctum that came in with the visiting students. I would've asked Lurida and Xannie, but I haven't seen them in the past couple of weeks. Apparently Team GLXY's been on a follow-up mission to Mikado Village."

Rime smiled, "Timbre! You could've asked _me_!"

Timbre gave her a strange look, "Wha-"

"Frost's _my leader_ , T! I know Team FREZ may seem pretty dysfunctional, but we've learned to talk a bit." She grabbed Timbre's wrist and began leading her out of the building.

"Hey! Rime! What are you-"

"I'm taking you to Vale to where Frost's mom works. I don't have anything big to do today, and I like hanging out with my friends."

"Wait… Frost's mom?"

"Where do you think she learns how to do all that zen psychology hoo-ha?"

"Well.. What about Everest and-"

"He'll be fine." She laughed sinisterly, "I think it'd be hilarious to see how much 'fun' that Eden and Neila have with him while I'm not around."

Timbre chuckled as she kept pace with the shorter girl as they made their way to the airship dock at the end of the entry courtyard, "You're a monster."

Rime skipped along the cobblestones giddily, "I know. I take pride in it." She scrunched up her nose, "Have I seriously never told you that Frost's mom was a counselor?"

* * *

The small brick building sat across from the docks. The setting was perfect for a counseling clinic. The calm sea breeze, the lack of traffic, even the pleasant view of the ocean made the area an island of serenity among the normally bustling docks of Vale.

Timbre and Rime climbed the narrow flight of stairs to the upstairs office. The sitting room was warmly lit. The walls were a pale blue. Flowers, both real and in paintings, were scattered around, giving the room a more homey feel.

"Wow. This is... a _lot_ nicer than I was expecting for a dockside counseling office." Rime said as she looked around the comfortable room.

Timbre laughed as she inspected one of the paintings. Bright yellow flowers stood in front of a deep red background. The artist's initials 'J.P.' were scrawled lightly in the bottom right corner. "Huh… looks like something Arty would paint for his mom. She runs a flower shop back in Atlas you know. Maybe I should ask who painted this so he can look it up lat- Lurida?!"

The purple Rhea sister, dressed more casually in black jeans and a dull violet t-shirt, sat in the corner of the waiting room. She looked tired like she did some days when the coffee maker was broken and she couldn't get her morning fix.

"What are you doing here?" Rime blurted out.

Lurida sneered as she looked up. Apparently, they had interrupted a nap she was taking in the waiting room of the clinic. "Why is _nothing_ going right for me?..."

Timbre knew Lurida would be touchy, she always was when she was tired. "Arty said Team GLXY was off on a mission to Mikado. You guys just get back or-"

"Yeah. We just got back, and Xannie wanted to see Ms. Weaver immediately. Let's just say that our sleep wasn't the best while we were away. Things get a little crazy when we're in the thick of it."

Rime tilted her head, "What do you mean?"

Timbre remembered the night she learned about the 'Twin Dynamic' and Xannie's Semblance. She found it best to try to move past it. "Wait, so Ms. Weaver's working out of here?"

Lurida narrowed her eyes at her, "Yeah, why?"

"Frost's mom works here. Every time any of us get in a fight she brings up how her mom taught her all of her psycho-analytical mind-freak mumbo-jumbo. I used to hate it, but you know, the past semester has possibly been the most peaceful and relaxed I've felt in a while!"

Lurida looked annoyed, "Huh… Alabaster never mentioned that to us during our orientation briefing."

Timbre was the one to start asking questions now, "What do you mean?"

"Every second-year team that gave tours during orientation got brief descriptions of those in our tour groups. Yamuna gets told all sorts of sensitive details like the fact that Alice Crims' father runs shady gambling houses across Sanus and Anima and openly voices his negative views towards Faunus, but she never relayed to us that Frost Aurora's mom was a therapist."

"Huh… weird." Timbre shook it off as a misunderstanding. Yamuna, being a Faunus herself, probably focused a bit more on the girl with an openly prejudiced father rather than the girl with a mom working in a counseling center. It seemed everyone was trying to find some sort of conspiracy to follow all of a sudden. She walked up to the check-in counter as Rime took a seat next to Lurida.

She smiled to the young receptionist, who, like many others, gasped when he found himself face-to-face with Timbre Forté. Thankfully, he went on with his professional manner.

She cleared her throat, "Hello ma'am. How can I help you today?"

Timbre smiled back. "Hi. Yeah, I was told that Mrs. Sofaira Weaver was temporarily working here, and she told me I could come here for a visit?"

The receptionist pointed to the door to his right, "She's right in there, but I'm sorry to say she's already talking to another patient."

Xannie. It obviously had to be Xannie.

Timbre cursed to herself, "Oh, right."

"If you want, you can visit with one of the other specialists if they don't have any appointments."

Timbre went to say it was okay and that she'd come back later, but she suddenly found Rime jumping up beside her at the desk.

"Is Mrs. Aurora here?" She turned to Timbre, "If Frost's mom is _anything_ like she talks her up to be, she'll be able to help you with your nightmares by just _looking_ at you."

The receptionist gave the girls a confused look. "I'm sorry… who?"

Rime and Timbre returned the confusion. "Mrs…. Aurora? She works here doesn't she?"

The receptionist just shook his head, "I'm sorry girls, but I've never heard of a Mrs. Aurora working here. I can do a quick search to see if she works at one of the other clinics in town."

Rime shook her head, "No. No way. This is the _exact_ office Frost told me her mother worked at. Are you one-hundred-percent _sure_ that there isn't an Aurora here?"

"Ma'am. I'm going to have to ask you to either calm down or leave. I don't want you upsetting any of the other clients."

Timbre grabbed Rime by her shoulders, "It's okay. I'm sorry about her. We'll be heading out now."

Rime's eyes darted around as she tried to figure everything out. "There's… there's no way… She's _drilled_ that into our heads… She even gave us this address..."

"What was _that_ all about?" Lurida said as she impatiently tapped her boot on the hardwood floor.

Timbre continued to lead Rime towards the door. "Rime must've made a mistake. Frost's mom apparently doesn't work here and now she's freaking out."

Rime held a hand out, stopping them from going into the stairwell, "She said they've never _heard_ of her, Timbre!" She looked panicked as she began nervously playing with her necklace. "This… this doesn't make sense."

Timbre held her and looked her in the eyes, "Hey. Rime. Calm down. You're doing that thing again where you freak out when you misremember something."

"I'm not misremembering anything, Timbre!"

Lurida suddenly stood up, hurrying them out of the door, "C'mon. Let's go somewhere else and talk about this." She glared back to the receptionist, "When my sister comes out, can you tell her I went to meet some friends for a cup of coffee?"

The receptionist clacked away at his computer, obviously ready for the loud-mouthed girls to leave. "Yes, Ms. Rhea, I will."

"Thank you." When they hit the street, Lurida smacked Timbre and Rime on the backs of their heads. "What were you two thinking coming in there and causing a scene like that?!"

"Hey!" Timbre rubbed her head, "I was just trying to see Ms. Weaver about my nightmares, just like you and Xannie did!"

Lurida remembered how distraught Timbre was that night she believed someone broke into the dorms. "Okay, I'll believe that for now, but what about… Hey! Get back here!"

Rime was already storming down the street. The confusion was making her head hurt. She felt angry and lied to. How dare they treat her like she was making things up. There was no way she was remembering things wrong. She felt someone grab onto her loose hoodie and begin dragging her around the corner, perpendicular to the direction where she was heading. "Hey!"

Lurida had an iron grip on Rime's jacket and Timbre's sleeve. She was getting to the bottom of this.

"Hey! Lurida!" Timbre protested, "What are you-"

"We're going to the cafe you ARTS guys made the mistake of telling me about. When we get there, we're going to figure a few things out, because I'm with pipsqueak here. Something's weird." She furrowed her brow and morphed her face into a scowl. "I always thought there was something funny about her."

* * *

Lurida took a sip of her espresso and eyed the dark screen of Rime's scroll. Timbre sat quietly across from her with her usual tea and scone. Rime was quickly guzzling down her vanilla bean blended iced coffee, her legs bouncing as they waited for the reply.

After what felt like hours, her scroll finally chimed and the screen lit up.

Rime reached out, but Lurida snatched it up first. She read over the message from Zero. "Well, that confirms it. Zero and even Everest remember the same name." She slid the device across to Rime. "She's not crazy, but why would your leader drill in a lie to you about something so benign? And so often?"

Rime shook her head. "I don't know, okay? I'm just as weirded out as you are."

Timbre tried to be sympathetic, "Look, maybe she has some things she'd rather not tell others. I mean, look at Roland. He lied, hid, ran, fought, punched, kicked… whatever to prevent telling us the truth last semester. Who's to say Frost isn't doing the same?"

"Because Frost isn't hiding, running, fighting, punching, or kicking. All she's doing is _lying_." Lurida tilted her head back, draining the small espresso cup. "What else can you tell us about her? Maybe there are more inconsistencies between her supposed 'life' and the real world."

Rime fiddled with the bright blue gem hanging from her neck. "Well… the first night she really opened up to me, she told me that her father died in a mine collapse when she was young, and her step-father worked in the same mine."

Lurida pulled a black and neon purple glove out of her pocket and slipped it onto her right hand. "Where was the mine?"

Rime shut her eyes as she tried to remember the details. "Um… in Vacuo, near the border."

Lurida swiped down with her index finger, bringing up her holographic screen. After a few taps and swipes, a map of Sanus was brought up. Little blips appeared across the map along with one large symbol perfectly at the halfway point of the Vacuo-Vale border. She shook her head as her eyes scanned lines upon lines of historical data. "Well, well, well… lie number two."  
Timbre covered her mouth to prevent scone crumbs from spilling out, "Say what now?"

"Xannie and I grew up in a research facility, right here," she pointed to the large symbol on the border, "It's an observatory that studies outer space and aviation. Our parents lead some of the projects there. Growing up, we interacted with a lot of mining groups that came through the area, but I have _never_ heard of a mine that had collapsed nearby." She tapped on one of the blips, "The closest mine to the border that had a collapse that ended with fatalities was way too far away to be considered 'on the border' and wasn't even in Vacuo. If Frost is actually in her late teens like she should be, then that's wrong too, since the collapse was also fifty years ago." She tapped on another blip, "There _was_ a collapse on the Vacuo side around the correct time, but nobody died and, like that first one, was way too inland to be considered 'on the border'." Before either of the other two girls could question her research, she held a hand up, "I lived my whole life right there. When you live on kingdom borders, you tend to know everything that goes on along that boundary." She snapped her fingers, dissipating the hologram.

Timbre was starting to feel the same way Rime did. She had confided so much to Frost. She had been the first one at Beacon besides Carmen she had opened up to about Koruss and now here she was, learning that parts of Frost's life story were a lie. The list was still growing, too. She was going to talk to her about nightmares too.

Nightmares.

Timbre was suddenly back the night she saw the shadowy figure in the doorway. She remembered what Roland had told her after the next morning. "Roland… Roland found her."

"What?" Rime looked up from her whipped-cream covered cup.

"Earlier this semester, when I saw someone in the room. Roland went to chase after the intruder. He went upstairs while Sepia went down. Turf caught up with him and when they got to the roof… Frost was there. He accused her of being in our room and, of course, said something about the Grimm Brotherhood. She got mad and… we're sure that's why Team ARTS and Team FREZ haven't really done much together this semester."

" _That's_ why?..." Rime tapped her gem again, "She never told us that… All she said was that Roland was running his mouth again. I did find it weird how she seemed to hold a grudge about it. She usually gets over stuff like that within a couple of days or so."

"So the secrets and lies keep piling up." Lurida stood up, "I'm gonna need another espresso… or five."

With Lurida gone, Rime felt herself comfortable to ask Timbre the question she had on her mind. "Timbre… you really don't think Lurida's on to something and Frost's actually…" Her knuckles turned white as she wrapped the silver chain tightly around her fingers, "with… _them_ do you?"

Timbre shook her head and put a hand on hers to reassure her, "I'm sure there's a reason for this, Rime. Don't worry."

Even as she said it, Timbre didn't believe her own words.

.

"Okay. So when I get back to campus, I'm going straight to Alabaster's office and telling him about this." Lurida fumed as they climbed the stairs to the counselor's office. "Normally, I'd let it slide like I did with Wells, but with all this Grimm Brotherhood nonsense going on, I'm not taking the chance any longer. It's dangerous to keep secrets in a time like this, even if you're innocent." She pushed the door open just as Xannie and Ms. Weaver were leaving her temporary office. Xannie was smiling widely, obviously happy with the conversation she had with the Faunus woman.

"Ah, Ms. Rhea…" Sofaira stopped when she remembered that there were two 'Ms. Rhea's' in the room. "Lurida! Did you enjoy your coffee?"

"Yes, I did." She replied bluntly.

"Good! Oh, and Ms. Forté, it's so good to see you again! I'm sorry I couldn't meet with you earlier. I was right in the middle of talking to Xannie here about her and her sister's recent bout of nightmares while on their mission."

"What happened to patient confidentiality?" Lurida griped.

Xannie waved her off, "It's fine Lurida. Everybody gets nightmares." She waggled her finger in front of her sister's nose, "You don't need to make a big deal out of it."

Sofaira turned back to Timbre, "So, dear, what did you want to talk to me and Mrs. Aurora about?"

All of the girls except for Xannie went wide-eyed.

"Wha-" Timbre stuttered, "What did you just say?"

"You and your friend came by asking for Mrs. Aurora and I earlier, didn't you? Are your nightmares flaring up as well?"

"Did somebody call for me?"

The girls turned to find a pale-complected woman walking out of one of the other offices. She had shoulder-length white hair slicked back to keep her bangs out of her eyes. She was dressed professionally in a grey jacket and light blue skirt. She accessorized with a few white crystals set into silver fixings. Her light grey eyes were unmistakable.

As Timbre looked her over, she couldn't help but feel an air of familiarity emanating from the woman. She wasn't sure where it was from at first, but she finally decided to put it in the most obvious place.

This had to be Frost's mother.

"But… but…" Rime stuttered uncontrollably as she pointed back and forth between the woman, Sofaira, and the receptionist.

Lurida stomped up to Sofaira, getting up close to her face, "What are you people trying to pull here?"

The Mistrali therapist looked startled, "Lurida. What are you-"

"Don't play dumb with me!" She shouted and pointed to the other woman without taking her eyes off of Ms. Weaver. "Who is she?"

"That's Mrs. Aurora! Her daughter is one of your classmates!" Sofaira was certainly frightened. She seemed to shrink against the wall, the spider legs on her back scrunching in closer to her body.

"Lurida… please." Timbre reached out to her.

"Yeah, sis, you're being really scary." Xannie added.

"Are you _serious_ right now?" She snapped back to Timbre. "Less than a couple of hours ago Mr. stuck-behind-a-desk over here told us he'd never heard of any Aurora working here and now by some _miracle_ here she is and everyone seems to know who we're talking about?"

Sofaira looked to the receptionist with her face contorted in confusion.

The receptionist shrugged in return.

"I call bull on _all_ of it." Lurida began to stomp towards the woman that was introduced as Mrs. Aurora. "I'm only going to ask this one. More. Time." Her long purple ponytail began to float upwards, no longer held by gravity's force. Vases of flowers began to float up into the air. Some of the flower paintings hanging on the wall began to be pulled away, barely holding by the strings on their backs. "Who. Are. You?"

The white-haired woman shrunk back, terrified by Lurida's show of power.

"Lurida!" Sofaira shouted at her, but she went ignored.

The receptionist began to reach for the phone to call for the police, but Sofaira reached one of her segmented spider legs out, stopping him from dialing.

"Please… stop this."

"Not until I have answers! I _refuse_ to be treated like some sort of naive child! Timbre, Rime and I all know that this is all a lie! We know Frost Aurora isn't who she says she is and I bet more than anything that this is all some sort of trick by the Gri-"

There was a loud whizzing noise as something silver and lined with neon yellow flew towards Lurida, making her fall to her knees.

The vases fell to the ground and shattered and the paintings slammed back into place against the walls.

Everyone turned to Xannie, who stood there with one arm extended, panting heavily and looking just as scared as everyone else. A black and yellow glove stretched down her forearm.

Lurida struggled against her sister's rings as they held her wrists together like handcuffs behind her back. "Xannie! Let me _go_!"

"You're acting like a lunatic, Lurida!" She shouted back. She looked to everyone who worked in the office, "I… I'm so sorry… I don't know what's gotten into her…" She raised her hand through the air, forcing the rings to pull Lurida to her feet.

She began to whine as if on the verge of tears, "Lurida… I'm so sorry… but you left me no other choice…" She grabbed onto her sister's arms and began to lead her towards the door.

"I'll be taking her back to campus now. I'm _so_ sorry about the mess!" She looked to Sofaira, "Thank you again for meeting with us today! I promise… I'll…" She wanted to say 'I'll make sure she'll behave next time' but she honestly felt like it'd be better if they never showed their faces around the office again.

The entire time she was being led down the stairs, Lurida was shouting and cursing, trying to break free from her restraints.

Timbre and Rime looked to one another, back to the adults in the room, and then back to the stairs.

Shockingly, Ms. Weaver was giving them a warm smile, "Go on dears. Go make sure your friend is… okay…"

Without another word, Rime was out the door as if her life depended on it, and Timbre was close behind.

.

When they hit the sidewalk, Xannie expanded her rings, letting Lurida's hands free before returning them to her own wrists. To anyone who didn't know her, they looked like a set of designer bangles in their deactivated state. "What is _wrong_ with you?! Did you drink more than four espressos at once again?!"

Lurida pushed her sister away, "You don't know what you just did! I was trying to find out the truth!"

Xannie shook her head, "What the heck are you talking about, sis?!"

Lurida quickly yanked her glove back on and showed Xannie the map and pictures of the messages from Rime's scroll. "Frost Aurora is a liar and apparently a damn good one since she's been able to hide things this long." She moved closer and lowered her voice, "I bet you more than anything she's that infiltrator that Onyx has been rambling to us about since the first-years got attacked."

Xannie felt like her sister was losing it, "Lurida… this is crazy… you can't just go around throwing accusations like this. A few inconsistencies doesn't make her an infiltrator!"

Lurida shook her head and ran her hands through her hair, "That's your problem. You know that? You _only_ look for the good in people." She pointed back to the office above them, "Out of all the times we've been there this semester, have you _ever_ seen that woman before?"

"Look, Lurida, people are constantly coming in and out of that office. It's a temporary place for a lot of specialists. Besides, we've only ever been there to see Ms. Weaver!"

"But it's supposed to be the _permanent_ office of Mrs. Aurora. We have a whole _list_ of the things Frost has lied about, you're just not willing to see it!"

"Because I want to be sure before we try bringing it up to Professor Alabaster! People hide things, Lurida! I mean… look at you!" She gestured to Lurida's hair and face.

"You're really going to go there right now… aren't you?"

Xannie pouted, "Yeah… maybe I am."

Lurida only nodded back. "Okay then."

Just then, Timbre and Rime came out of the building. Before either could ask why the twins looked so angry and serious, Lurida latched onto their arms.

She began to lead them away for the second time that day, back towards the cafe. "Just go back to campus. I'll see you at dinner." Xannie called after her, but she was having none of it.

.

A few blocks away, once they were well away from Xannie and back at the cafe, Lurida let go of Timbre and Rime's arms.

Timbre rubbed her wrist, sore from Lurida's angry death-grip. "Lurida… what are you doing?"

Lurida leaned against the counter and ordered another three shots of espresso. "I'm hopping myself up on more caffeine for tonight.

Rime finally spoke up, "What? Why?"

"I'm going to wait until that place closes, and then I'm going to get my answers."

Timbre watched as she balanced the three small cups in her hands. "What do you-"

"You saw the room that woman came out of. I want to see what's in it. There has to be something there that proves that there's something going on at that office to make a cover for Aurora."

Timbre realized that she was talking about breaking and entering. She lowered her voice and leaned in as they sat down, Lurida already downing her first shot. "Are you _crazy?_ What would Professor Alabaster do if he heard you were planning on breaking into a local clinic? Much less what he'd think if he heard you were trying to bring a couple of first-years along! You... you'd get expelled!"

Rime bit her lip, "Look. I know Zero and I have done some questionable things sneaking around and stuff, but that's on a _whole_ different level!"

Lurida downed the second cup of liquid energy, ignoring Rime's comment. "Look… Timbre. I know we've never been on the best terms… but you and Rime are the only ones who're willing to see the issue here. Xannie… she's being too thick-headed to see past what she wants to see." She looked between the two first-year girls before her, who were staying silent to allow her to rant. "You do believe I'm not crazy… right? I mean…"

Timbre shook her head, reaching a hand out to Lurida's jittering arm, "No, you're not. There's definitely something weird going on. I'm just…" she remembered how Sepia had gotten really angry when she found out about Roland blackmailing the general's daughter, "not sure about your plan of attack."

"Same here," Rime added.

"Okay…" Lurida finished her last shot, "then how about this. You two at least stand outside and message me if anybody starts coming our way. If I get caught, you run and I'll stay behind and take all the blame."

Their minds were sent reeling. Was she really willing to take punishment for something like this and let them get off scot-free?

Timbre didn't like the sound of Lurida's new plan. "But you'd get exp-"

"I don't care, Forté. If I'm wrong, I'm wrong, and I'll suffer the consequences. But if I'm right… then there's no telling how many people could be saved."

Rime tried to speak up, "But-"

"Please, stop it with the buts and uncertainty. Just say you're either with me or not on this."

Timbre and Rime could see the determination in Lurida's eyes. She was so sure about this. There was proof. They saw with their own eyes and heard with their own ears how there was never an Aurora at that office and then all of a sudden there was one. Deep down, they were sure they wanted to learn the truth just as much as Lurida did, and it was obvious that the only way they'd get information quickly would be to do what Lurida was suggesting.

"Well?" Lurida waited expectantly, tapping her foot on the ground beneath them.

Timbre looked to Rime. Apparently, they were in agreement.

Hesitantly, Timbre nodded. "Okay. We're in."

* * *

The same dockside road was much more eerie at sunset. The high tides allowed the waves to lap repetitively against the shore and made the boats tied at the docks to dip up and down in the water. The wind had picked up, causing an unsettling whistle to blow from the smaller nooks and crannies in the row of buildings. There was a lack of street lamps on the road, plunging it into near-black darkness that could hide all sorts of dangers, despite the sun having just set.

To Lurida, Rime, and Timbre, the darkness was a blessing as they tried to casually stroll up to the door up to the counseling center, now long empty as it had closed up shop hours before.

"Okay, Timbre, you just stand over there and keep watch. Rime, you go down the street a little bit. If either of you see anybody coming my way, message."

Timbre didn't feel comfortable. She began to realize how much of a bad idea it was to have someone as recognizable as her to play lookout. "Lurida… I'm starting to have second thoughts…"

"Don't chicken out and run away now, Forté." Lurida snarled.

Timbre looked up to the dark windows of the building. Despite them being the only people in the street, she couldn't help but feel like there were eyes watching them from the shadows. She began rubbing her arms against the chill of the wind.

Rime pulled at a lock of dull blonde hair as she began walking backwards towards her position, "Do you even know what you're looking for?"

Lurida shook her head, "No. But once I find something that proves that that woman we saw earlier today isn't Frost's mother… or really anything that ties this building to that whole web of lies, I'll be right back out, okay?"

Timbre nodded. "Okay, just be quick."

Lurida ran up to the door as Timbre stood on the other side of the street near the docks and watched as Rime hurried towards the corner.

Lurida cursed when she realized just how dark it was in the stoop leading to the stairwell. She could barely see the door, much less the lock she was trying to pick with her bobby-pins. For the third time that day, she pulled out her glove and activated the hologram. Instead of using it to show information, she was using it as a flashlight. A bright purple light illuminated the doorknob, giving her a clear view of the keyhole.

Timbre felt a chill run down her spine when she saw what was spray-painted in black on the door. She didn't know how Lurida hadn't seen it.

There on the wood, plain as day, was the wheel-like symbol Roland had allowed to consume every waking moment of his life.

"Lurida! Get away from there!" Without even thinking, she flicked her arms, bringing both halves of Klavier down around her wrists.

Lurida hissed, shushing Timbre, "Are you _trying_ to get us caught!" She felt something wrap around her waist and tighten. Her bobby pins clattered to the ground just as she heard the tumbler inside the lock turn. No matter how much she tugged, the woven silver cord constricting around her wasn't letting go. "Timbre! What are you doing?! Let go of me you _idiot_!"

Timbre pulled with all of her might to get Lurida away from the building just as the office exploded, bathing them in bright white light, intense heat, and shattered glass as fire blew out the windows.


	39. V2Ch11: Pull Back Shot

Tears dotted down the carpet of the dormitory hallway towards the stairwell. It had been a long time since she had cried tears of sadness. It had been a long time since she had been so hurt. Every time something bad came along, she had no problem throwing it to the wind for it to work itself out. Even the incident on her last set was something that she could move on from, but this was different. This was an issue that she felt responsible for.

It was a rare occasion when Sepia Hughes was given responsibility for something rather than taking it on willingly. Her talent and prowess was notable, but she always had a tendency to do everything herself. She studied camera angles, digital effects, programming, and even gymnastics for hours upon hours between going to preparatory combat school and keeping up with its homework. Going the extra mile was never good enough. Anything that she made had to be hers, but a relationship would buckle under that kind of pressure.

Thoughts whizzed around her brain between every step down the stairs. What had she done so wrong? What had she done to deserve this frustration? Her mistakes always came down to what she did. She did everything, so of course it was always something that she had done herself. So what had she done to allow her boyfriend to spiral out of control? What could she have done better to avoid all of this?

 _I never really had an example, huh…?_

Sepia stopped at the bottom of the first flight of stairs and shut her eyes to collect herself. There were expectations when it came to her. She set the precedent that she was always the first to be amped up and ready to go. She was the happy one out of them. Arty panicked every time he needed to be a leader. Roland hid things when he was anxious. Timbre was always conflicted, wanting to run into a fight and run away from it at the same time. Out of all of them, Sepia took orders and carried them through with her own little twist. She "had it together in her own chaotic way," as Arty would have explained.

She hadn't had it together ever since Roland found that wheel.

Their favorite show would come on, but he insisted that they would catch up the following week. That obviously never happened. He'd promise a date at lunch and forget to follow up on it because that Khimera girl had something else to tell him. Maybe they could have gone on a morning run like they did every once in awhile, but he was too busy sleeping in because he was obsessing over that wheel until four in the morning.

"Ugh… Why does he have to go and give me a reason to like him, and then turn around and give me a reason to hate him? Oh, look at that! He's trying to connect with the Faunus here to help heal and stop being a prick! Wait, no. Please. Please stop going nuts over all of this. Come on, think of us!" Timbre ranted to herself while jogging down the stairs in her pajamas, "Jeez…"

Sepia started to turn and sign something in response about how he would get better. Before Timbre even began to ask if she was okay, she was thinking up a response. It would be so easy to tell her that it was all okay as long as it worked itself out in the end. Optimism was the usual response that she had to Roland's crazy. However, this time was different. She couldn't just flat out lie to her partner.

"Are you going to be okay, Sepia?" Timbre asked from a few steps back.

Instead of turning around, Sepia raised her hands over her head to sign back to Timbre, ' _I'm okay, as always. I just want to cool my head. If I'm not at the mock mission today, don't worry. I'm really okay,'_ she dropped her hands and wandered towards the main doors, not even waiting for Timbre to respond.

Cool fog still hung around campus, and it nearly chilled Sepia to the bone. Instead of her normal attire, she still wore her three-times-too-big tan t-shirt and basketball shorts. Her hair hadn't been cured of its morning rat's nest. Dark circles hadn't been covered up with makeup. The beauty mark under her eye just looked like a little brown dot. All in all, she looked like a complete mess compared to her usual self.

 _Why did I think that this could work…? I don't know the first thing about relationships… I just know how to do things on my own…_ she blinked back tears in a vain attempt to keep from crying. All of the determination that she had when she got to Beacon was drained away. It all seemed pointless if she couldn't even figure out how to deal with a single issue.

Her fingers reached into her pocket. On the way to the cliffs, she opened up her scroll and stared at the hundreds of pictures that she had. The one that she used for Arty's contact was the first to open up. It was a diagonal shot of him trying to hold off a Boarbatusk with his boot and failing to line up the shot to take it out. Another one of Arty came up, but this one was a photo of him working diligently to make enough paintballs for the mission in Mikado.

 _I didn't think that we were going to see eye to eye. I thought that you would get on my case for being so out-there, but then you started acting so… real with us,_ she smiled at the photos in the album marked 'Arty', _Then you actually stepped up in the Emerald Forest. I was so scared of what Oro might do, but you fought on. I almost stopped to take care of Roland, but I couldn't leave my leader like that. You actually made me work with my team and not on my own…_

She sat beside one of the pillars in the courtyard once she reached it. No one was around, and the sun had yet to fully rise over the horizon. Everything was dead silent.

Her fingers skipped over the album marked 'Roland' and straight to the one marked 'Timbre'. The first image was one of Timbre singing into her hairbrush with her foot planted up onto the bathroom counter. That live performance was given before class on their fifth day as a team, and Sepia would never forget it.

 _I never thought that I'd be partners with someone like you,_ she wiped a tear away while looking over a photo of Timbre laughing and reshelving books, _I thought I was going to look up to you, but then you showed us that you have every bit as much growing to do as the rest of us. You always run off at the wrong moment, but then you manage to show up at the right place at the right time to make up for it. You do what you think is right. Even if that has gotten you in trouble, I'm glad that you have the strength to follow your gut like that. It saved a lot of people at Koruss, and I think it could again if you just got the timing of it down.'_

Her thumb froze over the album marked 'Roland'. If she looked in that album, then she wouldn't be able to stay mad. If she wasn't mad, then she might just blow off the issue at hand again. Apparently her hands didn't get the memo, and she clicked the album without a second thought.

The first photo was him stuffing his face with spaghetti at lunch after the first day of combat training with Professor Maple. Fighting Rime had apparently taken a lot out of him. It wasn't until the fourth tray of spaghetti that he decided that he was full.

 _I thought you were cute when we met, and down right handsome when we fought the Minotaurus. I think it was that time at lunch when I thought that I might actually want to date you,_ she scrolled onto the next photo. It was easily a favorite of hers.

Never had Roland's seething violet gaze brought her so much joy. When Xannie still had him in her makeshift stretcher from the mission in Mikado, Yamuna thought it would be funny to mess with him. Knowing that Roland wasn't a touchy person, Yamuna and Xannie gave him a big kiss on the cheek from each side. Yamuna was holding a piece of paper torn off of Writer's Block with the words 'Get well soon!' typed out.

 _I love this photo, but I remember being so torn about how jealous I felt. Sure, they were just messing with a first year, but it made me feel even more awkward than I already did with my scar being out in the open,_ she slowly shut her scroll to keep from going through the entirety of the album that dwarfed the other two. Getting to her selfies with him would only serve to make her heart ache even more.

 _Stop being so ridiculous about this. Just go and talk to him calmly. You can work it out. If there's anyone that he'll listen to, it's me,_ She slowly got up and pulled her scroll back out to text Arty.

 **Sepia Hughes: Hey, how is Roland doing? Is he okay?**

She tapped her foot in wait for the response. Not everyone was quite as fast as she was. By the time the chime of a response came, it felt like she had been waiting for eternity.

 **Burne "Arty" Umber: yeah hes asleep.**

 _So informative. Thanks, Arty,_ She rolled her eyes and put away her scroll.

The walk back to the dormitory felt long enough usually, but walking there with a weight on her heart made it feel like a thousand miles. He would probably wake up as soon as she got into the room and start shouting. It would probably all go downhill really fast, but she wouldn't just linger on the issue for this long.

.

All was quiet in the dormitory. With all of the other students at breakfast, the dorm was empty for the most part. The sun shone through the windows as it rose up over the horizon. As peaceful as everything was, Sepia couldn't help but remember the vice that closed over her heart the night that Timbre woke up and screamed about an intruder.

She opened the door slowly only to find Roland still passed out in his bed, _Great. Now what do I do? Let him sleep or wake him up to talk this out?_

Deciding that it'd probably be best to avoid waking up the ticking time bomb, she went to get dressed to make an attempt at having a semi-normal day. She sat at the edge of her bed and went to work trying to brush the countless knots that looped around and tangled themselves in a mass atop her head.

 _What do I have to apologize for, anyway?_ she grabbed a mass of hair and tried to yank the brush down through it, _If there's nothing that I could have done to keep him from obsessing, then why am I feeling like this?_ She took another mass and strained to get the brush all the way through the knots in her hair, _But maybe I could have kept it from him. Auntie-mom always preached that holding anger in your heart made it more difficult to actually be real with people. I finally got to see it happen first hand with him. When he actually started being open with me…_

Inside of the photo album of Roland, she had a photo of the first real smile that she ever got out of him. They were at the café that Timbre introduced them to. Just before Arty and Timbre came in with their families, she snapped the picture. It was right after she dropped her spoon and started signing swears without so much as thinking about it. Seeing Roland laugh so hard that he cried made her day, and gave her a photo for his contact.

 _Then he actually started being open…_ She finally finished brushing her hair. It hung from her head in waves of chocolate brown. Her eyes stayed fixed on the sleeping Faunus while she slipped on her headband and began putting her hair up, _You told me about your favorite books, what movies you were looking forward to seeing, and even started flirting. When I first met you, I didn't dream of hearing you call me 'cute'. Then you listened to every solitary bit that I told you about film, and Vacuo, and my other hobbies, and… everything. You actually enjoyed spending time with me. The only person I've ever known that could put up with me was Opal, but she didn't have to learn a whole new language just to talk to me._

She threw off the baggy t-shirt and pulled on her brown dress and sequined tank top, _So maybe I could have done something..._ She began the arduous task of attaching her bustle. It weighed down on her lower back and hip with the pouch inside that was bursting at the seams. Even as a Huntress in training, she liked having a purse with her at all times.

 _Maybe I could have been supportive and actually given him a reason to relax instead of getting so angry with him._

With her boots zipped up and her gloves pulled up to her elbows, she stood up. She gave Roland a gentle kiss on the top of his head and quietly left the room, _I need to forgive him, and maybe he'll forgive me. I mean, it does kind of take two to tango, as Cayenne would say._

Her head wasn't in the place to be out and fighting Grimm. She knew this for a fact, and would make it a point to send McGouran a message about her absence… as long as she remembered. That was a fifty/fifty shot, but it was better than putting in no effort to be responsible.

 _Maybe I should consult Opal. I don't think she has a class this morning,_ Sepia looked at the photo on her scroll of the schedule for Team STON, _Nope!_

 **Sepia Hughes: Meet me at the benches outside the CCT Tower. I want to talk about some things. Roland and I are having some troubles, and I know that you and Damascus seem to be happy. I need a second opinion.**

A response came in only a few seconds.

 **Opal Uluru: Be there in 10. See ya in a jiff. I have chips!**

 _As always, I can count on you. Thanks, Opal,_ Sepia smiled and jogged to get to the rendezvous point.

When she got to the CCT, Opal was already situated at one of the benches with her bag of salt and vinegar chips. Opal hated that flavor, but smacked away at them as if they were just her favorite thing in the world.

Sepia held up her scroll when she sat down beside the girl, ' _You don't have to fake liking my favorite chips.'_

"Thank tha gods!" Opal spat out a glob of chewed potato chip into the bushes behind her. She shivered in disgust, "I hate those nasty things. Absolutely hate 'em! Get 'em away from me!" she shoved the bag into Sepia's hands, "Bought them from the vendin' machine right when you texted me. Gotta say, they really give big portions around here. That's like a family sized bag, but I guess we all need the energy! Still wouldn't eat those things if the world depended on it, ya know?"

' _But you will if it means it'll make me feel a little better?'_ Sepia put down her scroll to shove a handful of chips into her mouth.

"Well of course! 'Sides, I just shoved 'em in my cheek to spit out when you got here. About an eighth of them went down the hatch before you got here. Sorry!" Opal raked her tongue off with the back of her pinky and flicked the remains of chewed chip back into the bushes, "So you an' Otta-Butt havin' issues?"

Sepia typed out another message while crunching a mouthful of potato chips, ' _Yeah. He's being really bull-headed about all of this Grimm Brotherhood stuff. I think I'm just going to try and forgive and forget. Maybe I can snap him out of it by just being there for him, you know?'_

"Maybe," Opal rolled her tongue around in her mouth to get rid of the dreadful taste of vinegar, "You know, Damascus get's really cranky when it comes to those Grimm Brotherhood koo-koos, and worries a lot about what they're doing. He gets all obsessive over any new thing that those crazies steal back home. I usually just talk him down and give him some-"

Sepia quickly whipped out her scroll and shoved it into Opal's face, ' _Don't need details.'_

"'Aight, got it," Opal waved the scroll away, "I just mean that you've gotta get ya quackers in a row before you can get his. If something's buggin' ya, then work that out before ya try an work _him_ out. Head downtown. Relax. Call home. Whateva you need."

 _Auntie-mom probably is worried about me… It's been a while…_ Sepia tapped out a message and held it up for Opal to read, ' _You know, I think I should call home, like you said. I haven't even texted her since the Trex and Oro. Maybe I could learn a bit about Mom and Dad's marriage. She always talks about how happy they were.'_

"Yeah! That'd be great! Heck, do some shoppin' while ya at it! See some flicks! Just clear ya head!" Opal hopped up from her seat, "Now, don't go holdin' up for me! Get a move on! If all goes well, you, me, Roland, and Damascus could all do a double date tonight!"

Sepia pumped a fist in the air to say 'I've got this!' and shot up from her seat. Her confidence was flooding back in. She had a plan, and had faith that it would work.

* * *

Four movies. A ton of Lien spent on popcorn, soda, and movie tickets. That was the following eight hours in the life of Sepia Hughes. It started out with the horror movie that she had been dying to see, but Roland wasn't the type for horror movies because their 'plots were rip offs of far superior and better-structured stories'. He didn't see the magic of film going on between each shot, and how intricate the animatronics were. Her firm belief that many people failed to appreciate practical effects was only strengthened by his lack of enthusiasm.

The next movie was one about a gritty Huntsman that was out for revenge, which reminded her of someone near and dear to her. Naturally, she had to see that one when she found out that it was still showing at the theatre in Vale. It was a film that she decided she would bring Roland to within the week. The whole redemption and revenge plotline was right up his alley.

She promised herself in the previous showing that it would be the last movie she saw that day, but then she spotted the poster for the seventh movie in a series about Huntsmen and Huntresses in space. It was another must-see with a fan following of millions, so she went to see that film as well. It was going to be the last one.

Then it happened. She was walking out of the theatre with scroll in hand to call Aubrey when she made the mistake of turning around. Up on the list of films that were playing was the movie that was swooning the hearts of girls across Remnant: 'The Sketchbook'. By no means was it what Arty would have been interested in, but it was for Sepia. She wasn't fond of chick flicks, but this one was said to be the exception to most. It being adapted from a novel, she would never be able to convince Roland to see it with her. He would know the movie frame by frame if it stayed as true to the novel as people said it did.

After the movie marathon was finished by the growing void in her bank account, Sepia finally felt like her head was clear enough to call Aubrey. It didn't take long to find a quiet place on a picnic bench in the nearby park. It was close to the Dust shop that Team ARTS frequented, so maybe she could check with Ms. Perry if the ARTS boys had an order ready to pick up. Maybe a small gesture like that would aid in mending the tension between her and Roland.

The call was made without a moment's hesitation, and was answered instantaneously.

" **SEP-A H-D N T-E ANT-NA O-T F W-CK"** a woman seemed to be screaming over static and the whipping winds of a sandstorm. It seemed that one of Vacuo's legendary blackout windstorms was underway, and Aubrey was taking care of the antenna.

' _Try putting another Lightning Dust crystal in to boost the signal and then get inside!'_ Sepia texted back in response.

" **I M TR-NG T GET"** Aubrey cut out for a few seconds. Nothing was heard from her end for a few moments, but then everything came roaring back through the speaker, " **THERE IT IS! WORKING LIKE A CHARM!"**

' _Told you,'_ Sepia silently giggled.

The wind suddenly stopped with the slamming of a door. Footsteps clattered down creaky stairs, then stopped when the creaking of another door could be heard.

"Alright! I'm safe and sound in the house! In your storage room, actually. Your cameras are safe, sound, and double locked in their trunks. That animatronic Oro gives me the heeby-jeebies though…" Aubrey rattled on and on for a few more minutes about how great and sandy it was back in Vacuo and how she 'simply cannot wait' to make a trip out to Vale.

' _It's good to see that you can still talk enough for the both of us, especially now,'_ Sepia carried on the conversation through text. It was still awkward talking like this, and the reason that she had avoided calling home as much as she could. She loved Aubrey, but it was still weird not being able to carry on a conversation easily.

"What's wrong, dear?"

There it was. Aubrey knew that Sepia was off just by a text. That was all it took.

She'd have to talk about it sooner or later, ' _My boyfriend and I are having problems.'_

"You two are still going, huh?" Aubrey laughed, "I guess that means he can tolerate a lot!"

' _Auntie-mom, please,'_ Sepia rolled her eyes as her fingers worked a message out of the scroll, ' _Sorry. I know that I haven't really talked to you too much. It's been a few months, and I'm really sorry.'_

"No, no. You've been busy. Don't worry about it!" Aubrey giggled, "Anyway, so a Hughes is having lovey-dovey problems. That wouldn't be the first time. You're doing better than me! I mean, I think the last time that I went on a date was…" the line went quiet.

Sepia let out the most exasperated sigh that a mute girl could have, ' _I was looking more for Mom and Dad's… relationship. No offense, but you've never been the most… you know.'_

"No. It's fine. I'm good," clanks and crashes came from Aubrey's end. A yelp followed, but she composed herself, "Sorry! Sorry! I thought the animatronic moved! It just shifted because of the draft or something! All is well!" she huffed, "Anyway, your parents, right? What do you want to know?"

' _Well, they started dating around my age now, but that's all you really said about that. What about them? We hardly ever talk about them in training,'_ Sepia lowered her scroll and peered around the park. Before Aubrey could respond, her scroll dinged.

' _Hold on. Got a text.'_

 **Roland Wells: Hey, how is the mock mission going?**

Sepia rolled her eyes at the text. If he was that worried about her, then he would have gone on the assignment and found out that she wasn't there.

 **Sepia Hughes: I didn't go. I'm talking to Auntie-mom.**

Once no response came, as usual, she went back to the conversation at hand, ' _So what were they like back then?'_

Aubrey laughed, "Well… they got along alright, I suppose. They were competitive, as you could have probably guessed. It was always a game of 'Who Can Kill More?' on missions, and their leader and her partner struggled to keep them from killing each other for the tie breaker. They had a few spats that I had to make the trek up to Shade to break up, given that your father was usually the one getting beat down by your mom."

' _So they were dysfunctional?'_ Sepia raised her eyebrows. She hadn't heard about her parents ever having actual issues. Then again, the majority of what she knew about them was when they got into their actual careers.

"No! Not in the slightest!" Aubrey's voice faltered, "Okay, maybe they were a little. Your mother was a very hard-headed woman, but your father liked to think things out more. While she jumped into the middle of the fray and overpowered her opponents, he liked to exploit his opponent's weaknesses and take them down as fast as possible. They never saw eye-to-eye on strategy, but they were a damn good pair when under pressure. When it came to their relationship, it was the same way. Your father wanted to take things slow and plan out every date, training session, and whatever else they did together days in advance, but your mother was spontaneous. She liked to drag him to the movies at three in the morning."

' _So they fought?'_ Sepia bit her lip in thought. Sure, her and Roland weren't acting quite like her parents. However, they were about as opposite as her parents were, ' _How did they work things out when they were fighting?'_

"They didn't," Aubrey put her scroll on speaker and set it down to clean up the mess that she made when the animatronic Oro scared her, "Well, not until they got married and had to! Before that, it was CiCi that was always telling them to calm down and make up. She was always the one to push them apart and explain in detail what they had both done to cause the little spat. The phrase 'What would CiCi do?' was usually the first thing that one of your parents would say when they got into it again. Having that team in training was-"

' _What was their leader's full name?'_ the tips of Sepia's fingers felt cold. What she was hearing had to be a coincidence. Surely someone in Vacuo was also named CiCi.

"Oh, CiCi?" Aubrey thought for a moment, "Chiara Oscura, but she always got mad when people didn't call her CiCi. Something about her name rhyming or something. Why?"

Never once had Roland mentioned his mother being from Vacuo to her. Much less did he talk about her team. The entire time that she had known him, not once had it come up, ' _Did she have a weird Semblance? Ink control, for example?'_

"Yeah, actually. She used it to fight with a really thick book that she kept strapped to her belt. I've told you about her, haven't I?"

' _No, you haven't. You've told me about Mom and Dad, but never the rest of their team,'_ Sepia tried to wrap her mind around what Aubrey was telling her. There was no doubt that this CiCi Oscura had to be the same person as Roland's mother, unless there just happened to be another woman in Vacuo with the same name and same Semblance.

"Oh, well…" Aubrey snatched back up her scroll, "So you know of CiCi, your father, and your mother. That covers the first three in Team CIRS. I haven't told you about Shirley?"

Another name seemed to echo in her mind, but surely that one _was_ a coincidence, ' _You haven't."_

"Shirley Nozium, but Nozium was her maiden name. I think she's actually the headmistress at Haven now... I think her married name is…"

' _Wells.'_

"Yes! Shirley Wells. Is she related to Roland?"

' _That would be his stepmother,'_ so it wasn't a coincidence. Roland's mother _and_ stepmother had been on a team with her parents back at Shade, ' _While I'm at it, the CiCi Oscura in CIRS had to be his mother. He got his Semblance from her.'_

"That's right! Roland's an Otter Faunus! I don't know why I didn't think about that sooner!" Aubrey started making her way back upstairs. Boards creaked with each step, "What a small world we live in, huh?"

' _I guess so…'_ Sepia looked down at the grass just under her feet. She had to wonder if CiCi thought seeing so much green was weird when she got to Mistral. It had to be a lot like what Sepia felt coming to Vale. Knowing that CiCi was her parents' leader did make her concerned about one thing, though, ' _Was she the one who made the decision to go the route that Mom and Dad got ambushed on?'_

"She… did. She underestimated the volume of Grimm, but you can't blame her. They came to a fork in the road. Either they could have gone through the desert and risk not having enough supplies to make it, or they could have gone a shorter route over a mesa that was known to have a lot of Grimm along it. Had they gone the route through the desert, they might all have gotten dehydrated and been easier targets. They had to get to their destination in one piece, and the route over the mesa was the best chance."

' _Alright, I was worried for a little bit. I was scared that she might not have been all Roland made her out to be,'_ Sepia smiled slowly. Working things out with Roland didn't feel so impossible anymore. If her parents could do it, then they could, too, ' _Anyway, thanks. Everything's wild between Roland going crazy over some symbol, Arty panicking over what to do, and Timbre's dealing with some things. You know how it goes.'_

"Wait, symbol? Do you mean that one that those Grimm Brotherhood weirdos keep putting up?"

' _Um… yeah, why?'_

"Nothing. They've been really active in Vacuo lately. I thought that they were just thieves, but then you told me about the incident with Oro. Not everyone in Vacuo knows exactly how dangerous they can be like you do," Aubrey gave out a short, strained laugh, "I should get going. I need to make sure the tarp is over your van during the storm. You have fun, okay!"

' _Right. I'll talk to you later. Love you!'_ Sepia texted out, but the line was already disconnected.

 _So Mom and Dad knew Roland's mom, huh…?_ Sepia put away her scroll and stood to leave. Something itched at her, though. Why hadn't Roland ever once mention this with how close he was to his mother. He was probably in the same boat of his mother never mentioning the other members of her team, but that would be another really strange coincidence. Had he known and just never connected the dots? He was dealing with a lot ever since his mother died, so connecting something like that was probably the last thing on his mind.

Ever since Sepia was a child, she just sort of accepted that her parents were gone. It never really hurt her. It was just a fact of life that she couldn't do anything about, so she just moved forward instead of letting it get her down. When a letter would be sent home with her from primary school for her 'mom or dad', she was perfectly okay with giving it to her Auntie-mom. When she heard of the vacations to Vale and Mistral that her friends took as kids, she was content to say that Auntie-mom took her out around the deserts of Vacuo to look at the views.

This lonely day in Vale was the first time that she actually felt disconnected because her parents were gone. All of it came seeping in slowly at first, but picked up gradually. She felt angry, sad, hurt, confused, and everything all at once as she walked away from the park. What if CiCi had just risked the hike through the desert? What if they had scouted out the route before going in? All of the questions that she had were probably the ones that CiCi asked herself until the day she died, but that thought surely didn't make her feel better.

Maybe she could head back to Vacuo for a weekend and look around the area. Maybe she could understand exactly what happened a little better than she did now. Maybe… this was how Roland felt every waking moment.

 _This is what that obsession feels like…?_ Sepia slowed to a stop on the sidewalk, _You just want to see a legitimate reason for why it all happened. You just want that burden gone forever._

Everything seemed to fall into place. It was so hard for her to understand until she felt it herself, but Roland wasn't completely crazy. He just wanted answers.

 _It's not about getting answers, is it? It's about being ready for when you have the opportunity to find them,_ She started off down the sidewalk again.

It was only about four in the afternoon. Though it didn't get particularly chilly in Vale during the winter, dusk still began around that time. It wouldn't be but a couple of hours before the sun went down. It was just enough time to run by the theatre and reserve some tickets for the movie that she knew for a fact that Roland would love. That would give her the opportunity to guilt-trip him into giving her enough time to actually attempt to help him.

The walk between the park and the theatre wasn't too terribly long. Buy the tickets for the weekend, meet up with Roland, and then try to start making up with him. If she also managed to find a book that he hadn't read, then maybe she could even lead in with that.

Upon reaching the theatre, Sepia instantly noticed that something was off.

No one walked the streets nearby. No lights twinkled around the sign showing what movies were playing. The neon signs were dark. The backlights on the movie posters were all out, and the chilling black lines of an eight-segmented wheel covered the glass panes used to preserve them. Even the ticket kiosk had the symbol hastily spray painted over the glass.

 _What in Remnant…?_ Sepia backed up from the building. It couldn't have been robbed in broad daylight. Surely the place had been evacuated if it were attacked.

 _I thank the gods for my Semblance everyday,_ seven orbs appeared on the other side of the main doors to the theatre. Dusky light streamed in through the windows in the lobby, but the theatre was completely dark deeper inside.

Not a soul could be found in any of the theatre rooms or the maintenance halls. No one was in the bathrooms, behind any counters, or even in the breakroom. The place was completely dead, but there was evidence of people being inside recently.

Steamy popcorn littered the lobby and the halls between the theatres, and a spilled cola here and there told the story of dozens of panicked moviegoers rushing out. Bullet holes littered the ceiling here and there to indicate that this wasn't a mere gas leak or structure failure. Someone cleared out these people and then cut the power.

Her orbs disappeared as soon as she opened her eyes, _No one inside… so what about around?_

Three more orbs appeared around her head and shot around the building. Nothing but knocked over trash cans and litter could be seen down the alleys on either side. On the backside of the building was the A/C units, electric boxes, and the roof access ladder. Oddly, the roof access ladder had been let down, but it had yet to be put back up.

 _They're on the roof…_ Sepia opened her eyes once more and darted down the alleyway. The sun was slowly but surely heading down the horizon. If she had to put up a fight, she didn't want it to be in the dark. She had to hurry.

 _I need my weapons, but they're back in my locker,_ her eyes widened when she remembered the one strange function that Beacon had given the student lockers. Those things could be launched up into the stratosphere and dropped down precisely where the student wanted. The whole system was integrated into the scrolls, _That's an ex machina if I've ever known one, but an ex machina is exactly what I need right now._

The coordinates were set for the center of the theatre's roof, and the timer was set to five minutes. The only thing left to do was to get up three stories of brick wall and confront whoever was up there. _I swear to the gods if it's Oro again, I'm gonna…_ She shook her head and ran into the alley.

She started to go up the ladder, but hopped down only three rungs in. The ladder was the way that they would expect somebody to come. However, the alleyway was narrow enough for her to go up, as only a few of the most recently built buildings were up to code. With that plan in mind, she ran back to the alley and braced herself against the wall opposite to that of the theatre's. She planted her feet against the theatre's wall and walked up the wall one step at a time.

At only five more feet to climb, an orb appeared in front of her and shot up well above the rooftop. Eight figures in black cloaks and mirrored black masks were hard at work setting little boxes with blinking red lights at each of the four corners of the building. Bombs.

Sepia nearly fell back down when she saw the man in the black trenchcoat in the center of his minions staring up at her orb from behind a mask that looked identical to the Trex her and her team had fought the semester before. His molten ember eyes chilled her to the core.

 _That's_ definitely _not Oro… Maybe I should go get help…_ She looked down to the alley below as she considered going for backup or to alert authorities. _No. There's no telling when those bombs are set to blow. I don't have a choice._ _It's go time,_ Sepia took two more steps and leaned forward to grab the edge of the building. She kicked off the brick and backflipped up onto the roof between two of the Grimm Brotherhood grunts. The gasps that came from them were nothing compared to the pained shouts that came from them when she drove a heel between one of their eyes, and then when the other was met with a bone-crushing kick to the neck. She finished them off by kicking them to send them both off the side of the roof.

A slow clapping echoed off of the brick and concrete.

"Well, well, _well_. Look who truly lives up to her name!"

Ignoring the Grimm-masked man, she continued her internal countdown. _And in three… two…_ the locker burst through the clouds above and landed between her and the man in the Trex mask. Instead of making a break for her locker, Sepia stayed still. None of the grunts were attacking. It seemed as though that they were waiting for orders. Either that, or that they were more concerned with preparing their explosives.

The locker was only mere inches away from slamming into his mask and crunching off his toes. He didn't seem shocked at the least. He looked around the locker to peek at the small girl. "You know, I meant that as a joke initially, but I seriously mean it this time when I say you _really_ live up to your name, small-fry."

' _I don't know who you are or what you're talking about, but I'm about to deus ex machina your-'_ Sepia went from signing a coherent sentence to a stream of swearing as the grunts watched on in confusion.

"Uh…" the leader looked to the grunts, "Any idea what she's saying?"

"Do you… not…?" One of the grunts turned towards the man in the mask, "Trex, you're the one keeping tabs on that one…"  
"Yeah… and?"

"I just thought that you might… have the foresight, sir...?"

"Listen, guys, really? It's not like Lieutenant Hulud told me to learn funky finger-flapping sign language. She told our branch to keep watch, not study."

"Sir, she _did_ tell us that. She told _you_ to learn everything about the target. I would think that would include her language," the grunt seemed almost disappointed with the leader of this operation.

"I've got this… If I keep at it, then I might end up being the new Captain Trex," another grunt spoke up.

Trex looked down to the grunt. He leaned in close and then pointed to Sepia, "Well, then do it then! Our job right now is to blow this place sky high and I've just decided that _you_ will the the one to stop _her_ from _ruining this for us!_ "

"When I said that 'I've got this', I meant that I know sign language and can translate what she said," the second grunt let out an exasperated sigh, "How did you get promoted to this position, sir…?"

He began stomping his boot repeatedly, "Because I'm good in a fight and always manage to get the job done! That, and I've been in the Brotherhood a _lot_ longer than you losers."

"She told us that she was going to 'deus ex machina your ass', sir. That was followed by… pretty much a comprehensive list of swears... That includes the colloquial ones from Vacuo," the second grunt went on, "And, if I may, it seems like you only ever _barely_ manage to get the job done. You nearly destroyed half of the fossils at the museum on one of our last missions…"

He leaned in close again, "You'd _love_ to think that, eh little-miss-nobody? Maybe I'd have a better job getting things done if the _grunts they stuck me with didn't question every move I made!_ Now if you want to actually _do_ something other than criticize your superior, _then get_ … hey… where'd she go?..." Trex looked around the roof. There wasn't a sign of sequins or feathers anywhere.

Or, so he might have thought. Right inside of the locker in front of him, Sepia held her guns at the ready, _At least he's not as scary as Oro…_ she thought while sticking her foot out of the locker and kicking off the ground. It took all of her might and both feet to push the locker back towards Trex. Once it was tipping, she darted out and whipped around with her guns out in front of her. The reels still spun and gave off the scent of gunpowder and plastic.

Trex roared in anger as his toes were almost crushed by the locker for the second time. The barrage of bullets seemed to harmlessly bounce off of him, "Why you little…" He reached up with one arm and latched onto something hanging from his back. "You think you're tough stuff, huh?" Heavy chain clanked to the ground as it unravelled from the object it was connected to. "Just because you helped take out me and Oro's little pet doesn't mean you can win against me…"

Steam hissed from black metal as Trex drew his weapon. He turned to his lackeys "Don't just stand there! _Get her before she gets to the bombs!_ " He threw his arm outward, launching the bulk of his weapon towards Sepia.

 _OKAY, MAYBE HE'S JUST AS SCARY AS ORO!_ Sepia ducked under the snapping beartrap that rocketed towards her. The chains rattled when the hunk of black steel teeth embedded themselves into the side of the building she had used to get to the roof, _HE'S JUST STUPID!_

She gave up her direct sight and hearing to create four orbs just in time to see that two of the Grimm Brotherhood grunts were running towards her with black and red carbines at the ready. She kicked off to the left just in time to avoid a hail of bullets, _They're slow with all that armor under their cloaks…_

Just as the grunt to her left raised their gun, she aimed both of hers back and held down the triggers. The spray of bullets clattered against the grunt's armor, but one flew true. It struck the crease between the black mask and the cloak that seemed to be only protected by a thin veil of bullet proof fabric. She noticed it when she kicked the first two grunts off the side of the theatre, and knew that getting shot would still be agonizing regardless of whether or not they were focusing their aura.

The grunt grabbed at their neck, letting off on their barrage.

Trex released the grip his weapon had on the wall, causing a cloud of hot steam to envelop their target. "Oh quit whining you baby! You have aura! Suck it up and keep shooting!"

 _That's wishful thinking,_ Sepia rolled her eyes and slammed the butt of her gun into the grunt's already throbbing neck. She ducked behind them to avoid the incoming bullet rain from the other five grunts. The ensuing thuds of bullets made her cringe, _Oh… they're all stupid…_ she thought while throwing the injured grunt off the side of the building.

One grunt stopped firing for a moment and pressed a button among the wires and explosives causing a small LED screen to light up, "Captain! The bombs are set!"

Trex threw his weapon again, "We haven't gotten word from the others yet! It's not time!" He cursed when Sepia managed to figure out his attack, jumping up and bouncing off of the chain when it went taut. "Just hold her off until we can blow this joint!"

 _Nuh-uh._ _You are_ not _blowing up my favorite theatre!_ Sepia flew towards the grunt that set the bomb with her guns blazing through bullets shot after shot. Instead of going in for a kick to the face like the arms crossed in front of their head seemed to indicate, she drove both her heels into the grunt's stomach. She cartwheeled off of the grunt and sprayed bullets at their partner, hoping that one might strike them in the neck too.

 _Now…_ she shifted the gun in her left hand into its retractable whip form. The reel of film extended from the base and latched onto the live bomb. In one strong heave, she snatched up the bomb and tossed it into the locker, _One down, three to go._

" _NO!"_ Trex threw the jaws of his weapon towards Sepia in hopes of dividing her from the locker.

Unfortunately for him, she didn't need to be close to the locker for the next step.

The jaws crashed into the roof again, their sharp metal teeth threatening to smash a hole into the room inside.

Sepia grinned as she leapt up onto the chain and took off towards Trex, _I was right! You're_ really _stupid!_ She whipped her other gun into its whip form and hurdled over Trex. The whips of film and bullets twisted around his neck and drew taught when she landed behind him. She snipped them off, returned her weapons back to their pistol forms, and darted off towards the unguarded bomb left from the first two grunts that she took out. It was tossed into the locker like the first.

Captain Trex gagged and grabbed at his throat with his free hand as the other was still locked in place from his weapon being stuck. He finally managed to tear the film whips from his neck. The little girl was becoming a real nuisance. Steam sprayed from his weapon, but he didn't retract it back to the base on his hand. "If I can't hit you head on…" he twisted his body, the jaws sending up sparks as they were dragged across the concrete, "Then I'll just use a wider spread!"

 _And you'll regret that,_ Sepia saw the closed jaws barreling towards her from one of the orbs. She jumped over the hunk of steel without even turning her head, and saw from one of the other orbs that Trex's weapon managed to smack two more grunts off of the roof. Only two wounded grunts and the sassy one that knew sign language actually remained in the fight.

"Dammit…" Trex fumed as he watched the two grunts fall over the edge. "I forget that you can see _everything_ with those." He smiled devilishly behind his mask, "But I know full and well what happens when one of your little toys break." He looked to his remaining minions, "You three! Focus on shooting the glowing lights! I'll handle her!"

Apparently the sassy grunt wasn't a terrible shot. One orb was shot as soon as the order was given, and Sepia grit her teeth from the jolt of pain she felt pulse through her head. She kept the other three orbs spinning around the battlefield in hopes that it might make her temporary eyes and ears harder to hit. Hopefully she could fend the motion sickness from the sweeping shots off long enough to finish the four of them.

She tried to make a break for another bomb, but her balance was thrown off by the pain rocketing through her brain. She tripped over a heel and slid to a stop in front of the third bomb.

"Not so tough with your orbs going willy-nilly, huh?" the sassy grunt said as she walked up to Sepia, her gun ready to fire at her back. She noticed one of Sepia's orbs floating in a figure-8 a small ways away from the building and a few stories up. Through the iron-sights of her gun, she began to get the pattern down. Her finger twitched as she went to pull the trigger.

Sepia wished that she could have screamed when the second orb shattered. All she could see was white for a few fleeting seconds. Through all of the pain, she still managed to come up with an idea. Her favorite type of camera shot would be perfect: a pull back shot.

The remaining two orbs rocketed back far enough that they nearly looked like two bright stars in the darkening sky. They were a bit far for her to see and hear everything perfectly clear, but it would work fine in the pinch she was in.

"Say goodnight…" the grunt aimed her sights at Sepia's head.

 _Yeah, no,_ Sepia reached back and grabbed the bomb that was left from the pair of grunts that Trex threw off. She hoisted it out towards the muzzle of the grunt's gun. In the moment of terrified confusion that followed, Sepia threw herself up off the ground and pressed the muzzle of her own pistol into the grunt's neck, _You say goodnight!_

"Tsk-tsk," Sepia clacked her tongue against her teeth for one of the few audible sounds that she could make. _You were my favorite out of this bunch._

A dozen rapid shots slammed into the grunt's neck. She screamed, and then screamed a little more when Sepia kicked her off the side of the roof to join her friends. While the other two grunts staggered to get their guns up, she threw the bomb into the locker with the other two.

Half of Trex was angry that the best shot on his support team had gotten taken out of the fight, the other half was happy to see the smart mouth get her ass handed to her. He cracked his neck, ready to get back to the fight. Long range wasn't working too well. It was time to step out of the comfort zone. With the jaws back in his hand, the chain wound back up against the apparatus on his back. The weapon hissed and the jaws snapped shut. The beartrap had effectively become a giant gauntlet, ready for bashing in the heads of Trex's opponents. He may have been big and a bit slow, but he knew that Sepia didn't have long to get to the last bomb.

A chime, similar to that of a scroll, rang out from his wrist. Pulling the sleeve back, he revealed a red and black watch communicator. He held it up to his face to where he could hear. A smooth female voice from the other end began to speak.

"Trex, Venice's group and I are ready. How are things at the theater?"

Trex grunted, "Having a bit of trouble with a surprise, but I'm working on it."

"Just make sure you time this right. We don't need you screwing this up for us."

"Back off, Sanguwalker."

"I'm not the one getting outdone by someone wearing a dress and high heels."

"Hey-"

"Just do your job, Trex. We don't want any more mistakes."

The comm ended before Trex could retort. "She thinks she's so much better just because she gets all the _fun_ jobs up in Atlas..." He shook off his anger, redirecting it back towards Sepia. "Why don't you just sit still?" He reared his arm back, ready to bash Sepia with his weapon.

His shoulders slumped when he watched Sepia throw the last of his group off of the roof by their hoods.

"Oh… uh… Well then…" He roared again, charging at Sepia, his weapon reared back to strike.

Sepia tossed the final bomb into the locker. Phase 1 of her plan was done. Phase 2 was the hard part. Her orbs closed in on Trex as he readied his attack. Instead of going around the battlefield, they began spinning around his head in a furious show of bright white lights.

While his retinas were burning, he laughed to himself as he noticed Sepia make the horrible mistake of bringing her remaining orbs close to him. In one big swing, his iron jaw-gauntlet slammed into the balls of light, sending a huge shower of glass shards spraying across the roof.

 _There you go! Nicely done!_ she forced her mind to push through the pain. She allowed herself to stumble and fall to Trex's feet. Her eyes were still squeezed shut as the pain rocked around in her head.

Trex opened the jaws of his weapon. They made great restraints for unruly captives, especially when he 'accidentally' made the teeth close a bit too early and latch onto a free arm or two. "Now, why don't you just sit still so I can destroy you and your boyfriend's favorite date spot, okay?"

Right when the jaws were about to close around her waist, Sepia rolled off to the left. The jaws closed on the concrete that was just under her, and she was up with her guns at the ready once more. Her soft brown eyes glowed with a residual golden shimmer as she opened them to stare at Trex with every ounce of rage that she had in her, _YOU ARE NOT DESTROYING THIS THEATRE!_ She screamed in her mind.

The butts of her guns slammed down between the eyes of Trex's mask, came back up, and then slammed down a second time. She watched as a crack formed in the front of the mask.

The pain of having his head jostle around the inside of his mask forced Trex to yell out. He tugged and tugged, but the teeth of his weapon were firmly planted into the ground. Had he been only a little bit more competent, he might've thought to detach the jaws from the base. They'd still be stuck, but he could at least increase his mobility.

Instead, Trex threw his arm back, sending Sepia sliding across the roof.

Sepia felt herself hit the ledge. Before she knew it, she had gone over the edge of the roof and began falling towards the ground below.

With Sepia finally out of his sight and not trying to bash his brains in, Trex ripped his weapon free. _Now with her gone_. He watched as the sun neared the horizon. It was time to start the countdown.

He pulled up his sleeve to reveal the communication device he had been called on earlier. He pressed one of the buttons and smiled when he saw the red LED's begin counting down from one minute within the locker laying on its side next to him.

The new trick that Sepia had been working on worked just as painfully as it did perfectly. Just over the edge of the roof, she laid on a bed of glowing orbs. A pile of glass-like shards had collected on the ground below. One orb alone couldn't sustain much weight, but they could hold a decent amount if the weight was distributed across a few dozen of them.

 _So the bombs are on… perfect,_ Sepia grabbed the ledge of the roof. The orbs disappeared while she pulled herself up. She hoisted her way the rest of the way up and stood on the edge, _Now…_

Trex laughed, "They may not be in place, but at least they're still on the-"

Sepia held up her scroll, plugged in a few coordinates that were just due west of them, and selected 'launch'.

The locker slammed shut. The thrusters on the base of it flared to life and sent the locker rocketing sideways off of the roof before turning sharply and shooting up into the sky. With the timer set to one minute, the makeshift missile would explode high above the clouds.

"Roof…" Trex finished his sentence as he watched the locker fly off. He felt heat rise within him. He was _furious_ and refused to screw up his part of the initial phase of the mission. If the theater didn't go down, Hulud, Oro, and the rest of the Vacuo branch of the Grimm Brotherhood would never let him live it down. He began to panic when he thought about what the Captains from the other three branches would think. He was having none of it.

The chain fell to his side again as the jaws disconnected from the base around his hand. " _You little brat! You're not going to ruin this for me!"_ He threw the jaws towards the locker, the steam propelling it faster through the air. It latched on to the metal box.

The thrust of the rocket nearly tore his arm out of its socket, but he stood his ground and pulled as hard as he could. If the bombs couldn't go off the way they were initially intended, then he was going to drag the makeshift missile right back down into the center of the theater's roof.

After shuddering a bit from Trex yanking it back towards the ground, the trajectory actually began to change, beginning to swerve upwards in an arc that would eventually bring it right back down towards the city.

 _No!_ Sepia had to think fast. If the bombs came down somewhere populated… she didn't want to even think about that outcome. She did the first thing that came to mind. She dropped her guns.

Trex's arms were both out to guide the bombs to their destination. It was perfect.

Sepia jumped onto his back in a bearhug and shoved her hands right into his armpits, _Now just let go of the bombs please!_ She began tickling as quickly as a girl with a lot of experience signing could. Needless to say, Trex hadn't ever quite experienced a tactic quite like this.

Laughter began to echo from inside the hollow Grimm mask. In his fit of squirming, Trex clenched his fists, which inadvertently unhinged the metal jaws' grip around the flying explosives. His eyes widened when he realized what he had just done and watched as his weapon slammed into the ground in front of him, followed closely behind by the rest of the chain connecting him to it.

Sepia jumped off and snatched back up her guns. She smiled while watching the locker corkscrew up into the sky, leaving a nice swirl of smoke behind it. With a humongous _BOOM,_ it exploded like a crude firework, sending out sparks, flames, and smoke. She might have kept her smile longer had the shockwaves of three other explosions not made her sway in the wind, _No… there were more…?!_

Trex laughed as he watched three pillars of smoke began to rise from around the city. "Well, three-outta-four ain't bad I guess." He turned his dead gaze to Sepia, "But I think you just caused me a lot of trouble with the rest of my team." The jaws retracted back to his hand and opened. He clapped them open and shut repeatedly, like the gnashing teeth of his namesake.

Sepia took a few slow steps away from him. As the sun slipped away behind the horizon, so did her hope of a peaceful night. It was time for another night of fighting for her life, and one where she was completely without her team to back her up.


	40. V2Ch12: Following in a Giant's Footsteps

Hate bubbled up in Roland's gut as black smoke curled up high into the sky. His breathing went from huffs of unimaginable rage to calm, almost dead silent, deep breaths. If this was going to be done effectively, he had to quell his anger just enough to not jump headlong into battle and nearly get killed again.

"Arty," he stood and stepped away from Dante, "why do you really have Palette?"

All Arty could do was stare at the smoke. Khimera had said things might get bad, but he didn't think that she meant something like this. "I…" He was interrupted as people began running past them, away from the explosions.

Roland closed the small gap between him and Arty to keep them from getting separated. He grabbed his partner by the backpack strap and pulled him close, "Bombs just went off. People might be dead. This is not the time to withhold information from me."

Arty was torn between telling Roland everything and breaking free to run away. The shouting and noise was overwhelming.

" _Arty!"_ Roland yelled and shook him.

"Roland, it's not his place to tell you."

They both turned to find Khimera Léon standing there, her hand on Arty's shoulder.

"Oh, you've told me plenty just by being here!" Roland snapped.

"Get back to the school…"

Arty, Roland, and Khimera turned to see a singed Dante attempting to pull herself up. She kept her hazel eyes locked on them and went on, "We all need to get back to the school… Roland's bike is only going to carry three…"

"I can run! That Lightning buff helps a ton! Khimera in the sidecar, Arty using some Air Dust to fly over, and Rol and Dante on the bike! Flawless plan!" Epazote twitched, his hand spazzing out with each apparent jolt through his system, "No one gets hurt! None at all!"

All the bronze details in Khimera's clothing turned a deep red, followed closely by her eyes. " **NO! WE STAY AND FIGHT!"** she stopped herself, the brown returning, "What I'm saying is, Arty and I are already planning to take them on directly and stop them from completing…" she stopped herself, realizing that maybe she was saying too much, "whatever they're planning to do tonight. Look, you guys can try to make a break for it, but I highly recommend that you don't." She glared at Roland and Dante, "We could honestly use the help, and in all this chaos, it's going to take hours for backup to arrive from the school. As far as we know, we're the only ones capable of doing anything down here."

"I can't…" Dante strained to get to her feet, but fell right back down. She groaned and shuddered at the searing pain that wracked around in her body, "I don't know what happened, but I think that my Semblance just backfired with that Nova Dust. I knew I shouldn't have tried to use an improvised poem," she began to tear up, a pit in her chest growing with each accelerating breath, "Gods, I'm so stupid…"

"Then stay here and rest up. If you act wounded, which won't be too hard, the attackers will probably just ignore you," Roland started to help pull Dante over closer to the picnic table to lean on, "If things go sour, you can call me, or… I hate to say it… but you could call Shirley too."

"She can't be out in the open here." Khimera snapped.

Epazote twitched as he tried to take everything in, "Um… why?" He didn't know what the daughter of the Atlesian general was doing on her own, especially right as a psychotic terrorist group began attacking the city. From everything he'd read about the famous Team FNKS, Khimera Léon was _never_ left on her own and always had at least one of her teammates nearby. Something was definitely going on, but his Dust-fried brain couldn't figure it out. "I mean, I get that she'd be safer indoors, but why are you so adamant?"

Everyone looked to Khimera for an answer.

She flashed yellow and began to tremble. She stammered and stuttered, unable to find an answer. "L-l-look… I'm j-j-just saying that… m-maybe she'd… she'd…" She winced as her yellow turned blue. " _She's a target for the same reasons I am. We're both children of Academy leaders and the Grimm Brotherhood seems to be growing the gall to start attacking closer and closer to the schools. If they wanted to cause damage, then they'd go after her specifically."_ She shrunk back, returning to normal, "Roland and Arty are targets too. Their team fought and held their own against one of their strongest known members a few months ago. If there's one thing Atlas has learned about these guys, is that they don't like to have their egos bruised."

"So why'd you drag him down here?" Roland snapped.

"Because people are in danger, Roland." Arty drew Palette out of his bag, "We didn't think that you, Dante, and Epazote could hold these guys off."

"What the heck is wrong with you?! I've fought _Grimm_ scarier than these yahoos! I can-"

"Roland, you remember what happened with Oro. You can't do this alone."

"I have Epa-"

" _They_ aren't alone."

Roland looked down at his partner accusingly. "How do you know all this?"

Without saying a word, Arty just nodded towards Khimera.

"Right, of course…" Roland rolled his eyes, "If this is all about protecting their egos, then that means that Timbre and Sepia are both in danger too, doesn't it? We haven't a clue where they are, Dante is certainly in no condition to fight, and Arty is the only one with a weapon," he pulled out his scroll and started to put in the coordinates to bring down his locker, "The weapons thing can be fixed, but I'm not putting my sister in harm's way by having her fight."

"Roland, I…" Dante began.

"No," he shook his head while clicking 'launch'. Out of the corner of his eye, he saw Epazote doing the same, "We need to find a way to get her out of here, or have someone on the way to get her out."

"Everyone's going to be heading to the airships, so that's out of the question." Arty commented as he began picking out paintballs to load his gun with.

"And taking her towards the explosions isn't going to be very smart." Khimera lifted the shoulder strap of something bright gold hanging on her back. Holding it out in front of her, it appeared to be a solid gold metal backpack with no pockets. Scratches and gouges littered its surface. Whatever it was, it had seen more than a few fights, "And I _do_ have my weapon on me, by the way."

"You could just leave her here. That's always an option that might work out better for both parties in the end." A smooth female voice said from behind them.

From the shadows, a figure in a black cloak was slowly making her way towards them. Just like Oro, red fissures of light cracked the inky black surface of her clothing. She appeared to be wearing a lot less armor as she was able to move much more fluidly and quietly than the kangaroo-masked lunatic. Beneath her hood, the molten ember eyes of a Grimm watched them closely from the dead sockets of a bird skull. At first glance, they thought it was supposed to be reminiscent of a Nevermore, but there weren't enough eye sockets and the beak was white, not black. "You could just hand her over now and save yourselves at least a little trouble before things really get heated."

Dante froze up with her back against the picnic table. Her eyes widened in fear. Without a weapon and without the strength to use her Semblance, she was a sitting duck, "Please… please no…" she imagined what the Grimm Brotherhood had done to the workers on the shipments that had been stolen, "Please…"

Roland stood between the masked assailant and his sister, "I will tear you limb from limb if you even look at her the wrong way. Got that," he looked over the mask, and the Grimm that came to mind became clear, "Sanguwalker?" he growled at the woman. He had to stall for time for his and Epazote's weapons to arrive, "I'm not losing any more of my family to you monsters."

Sanguwalker tilted her head to the side. It wasn't often that anybody actually identified her namesake correctly. "Well well well. Look who knows their Grimm varieties. Somebody's been study-" before she could finish her sentence, a huge ball of fire tore past her, causing the tree behind her to explode into burning splinters.

Khimera had gone red again. Fear had been overtaken by the will and confidence she had that she could incapacitate and prepare her target for capture. Around her hand, the golden plates of the 'backpack' had shifted and contorted, rearranging themselves into a large cannon. The barrel resembled a large lion head with fire glowing inside its mouth. Glowing red patterns streaked down the sides. " **I WILL NOT LET YOU GET AWAY AGAIN, YOU GRIMM BROTHERHOOD SCUM!"**

Sanguwalker groaned, "Well, _hello_ again, Khimera Léon." With a loud roar, Khimera's weapon threw out a white hot ball of fire, which was dodged relatively easily, "How nice it is to see you again," her voice was brimming with sarcasm, "Still haven't gotten your broken aura under control, I see."

Khimera snarled. Her red eyes slowly shifting back to blue. " **DAMN** _you…_ " the cannon seemed to fall apart. Rearranging itself yet again to form a straight blade in her hand. The hilt appeared as a snake head with the blade protruding from between its fangs. The red patterns that were on the fire-cannon were replaced with blue. The blade unhinged, the segments falling limp to the ground with a loud hiss.

Sanguwalker chuckled, "It's so nice to know that the unpredictable powerhouse of Team FNKS can be so easily undone with just a few words."

.

"Timbre! Lurida!"

Timbre could barely hear the shouting through the ringing in her ears. The explosion hadn't done too much damage to her thanks to her focusing her aura right before the bomb went off, but the heat falling over her and the glass shards digging into her back still hurt. Through her fuzzy vision, she could see a blurry mass of white standing over her and shaking her out of her stupor.

"Timbre! Get up! We have to get out of here!" Rime shouted. The grunts and shouts of a fight nearby dragged her attention away from the pop-star beneath her. Looking over, she could see Lurida trying to fend her own against three goons dressed in all black, their masks a dark reflective material.

Lurida jumped back and kicked off the side of the counselling building. Gravity was no longer a factor in her fight, but the Grimm Brotherhood grunts seemed to be holding their own somewhat. That was, until Lurida slammed a fist into one of their faces and a foot into another's only to float towards a streetlamp and kick off of that to continue the zero-gravity beat down she was giving.

"I wouldn't mind a little back up over here!"

Rime watched as Timbre began to stir, which was enough confirmation that she was going to get up. She jumped up and ran towards the scuffle, her hands at her chest. In a flurry of snow and ice, Rime was holding a club of solid ice in each hand. Her sights were set on the grunt that had found Lurida's fist in his face. She raised her clubs and brought them down on them.

Water dripped down from her hands as her weapons melted away. "Wha- what?!" Rime looked helplessly to her damp hands. The heat from the burning building near them was too strong for her Semblance to be of any use.

"Tough luck." The grunt stood up and towered above her. He raised his carbine, ready to fire.

"Oh no! Whatever will I do?!" Rime dropped down into a prone position and drove her foot straight up into his crotch. Before he could fall, she gave him four more rapid kicks and sprang back up, "I'm a melee fighter who doesn't mind fighting dirty."

She snatched up his carbine and slammed the butt of it into his neck to shut him up for a while, "I really hate guns, but I'll have to manage…" she shouldered the rifle and aimed it at the other grunts. She wasn't the best with firearms, but she had enough experience making ice projectiles that her aim wasn't absolute garbage. With Timbre still out and the grunts outnumbering them five-to-one, she knew she just had to hold them off until Timbre got back to her feet, " _FREEZE!"_

"Oh, I get it… because she uses ice…" one of the grunts lowered his weapon and chuckled, "That's pretty good- _AH!"_

Lurida slammed him down and dug her foot down into the nape of his neck, "Thanks for the pun, Rime," she ground her foot in while the other four grunts aimed their rifles at her, "It gave me some good cover."

Rime rolled her eyes as she tried her best to shoot at the grunts without hitting Lurida, "Yeah, I'm sure Roland would be proud…"

"I'm sure," Lurida jumped up and planted her foot against the bright light of a nearby streetlamp. She kicked down and snatched up one of the grunts with one hand and used the momentum to throw them into one of the others. They both slid to the ground while Lurida moon-jumped around the street to confuse the two grunts that remained standing, "Is Timbre awake enough to tie the downed ones up?"

Rime kept firing, "I don't know! Can't exactly check on her rig-"

"I… I can manage…"

"Timbre! Thank god!" Rime begrudgingly shouldered the carbine once more as Timbre stumbled up next to her, "Now we can finish these guys and get the heck out of here!"

"No way are you gonna finish u- _AH!_ " another one of the grunts made the mistake of speaking, which gave Lurida the opportunity to punch him in the spine, flip over him, and slam her boot into his face.

Lurida set her sights on the last grunt, "One more to g-"

"Got it!" Rime fired a spray of bullets into the grunt's armor and pulled the gun up so the trail of lead ran up his chest and into his mask. Once he fell, she smiled wide, "Wow! I actually got him! I didn't think I would, but hey! Look at that!"

Timbre gave her a weak smile and a thumbs-up, "Nice, Rime…" Timbre ran towards all the grunts as they began to get up. She stumbled a few times, but quickly found her rhythm again. With a quick twirl, she swung a wire horizontally to the ground towards the grunts. They began to shout out in confusion as the wire wrapped them all up in a tight group before latching back onto itself. Timbre tugged the wire until they had all smashed together in one big bundle of baddies.

"Nice!" Rime pumped her fist in the air.

"Not done yet…" Timbre began to run towards the group, the wire still connected to her wrist.

One of the grunts shouted out as Timbre's boot connected with their face for a foothold to kick off of.

Timbre soared through the air over the horizontal bar of one of the nearby light posts. The momentum was enough to lift the group of Grimm Brotherhood grunts into the air, suspending them above the seaside street. Timbre continued to swing, wounding the wire tighter and tighter to the post, diminishing their chance of escape. When her wrist was a mere second from snapping against the pole, she clipped the wire and dropped to the ground.

"That takes care of that," Lurida snapped her fingers and dropped to the ground. Gravity seemed pleased that she finally decided to heed its call. She snatched the gun out of Rime's hands and propped it up on her shoulder, "I'll hold onto this. Team GLXY knows how to use each other's weapons in a pinch, so I'm not terrible with a firearm. It's just a little bigger than Yamuna's pistols is all…" she looked over the two first years, "Let's get moving. We need to check out the other two places that got bombed," she pointed to the black pillars of smoke curling into the sky, "This mess with the Auroras can wait. Civilians are in danger right now."

"Agreed," Rime followed Lurida down the street, "So we're actually dealing with the Grimm Brotherhood, huh…?"

"They look the same as they did back at Koruss. It's definitely them…" Timbre shuddered as she caught up with them, "Look, this is bad. They've killed civilians before. We need to get out of-"

"What we need to do is group up with any other students that might be here in town and stay together. Power in numbers. If any of us, Timbre, goes running off, then they are bound to get hurt. That team of grunts was new to the scene," Lurida looked ahead through her chilly violet eyes. Her ability to stay calm under pressure was what made her an asset to Team GLXY. As long as nothing came along that completely threw her off, then she was a cold-blooded killing machine, "The straps on their armor were loose, their masks weren't secured correctly, and a few of them weren't even holding their guns correctly. I'm guessing that those were just some recently indoctrinated scouts that got a little too close to us Huntresses in training and knew that they weren't getting off without a fight. Whomever we encounter next will be harder to take down. Our objective is to get to the other bombing sites as quickly as possible in hopes that we can group up with others. If trouble comes our way, then the plan is that I will take them off the ground, Timbre will wrap them up, and Rime will coat them in ice. Do we all have an understanding?"

Rime's necklace glowed with a hazy blue mist, "Yes ma'am. Understood."

For once, Timbre didn't feel like arguing. "Right."

.

Trex inched ever closer, his weapon's jaws glinting in the dark. "You probably think you're pretty lucky that you're not facing me on top of a burning building right now, but you know what? Everything's still running according to plan. All I need to do is capture you an-"

The scroll that was still clenched in Sepia's hand dingged. It was just enough to bring her back to reality.

Sepia held up a finger to tell Trex to wait for her to look at the message while she opened up her scroll. If someone else was in Vale to provide backup, then maybe this night would play out differently. Instead, it was just Opal.

"Are… are you seriously checking your text messages right now?" He clacked his weapon together a few times, "I could _literally_ rip you apart with this thing, you know!"

Sepia bobbed her finger up and down to tell him to shut up. She even let out a weak shush while she checked her messages.

 **Opal Uluru: So are ya still up for a double date? D and I were playin cards and he was like 'we could totes go hang with Sepia' and I was like 'ya, we could totes go hang with Sepia, and grab Wells while we're at it!' and he was like 'ya, thatd be cool!' and I was like 'ya, that would be cool!'. So if ya got things settled with otter boy then we should tooooootes hang. Hit up a nice supper joint, catch a flik, and walk on the beach! I'll even make sure that D and I get out of ya hair to give you guys some 'quality' time, if ya catch my drift. ;D**

After reading Opal's essay, she shot a quick text back.

 **Sepia Hughes: I'm kinda in the middle of something right now. I'll be done pretty late, but I can say that a movie is probably out of the question. Definitely this weekend, though.**

Sepia tapped her foot while waiting for a response. She passed a glance over to Trex and shrugged. As ridiculous at the interruption was, it was buying her time to think.

Trex held his arms out, rolling his eyes behind his mask, "Well? You done?"

She shook her head to say 'no' as the scroll dinged.

Two messages flashed on the screen.

 **Opal Uluru: K.**

 **Roland Wells: The Grimm Brotherhood is attacking Vale. Epazote, Dante, and I barely got away from one of their operatives. We just dropped Dante off at a nearby hospital until Shirley comes to get her. Where are you right now?**

Sepia smiled wide and tapped out a message to Roland.

 **Sepia Hughes: On top of the theatre with some GB agent named Trex.**

She put away her scroll and grinned at Trex. Backup was on the way. She bowed to him and raised her guns to say that she was ready.

"About damn time." Trex lunged, his weapon open and ready to grab Sepia between the sharp triangles of black metal.

 _I suppose it is,_ Sepia narrowly dodged the teeth of Trex's weapon with a backwards handspring. Instead of landing on the edge, she opted for going straight over. She pushed her feet and back against the walls that allowed her to climb up to the roof and slid down. Sequins ripped off of the back of her shirt and stuck to the wall behind her, and her heels snapped as soon as she began her descent. The worst part was the friction on her back from the brick wall.

Upon reaching the ground, she threw off her boots and looked up to Trex. Sepia smiled and waved up at him, then shot a few finger guns up at him. The jaws came down again, shooting down at her from the roof. A simple jump towards the street was all that it took to avoid the relatively slow moving weapon.

"Dammit…" Trex growled before his communicator chimed loudly. "What is it, Sanguwalker?!"

"Tsk. Tsk. Tsk. No need to be so snippy with me, Trex." The sound of wind and footsteps clattering on loose tiles could be heard over the line. "I was calling around and checking to see how you and Venice were doing with everything. From what I can tell, that giant firework in the sky wasn't exactly a sign of a 'job well done' on your end."

"Okay, so maybe things got a little screwed up and I didn't account for Beacon's stupid rocket lockers. Sue me."

The line crackled as another voice joined in, this one a bit deeper and more demanding than Sanguwalker's. "Just get her to where we need her. Once they're all together, we can start the next phase and even somebody like _you_ can handle them, Trex."

"Hey! What do you mean 'somebody like me'?!"

"Someone incredibly reckless, incompetent, narrow minded, short sighted, showy, talkative, lazy, thick headed, braindead, foolish, inconsiderate, and just outright stupid. Did I miss anything...?"

"Hey! How about both of you-"

"I think that was a fairly complete list." Sanguwalker added. Something shattered and exploded on her end of the line.

"Sanguwalker? What's going on over there?" Venice asked, both of them ignoring Trex's rant.

"Well… Things might be working a bit _too_ well on my end. Two of the targets from the group you led to me are currently... chasing and shooting after me across the rooftops."

"I'll let you get back to it then. I have to go meet up with my target. Oh, and Trex? Please try to act confident for _once_ in your life."

" _Get on!"_ someone shouted from down the alleyway.

He looked down to see Sepia running barefoot towards a violet cowboy on a matching motorcycle and sidecar. In the seat of the sidecar was a dark boy with prickly black hair and a bronze casing around his arm that glowed with a smooth green energy.

Sepia hopped onto the bike and hugged the cowboy's waist, ' _Thanks for saving me! I didn't think that I could stall much longer!'_ she signed up to him.

"No problem. Now…" Roland grabbed a black and white grenade off of his belt, pulled the pin, and threw it up at Trex, "Thanks for taking care of my girlfriend! That's your payment for babysitting!"

Trex dove off of the building just as a black mist exploded over the theater. "Okay… If that's how you want to play things, then let's play!"

"Yo, Rol. I hate to interrupt you guys' little make-up session, but can we get out of here before that huge angry guy you lobbed a grenade at comes after us?" Epazote kept his arm-cannon locked on Trex as he landed.

"Yeah, just a moment," Roland focused on the bits of paper floating inside the mist of ink. A single piece of paper with his beloved cake recipe had been cut up and mixed in with the ink. Controlling this little mix of ink and paper would be far less straining than a regular ink grenade, "I'm testing out some new equipment!"

The ink and paper mixture condensed and shot down at Trex like an arrow. The moment that the mass got close, it spread out and wrapped itself around his mask. A clench of Roland's fist sent more cracks through the mask, but apparently it had been reinforced from the inside.

"Now we can go!" Roland revved the engine. He, Sepia, and Epazote shot off down the street to meet back up with Arty and Khimera, "Epa! Send Arty and Khimera a live feed of our location! Then call Arty and put him on speaker!"

"Right, got it!" Epazote followed his instructions. As soon as everything sent, he called Arty, "Okay! His scroll is ringing- WOAH!"

A crushed car flew straight over their heads. It crashed down about a hundred feet in front of them. Teeth marks pierced through the metal shell of the car and shattered the windows.

"ROLAND! WE'RE GONNA CRASH!" Epazote screamed.

" _ **No we aren't!"**_ Roland threw a hand up in the air. The entire motorcycle bounced up into the air and flew over the destroyed car, missing it by mere inches. He huffed as they zoomed off down the street, then took a sharp right down a nearby street to get out of Trex's range, "Take that, Shirley! I knew putting text on my bike wasn't a stupid idea!" he shouted towards Beacon.

Sepia smiled and laid her head against his back, _It's good to see that you're feeling a bit better… I was worried,_ she thought to herself. Her hair whipped around in the wind, her feet ached from doing so many acrobatics in heels, and her head was throbbing from the broken orbs, but she was happy to be at least semi-safe with him, _I guess we have some more fighting to do. At least it won't be alone._

 _._

Ever since Arty got to Vale, he missed some of the urban combat environment given to him by going to school in Atlas. Back home, there was much more emphasis on combating criminals and people, which, more often than not, would have been in and around developed areas, not out in the wild. He didn't resent learning how to fight in mountains and forests, but given his focus on laying traps with his paint and traversing rooftops, he preferred an urban playing field. Given that his gun was also a _paintball_ gun, anything with obstacles and cover resembling those of a paintball arena was always welcome. The rooftops of downtown Vale were a blessing as he chased a crazy chick in a bird mask with the daughter of the woman who probably held the record for 'Who Hates Burne Umber the Absolute Most?'.

He aimed his gun forward at Sanguwalker and fired a few rapid shots. A few chimneys exploded after being splattered with orange and red paint. "Khimera! She's too fast! She's gonna get away!" After Roland, Dante, and Epazote had ditched them to get Dante to safety and pick up Sepia, Khimera had gone into full-on berserker mode. She looked like a chameleon the way her colors seemed to shift in and out at random, her weapon following suit. No matter what personality shone in her eyes, they all wanted to pummel Sanguwalker. Apparently, they had history together, and not a pretty one at that.

" _Not if I can do anything about_ **THAT!"** Khimera's weapon shifted into the lion-shaped fire cannon and launched a volley of fireballs at Sanguwalker, " **I SWEAR ON MY LIFE THAT I** m-m-might… take you d-d-down…" the weapon shifted into a bronze tube with a ram's head fixed to the end and glowed with a bright yellow light. She jolted forward and slammed it down just inches away from Sanguwalker's heels. Concrete exploded out around the impact crater, "I am s-s-so sorry to the a-a-architects that d-d-designed this b-b-building. T-t-too bad _this little mongrel won't stand still!"_ her weapon shifted back into its chain sword form, the eyes of the snakehead on the hilt glowing bright blue. She whipped it forwards, lashing at Sanguwalker as she kept up the chase, " _I swear on my life that I will kill you!"_

Arty knew she wasn't going to be much help if she was constantly flipping in and out of her different states. "Khimera! You need to focus!" Arty fired a few paintballs of varying shades of blue. Ice Dust created pillars of ice crystals that Sanguwalker weaved around. Water Dust sent up huge splashes of water that cascaded off of the roofs. Force Dust seemed to be the most effective as the various pulses of energy launched Sanguwalker forward, sending her skidding to a stop.

"Wow… Oro and Echo told me your Dust paint was annoying, but now you're really starting to bug me." She held her hand out in front of her towards the two Atlesians.

"That's right… just stay still…" Arty muttered as he looked at the swirling paintball loaded and ready to fire in his gun. As he leapt down to a lower roof, he fired.

The Nova Dust paintball flew through the air, glowing like a firefly in the darkness that laid over the rooftops above the brightly lit streets below.

Then it stopped.

Arty and Khimera couldn't believe it. It wasn't like the paintball had hit anything. It had just… stopped moving and was now floating in midair, small bursts of plasma jumping from it occasionally as the pent up energy struggled to break free.

"There's a reason they sent me on this mission, Burne Umber. Because with me," Sanguwalker threw her arm forwards. The paintball went flying back towards Arty and Khimera, blowing a huge hole in the building behind them, knocking them off their feet and showering them in bits of brick. "You become your own worst enemy…"

Khimera's eyes flashed bright yellow as she got back up, "That w-w-was… s-s-so… mean!" she ran towards Sanguwalker with the ram-headed battering ram raised high in the hair. She brought it down from Sanguwalker's right, but was met once again by the concrete of the roof. She pulled it back out and thrusted it towards her opponent, but she just danced around it as if it were nothing.

Sanguwalker continued the show for a little bit, throwing in kicks and punches at the Lion Faunus whenever she got the chance. She watched as Khimera threw another punch. Time seemed to slow as the gold and yellow battering ram shot by her face, nearly taking off not only her mask but also her head. She took the opportunity to swipe low, throw a few quick jabs at Khimera's stomach and swing her leg in a full arc, slamming Khimera down into the sloped tile roof behind her.

Khimera grabbed and clawed, but the shingles were giving her nothing stable to hold onto as each one popped out of place as she slid, sending her further and further towards the edge a full four stories above the road. If she fell, it'd take awhile to get back into the fight and she didn't trust Arty alone with the psycho. After a few more perilous seconds of sliding, all she could feel around her was open air.

"Khimera!" Arty watched as she slid off the roof.

"Well, now that she's out of this, maybe I can go ahead and take you in earlier than expected. Without your little _Faunus_ bodyguard, there's nothing you can do against me with your piddly little paint set."

Arty gritted his teeth as his mind tried to figure out what to do. He tossed his gun up. The orange and silver metal began to shift in mid air. When Arty caught it, the barrel of the gun had become the handle of Palette's bat form. He held it out, ready to strike if the bird-masked woman came any closer. "Back off! My team will be here any second to-"

"To what? Back you up?" She began to laugh maniacally, breaking the calm demeanor she'd had since Arty first encountered her back at the park, "That's a laugh, but really, what are they going to do when they have their own problems to worry about out here?"

"Their own problems?..." Arty felt a chill run down his spine when he realized what that meant.

"You honestly thought I was able to set all those bombs off on my own? As jealous as I am that I don't have that skill, I can't be in multiple places at once." A loud crash came from the road below. Arty watched as a car was thrown straight up into the air, well above the height of the building he was standing on, before crashing back down in the road below. The whirring of a motor-bike caught his attention. He recognized it as Roland's.

Sanguwalker glanced across the way. Roland, Sepia, and Epazote were only a few blocks away with Trex on their tails. Of course they were managing to give that buffoon a chase. She sighed behind her mask, "Well then, perhaps backup is on the way for you, but that won't matter too much. That car was thrown by a friend of mine," she crouched down like she was ready to pounce on Arty, "Anyway, how does it feel to be face to face with one of us again? Does it make you think of when just one of us nearly managed to kill you and your little friends?"

Before he could answer, Arty was startled by a bright blue flash from behind Sanguwalker. A bladed chain coiled around her neck like a python and tightened.

" _You can't get away from me that easily…"_ Khimera hissed from behind the Grimm Brotherhood agent, " _and now I have you right where I want you…"_ she yanked the sword back in an arc over her head. Sanguwalker was lifted straight off the ground and flew towards Khimera only to be stopped by the bone shattering fist that was driven straight into her spine.

Khimera threw her opponent a few feet behind her and turned to face her as the sword retracted back into a solid blade, " _This is between you and me. Got it?!"_

As the brawl commenced, Arty's scroll began ringing.

He held it up to his ear, "Epazote?! I'm kinda busy right now! What is it?!"

"Hey! Arty! We've got Sepia!" Roland yelled through whipping winds. The scroll had been put on speaker in a speeding motorcycle, which made the audio quality less than desirable, especially with the vehicles and lamp posts being thrown their way.

"So how are things?!" he shouted to be heard.

"Um…" Arty watched as Khimera tried to pry off Sanguwalker's mask, but was met with a boot to the head. "Khimera Blue is holding off Sanguwalker for the time being. I think a better question would be what the heck is going on _down there_?! What's with the flying cars and stuff?!"

"Hold on! I'll have Sepia explain!" Roland shut up for a moment. All that could be heard was crashing metal and the occasional energy shot from Epazote's weapon, "Got all that?!"

"Roland, this is not the time!" Arty shouted back.

"Right, sorry!" tires squealed as Roland swerved to dodge another car, "Some guy going by Trex is chasing us on a fourwheeler that we didn't realize he had, and he's throwing cars and other big things at us with this weapon that he has! It's like a big bear trap or something!"

Images of Oro's pneumatic battering ram flew threw his head. It seemed that anyone with a Grimm mask and black cloak had some sort of crazy dangerous weapon. He turned his attention to Sanguwalker. He then realized he hadn't seen her use a weapon yet.

Khimera brought down her battering ram for the decisive blow. Wet splattering came from all around Sanguwalker at the moment of impact, but it wasn't blood. Whatever it was, it glistened oily black… just like Roland's ink.

Sanguwalker held out her arms, and twin tendrils of inky fluid grabbed Khimera's weapon by the horns and tossed it towards Arty, the metal shifting back to its base form as it slid across the roof. Another tendril slapped the Lion Faunus to the ground as its user clawed her way back up. She stood with dozens of black tendrils whipping about behind her, "Never thought I'd actually have to resort to this on my outing…" she whispered as she turned her glowing eyes to Arty, "Remind you of anything, Painter-Boy…?"

"Wha-what?" Arty stammered as he watched the liquid tendrils curl and flutter around from Sanguwalker's back. "You… you have an Inkheart Semblance, too?! But that's-"  
"Impossible? Not really." One tendril slapped out to the side, destroying a chimney as she drew closer to Arty. "I know there's a saying about every Semblance being 'unique' but that doesn't mean that different Semblances can't be similar. People can have the same defining traits, the same experiences, the same familial branches. People like to think they're completely unique, but if they took two seconds to look a little closer," Arty batted away a tendril as it shot towards him, "they'd see that there are plenty of people that are _just like them_." Another tendril was batted away, splattering ink across the roof before each drop began sliding its way back towards their master, "I bet that somewhere on this wretched planet there's someone who likes painting just like you. Someone that lets it completely envelop their lives to the point where everything they did had to involve painting. One day, their aura decides to unlock another little piece of their identity and give them a Semblance, one that allows them to bring their scribbles to life!" Multiple tendrils shot towards Arty, wrapping around him and lifting him a few feet into the air. Palette dropped to the ground uselessly. "Uniqueness is a _myth_ , Umber. My only question is, what makes you so special that I'm being told to take you in alive?"

.

Timbre recognized the streets they were going down. The same shops. The same stores. She had a horrible feeling about where they were heading. She just hoped that the sinking feeling in her heart was wrong.

The three girls turned the corner to find the open-air courtyard caved in and burning. Bricks littered the ground around them.

"The… the cafe…" Timbre felt hot tears streaming down her face. This wasn't just some place to go get coffee and a pastry. This was where her parents met. This was where she grew up. In simpler times, she had birthday parties here with her closest friends and family. Her mother had brought her here the day before she headed out on the mission that she would never return from.

It was all gone. Burning to ashes right in front of her eyes.

"Timbre, I know this is hard for you, but we need to move. We don't have time for tears," Lurida grabbed Timbre by the shoulder and tugged her along, "I don't like the feel of this place…" her grip tightened when one of the wooden rafters fell and sent a swirl of burning embers trailing up into the night air. Every chair, table, and counter glowed bright with cinders.

"There doesn't seem to be anyone here, so that's good at least." Rime commented as she surveyed the area. "Let's get out of here before somebody shows u-"

Lurida shouldered her stolen carbine and aimed it into the charred remains of the cafe's kitchen, "Show yourself!" she shouted into blackness.

Something shifted back in the kitchen and was followed by a dim orange glow that shone through the doorway. It took a step back so that Timbre, Rime, and Lurida could make out white antlers peeking out from under a black hood. When it turned, they could see the glowing red eyes of the deer Grimm, the Venice. The figure was slim and dressed in flowy scraps of fabric that glowed a shifting red at the fringes. In each hand were four foot-long knives with Fire Dust along the edges of the blades. Steam slowly curled up from cracks along the blades. The agent spread them out to its sides to show off each individual claw in mock surrender.

"Great…" Lurida kept the gun trained on the newcomer, "If the one that looks like an Oro is called 'Oro', then I guess you're name is 'Venice'... or maybe even 'Wendigo'...?"

No response.

"I see…" Lurida glanced back at Timbre and Rime, "Rime, with me. Timbre, hang back to provide support. Your mobility will be limited if your wires don't have anything stable to latch onto."

Timbre wiped her eyes, "No! They just destroyed the one place that I-"

"That is an order," Lurida set her sights on the Grimm Brotherhood scum, "Rime, go left. I'll take it from the right."

"Got it…" Rime looked over the fire inside the cafe. Deciding that her Ice Dust wasn't going to be very effective with the heat, she snatched up a nearby brick, "Is there not another choice here…?"

"I don't think this one is going to just let us go," Lurida's feet left the ground as gravity began to shift around her. Bricks began swirling around her, "This one is different from those grunts," she rocketed towards the masked assailant while Rime took off to her left.

"My name is Venice," was all that Lurida and Rime heard as they closed in.

Venice sprawled out their claws and whipped across Rime and Lurida's abdomens. Four burning slashes appeared in their shirts, the grey and violet shimmers of aura rippling out from the sights of the new wounds.

Lurida fell to the ground clutching her middle and fighting back screams. She slowly looked at her hand and watched as bits of Fire Dust glowed in the smears of blood that had seeped out of the wounds. Her middle burned hotter than the stars she had studied for years.

Screams pierced the air as Rime writhed on the ground. Tears poured from her eyes as she pressed her hands to her middle. She could hardly breathe, much less form the words to scream for help.

Timbre screamed as she began stepping back, her knees trembling as she watched her friends slumped on the stone floor.

Venice turned its burning eyes towards Timbre and raised its claws. It waited for Timbre to make a move while its piercing molten eyes burned into her very being.

Timbre didn't attack. She didn't want to. She kept backing up until she felt the brick of the building across the street from the cafe against her back. All she wanted to do was scream or cry or wake up from this horrible nightmare, but the smell of smoke and the aura of pure evil emanating from the person… no, _thing_ in front of her confirmed that it was all much too real.

"T-Timbre…" Lurida coughed, "Go… run… now…" she looked up to Venice. It wasn't finishing her and Rime off, which seemed to mean that they weren't its target, "We'll be fine... Just go…"

Timbre half expected to see Venice lash out at Lurida and Rime again. Without their auras, any attack could cause lasting damage. Either she ran away and hoped that Venice would come after her, leaving them alone, or she stay and fight and probably go through the same pain or worse. She was filled with the fear of watching them die before her eyes.

"Timbre! Just… just go!" Rime shouted as Venice stepped past her, making her way towards the singer.

Venice sprawled out their claws and crouched to break out into a sprint after Timbre. With a hiss of steam and the sound of burning cinders whistling through the air, they shot towards Timbre with claws extended.

The burning blades sliced deep into the brick where Timbre had been standing. In the moment that Venice had launched towards her, Timbre dove out of the way. Before the psycho in the deer mask could continue their attack, she had launched a wire towards the roofs of the buildings overhead. Wire after wire, she swung down the street focusing on only one thing.

Running.


	41. V2Ch13: Tooth and Nail

"Open place! We need an open place to fight this out until help can arrive!" Roland shouted to Epazote over the wind, "What is there northwest of here?!" he ducked to avoid being clipped by the drive shaft of a flying car. Streetlights and buildings whizzed by through the night. Behind the three roared the engine of a monstrously modified four wheeler that Trex had apparently hidden not too far from the theatre.

Epazote's eyes traced the car as it bounced and crashed down in front of an alleyway. It seemed that Trex was leading them somewhere, and the GPS on his scroll confirmed his suspicions, "The warehouse district! That's just a half of a mile down the road! It's open there, but it's probably a trap!"

' _It's okay!'_ Sepia sign at Roland's chest, ' _If we fight together, we can take him! I figured out that this one is a lot slower than Oro. I outmatch him in speed, you can outmatch him in versatility! We can do it this time!'_

"Right!" Roland pushed the throttle the rest of the way down, "Arty! If Sanguwalker hasn't killed you yet, and you can still hear us, then get to the warehouses!"

.

Arty could barely hear Roland's instructions as black fluid sloshed around him.

"Come on! Didn't you hear?" Sanguwalker released her inky hold on Arty and batted Palette back to him, "I love improvising, but I'm a sucker for a good plan. Now come on!" she darted across the roof and leapt to the next building, "Or are you two just going to leave your friends to die?"

Khimera snatched up her weapon and pulled Arty up by the strap of his bag, "It doesn't look like we have much choice here," she held a thick bronze shield in her free hand. Gears and plates shifted along its surface. This relatively useless weapon form was all that Khimera could use while in equilibrium, "Can you walk?"

"Yeah…" Arty looked down at the black streaks across his jeans and shirt. "Just a little messy." He took a few steps to retrieve his weapon. His boots made loud squishing noises as his ink-soaked socks sloshed inside. "Tonight officially got a million times worse…"

"Good," Khimera's eyes and clothes flashed blue. The shield morphed into its snake sword form. Her chilly blue persona showed itself once again, " _Then we pick up the pace and get this monster before we get to the warehouse."_

Arty nodded and followed close behind as the chase continued.

.

Normally, the wind rushing past her would have felt liberating, but, as she was being chased down the streets of her home town, Timbre felt like she was trapped. It seemed that no matter how many wires she swung by, Venice was always right behind her ready to swipe with their claws. Running wasn't enough. She had to do something.

She slid to a stop on the cobblestones and turned to face her opponent. She panicked when she couldn't see them at first, but she soon saw the glint of Fire Dust and clouds of steam high up in the night sky above her. She aimed her fist and fired. _If I could just drag you down to my level and take you out like those other freaks._

The wires shot towards Venice in a tangled mess of whirring metal. All seemed to be going well until the wires went slack and glowing bits of molten metal rained down from around Venice. The Fire Dust infused blades ripped through the air as they descended on their target. The blades embedded themselves in a nearby car and melted the surrounding steel. Not even a second passed before Venice was free and sprinting towards Timbre.

Timbre nearly tripped as she continued her attempt to escape. She was tired of running as her breaths grew short and strained. One thing was clear: she couldn't handle this monster alone.

.

Sanguwalker ran to the end of the row of buildings. She reached the destination that the four Lieutenants described to her. Spread out before her were dozens of large warehouses bathed in the darkness that had fallen over the city. Beyond them, she could see the light of the shattered moon dancing on the waves. She wasn't able to enjoy it for too long as she was suddenly tackled from behind.

" _I'm done chasing you!"_ Khimera jumped off the side of the building with Sanguwalker wrapped in her arms. The snake sword dug into her opponent's back as she pulled it tight around her arms, " _I'm taking you back Atlas and I am going to enjoy hearing about your punishment!"_ she shouted as they crashed through one of the warehouse's wide windows and disappeared into the depths of the building.

Arty ran up just in time to see the shine of the glass shards being overpowered by the shadows beyond the hole in the window. "Khimera!"

He had a feeling that this was a trap earlier when Sanguwalker had first started leading them away from the busier parts of the city, but now he knew for a fact that this was exactly what she, or whoever was in charge, wanted.

 _You can't just leave Khimera alone with Sanguwalker and whoever else is in there_.

 _I know, me, shut up_.

 _Then get in there._

 _But that glass looks sharp._

 _Is that_ seriously _what you're worried about right now?_

… _No._

"Why do I do these things to myself?" Arty held his bat in his arms, angled down towards the ground. The red paintball loaded in the middle flickered with embers as he slammed it between his feet. The fire exploded outwards around him, launching him forward. He curled up, cannonballing into the unknown.

.

"He's only fifty feet back, Rol! Any way to pick up the pace?!" Epazote braced his foot against the backrest of the sidecar and leaned his bottom into the miniature windshield at the front of it. Green smoke curled up from the blazing hot barrel of his armcannon. A volley of green balls of light shot out from it at their pursuer.

Trex juked around the shots with apparent ease. Maybe he wasn't the greatest or smartest fighter, but the guy sure knew his way around a four wheeler. That little hypothesis was proven correct when he stood up with one foot in the seat and one on the crossbar, "I've had _enough_ of this little game!" he shouted while raising his weapon and clacking the jaws together. "Time for this cat to catch its mouse!"

"Rol! Seriously! Any faster would be nice!" Epazote collapse back down into the seat of the sidecar and covered his head.

"I'm trying, Epa!" Roland glanced back at Trex and then to the road. He had to think of something. His motorcycle would only go so fast with the sidecar, and disconnecting it while moving could prove dangerous. If he took a turn too hard or hit a pothole, Epazote would be gone. That would be one less person to provide backup. Even manipulating the ink in the paint of the bike wasn't going to do much to help them get to their destination faster.

"He's priming up his weapon!" Epazote shouted up to Roland, "We're only two minutes away! He's about to go in for an attack, so get ready to swerve!"

"Got i-" Roland was cut off by the sounds of crunching metal and plastic. The words across the back of the sidecar crunched into the aluminum frame. He looked down to see what appeared to be a bear trap attached to the back of the sidecar.

"No!" he revved the engine to get away as they slowed down more and more. They were losing speed fast.

Epazote pressed the muzzle of this weapon against the frame connecting the sidecar to the bike, "I'll be fine. If he's just after Sepia, I won't get hurt!"

"Don't you dare-"

"Sorry, Rol! Give him some extra butt-kicking for me!" he fired into the frame. Green energy glowed at the molten remains of the braces that once held on the sidecar. The sidecar flew off towards Trex and then tumbled in the dust behind him.

"No!" Roland slammed on the brakes. Something slammed into his gut the moment he began to slow down even more.

' _Don't stop. I saw Trex drive past him. Go,'_ Sepia signed in front of his chest, ' _Get us to the warehouses now!'_

Roland bit the inside of his cheek, "Fine," he hit the acceleration once more and zipped down the street with Trex hot on their tails. Epazote would be fine. He could take care of himself. If Cayenne got word of things, then she would be down in Vale and running to his side as the chase carried on.

With revitalized agility, Roland was able to veer around the cars being thrown just over head and between the streetlamps. Being freed of his sidecar meant that getting to their destination would be a lot easier, but it came with the added cost of repairs later, "YOU OWE ME A NEW SIDECAR, JERK!"

The chain link fence cut out of the darkness as they neared, but there was an issue. A chain had been looped around the gate and secured with a padlock.

"Sepia!" Roland shouted, "Aim for the-"

The padlock exploded into a miniature star of sparks and lead. Smoke curled off of the muzzle of Sepia's pistol, which was resting just over his shoulder.

"Thanks!" Roland leaned forward and went full speed ahead. They reached the gate, the latch snapped on contact, and he and Sepia zipped into an open warehouse to continue the fight.

Someone shouted from inside, " _I'm taking you back Atlas and I am going to enjoy hearing about them extracting information from you!"_

Khimera fell to the ground in a shower of glass with Sanguwalker in her arms. They landed on the solid concrete, right in the way of Roland's bike. Arty began falling from the window above right before the remains of Roland's sidecar frame caught Sanguwalker's cloak and began dragging her across the open concrete floor of the vacant warehouse.

Sanguwalker screamed and grabbed at her neck while she came to a grinding halt with Roland's bike. She yanked off the cloak and jumped back and away from Roland's incoming foot and rubbed her neck. Apparently Khimera hadn't been dragged along and was already being helped up by Arty.

"This is your fault, isn't it…?" she croaked from behind her mask. Without her cloak, she seemed a lot more lean. What seemed to be her hair was wrapped up in black cloth and pinned up behind her mask. Her black and red bodysuit was padded around the joints, and attached to her back was some kind of metal frame holding a glass canister with silver caps resting inside. Rubber tubes ran around it, allowing black fluid to leak out of several ports, six on each side. The molten eyes of her mask leveled on, oddly enough, Sepia instead of Roland, "Of course it's you. I couldn't be any less surprised…"

Bare feet hit the ground as Sepia bounded off the motorcycle. She leveled her guns at the beak of Sanguwalker's monstrous mask to keep her from going anywhere. If the same rule applied to her as it did with Trex and Oro, she needed to either wait for an exploit in her weapon or for her to make the first move. Either way, she was ready.

Roland pushed the kickstand up, "We lost Epazote, but he's probably okay. Trex will be here any second," he straightened his hat, "Sorry to steal your thunder, Khimera."

Khimera just nodded and held her sword up, " _Trust me, I'm worried about more important things right now."_

Arty looked to his partner and waved weakly, "Yo. Uh… glad to see you guys are still alive."

"Right..." Roland's voice trailed off. He looked over the black patches all over Arty and Khimera's clothes, "What happened to you two?"

"It's… it's a long story. Just keep an eye on bird-brain." Arty snapped to attention and raised his gun at the newest freak in a mask as he pulled up on his fourwheeler.

"Yap yap _yap!_ Do you wannabe-Huntsmen _ever_ shut up!?" Trex roared as he stepped off of his ride.

Without so much as looking at Trex, Sepia just shook her head to tell him 'No.'

"About time you showed up Trex..." Sanguwalker darted past Sepia and Roland and back behind Trex. Her inky black tendrils flared to life and whipped around behind her back. Patches of black splattered across the concrete, "Little Ms. Léon here's been a real pain in my side tonight. Any word on how Venice is doing?"

"Haven't heard a peep. Been too busy trying to, you know, _do my part of the job_." Trex snapped at Sanguwalker while gesturing to Roland and Sepia.

"And failing…" she sighed underneath her mask, "Seriously, how does _one_ _kid_ take out nine of our grunts and then give a _Captain_ a run for his money? How'd she get away? Did you just sit there and let her call the mutt for help?"

Trex hesitated to respond, "N-no…"

Arty lowered his gun, only able to watch in confusion as the two Grimm Brotherhood agents bickered. He leaned towards Roland without taking his eyes off of the sight before him, "How come you guys got the idiot? I can see how Sanguwalker can be in the same league as Oro, she's terrifying, but him?"

"He's a better driver than anything. I'd never want to be chased by that guy again, but he's…" Roland looked to Sepia for the word.

' _He's very short-sighted and easily distracted,'_ she signed with her guns under her arms.

"Yeah," Roland nodded in agreement, "Short-sighted and easily distracted. So about the black patches…" he jabbed a finger into Arty's belly to get a sample of Sanguwalker's tendrils.

"Oh… yeah… she's… a bit scary." He watched the tendrils flailing from her back as Trex tried to continue arguing with her. "I… I don't know _how_ , but I think she has Inkheart, too, Roland."

"You think wrong," Roland started clacking away at Writer's Block at a blinding pace, "I'll explain later. Just know that I can't counter those tentacles. Not directly anyway," the paper trailing off of his weapon folded into a blade running parallel to his arm with a hook at the end, the edge facing outwards. He picked a red grenade off of his belt.

' _Stay on the defensive. Only strike after they do,'_ Sepia signed and then grabbed her guns to fight once more.

"Sepia says stay on the defensive," Roland nodded to Arty, "By the way, you and Khimera have a lot of explaining to do later."

Arty groaned, "Do I really have to?"

" _Cut the crap, Umber_." Khimera held her sword up, letting it collapse around her arm, " **FOR NOW, WE FIGHT! TAKE THEM IN BEATEN AND BROKEN AND LET THEM SUFFER THE CONSEQUENCES OF THEIR ACTIONS!"**

Sanguwalker's tendrils arced around her back. Their points tapered and turned to aim their now sharpened ends at the students, "Funny, that's exactly what we had planned for all of you!" she chimed, "And the singer too, if Venice would actually check in to do more than throw a few insults…"

They all ducked and dodged to the sides as the tendrils shot towards them. As Khimera and Roland rushed Sanguwalker from the sides, Arty and Sepia stayed back and fired from a distance.

"Um, sorry, but what exactly did _we_ do again?" Arty questioned as he fired paintballs past Sanguwalker at Trex, knowing that they wouldn't do much against her. If Roland and Khimera could keep her occupied, then maybe he could do some damage against the dino-dude with the bear trap, "I mean… we kinda _did_ blow up Oro's lizard, but I wouldn't really call that 'revenge murder' worthy."

"Trust us, kid, we have no intention of killing you… unless you give us a real reason to," Trex threw his weapon towards Arty, chains clattering loudly as it flew through the air.

Film and bullets wrapped around Arty's waist and yanked him sideways. The bear trap dug into the ground where Arty had been standing. On the end of Arty's lifeline was Sepia, who gave the line a little tug to free her leader.

A little shaken and a bit nauseated by the sudden maneuver, Arty gave her a thumbs-up, "Thanks… I can see what Roland meant by 'big bear trap or something'..."

Sepia nodded and began firing on Trex while his weapon was stuck. The bullets glanced off of the metal, but did manage to sent a few little gashes through his trenchcoat. One stray bullet even managed to dig a miniature trench through the cheekbone of his already heavily compromised mask. No real damage seemed to come to him, but at least she got a little of her frustration out.

The force of his reinforced mask rattled Trex's skull. "Why you little…" With a forceful yank to the side, the metal jaws of his weapon came out of the concrete and slammed hard into Sepia's side. She fell to the ground, sliding into the worn metal wall of the warehouse.

Trex reared the jaws back, aimed right for the dazed actress.

"Hey, ugly!"

Trex turned to see Arty leaping towards him, bat ready to bring down on his damaged mask. He raised his weapon to block the attack, but Arty slammed a boot right down in the middle of his weapon, kicking it out of the way before bringing his bat down. A blinding white flash of Nova Dust exploded outwards from the point of impact on the cracked bone of Trex's mask.

Arty flew backwards and tumbled over next to Sepia, "Deja vu…" he groaned.

Trex stumbled back and held his head. Bits of bone plating fell away from his mask, exposing his eye and a bit of hair. Before anyone could process even a single detail of what little could be seen of his face, a black mass slammed into the side of his face and formed a black replica of the missing bit of his mask. It oozed down to his coat, but did the trick of concealing his identity.

"Really?!" Sanguwalker shouted while batting away Roland and Khimera's attacks, "Gods, they aren't _that_ good! Just take them head on! That's about all you're good at!"

"It's not my fault the little ball of sequins got the jump on me earlier! My mask was already falling apart! Why didn't you just throw the runt with the gapped teeth into the wall before he hit me?!"

"That's not how my Semblance works, you idiot!" Sanguwalker snapped back, "I really wish Lieutenant Chiman would have stuck me with someone at least somewhat competent! Really, when did you last read a briefing from cover to cover?!"

"Lieutenant Hulud doesn't write big friggin _books_ like your stuck-up prick of a Lieu-"

"Don't you _dare_ start that up with me! At least my lieutenant can execute a mission without _witnesses_ , Trex!"

"Well, in case you forgot _Captain Sanguwalker_ , _witnesses aren't an issue for Lieutenant Hulud and the Vacuo branch!"_

Sanguwalker's tendrils seemed to droop for a moment, "Oh, just shut up ab-"

" **I'VE GOT YOU!"** Red Khimera slammed the mouth of her lion-cannon against Sanguwalker's abdomen and fired. The single opening was all that she needed, "R-R-Roland, now!" her weapon shifted back into the battering ram.

"Got it!" Roland closed in on the dazed Sanguwalker with his blade at the ready, "So," he slammed his foot into her gut and kicked her back, "What's this about faking my Semblance?!" he asked while thrusting his blade towards her chest.

Before hitting the ground, she rebounded using a few tendrils, launching some out from under her towards Roland. With a loud splash, she slapped him to the side, "Well, well, Wells. Sounds like either Painter-Boy's been lying to you, or you really are as thick-headed as I've been told. You only hear what you want to hear."

She lunged sideways, spinning to whip the tendrils for an attempt at a barrage of hits against the Faunus, "I'm not _faking_ anything. As I told your partner, people's lives can have similar attributes, leading to similar Semblances," a tendril looped over her head and sharpened to a point, "I'm sure you've figured this out while you were locked up in your room obsessing over conspiracy theories."

The black mass drilled towards Roland, narrowly stabbing him in the shoulder as he rolled to the side, "Things aren't always quite what they seem."

"I love that word that you used," his boots hit the ground. Something was becoming evident with Sanguwalker's tendrils, and using his blade to block her attacks was giving him enough time to think up a counter, "You said that our Semblances are similar. _Similar,_ " he grabbed a plastic ball full of ink from his belt and slammed it down on his blade. It coated every bit of white paper, leaving his weapon solid black with ink, "So, do you use acrylic or oil?" he asked with his blade ready to strike, "Because I know you can't do jack with ink."

Arty realized that Sanguwalker's barrage was slowing down, giving him a short break to think. The gears in his mind were racing again. As chaos raged around him, he couldn't get his mind off of one question: _Why were they so adamant about hiding Trex's face after I broke his mask?_ Trex was too preoccupied with Khimera's battering-ram punches and Sepia's whips. Roland was acting as a distraction, and Sanguwalker was open to an attack.

 _Her ink… paint… whatever is what's holding his mask together… If we take her out, he'll have to retreat to keep us from seeing his face when it falls apart without her Semblance._

"And we'll come out the winners here…" Arty muttered to himself. Despite seeing what she could do against his paintballs, he was still willing to take a chance and attack while she was distracted.

He ran at her from her right, which was wasn't being guarded by the tendrils. As with Trex, he leaped towards her, ready to bring his bat down on her head.

"To answer your question, oil… like your friend here." Sanguwalker grinned underneath her mask. She snapped with her hand down at her waist, "You like to think we're all out to get _you_ specifically, Wells, but I wasn't sent on this mission to counter _you_. But if I must… I should probably get a little upgrade." Two tendrils lashed out and latched onto Arty, interrupting his failed surprise attack. "I'm thinking… Magma," the orange paintballs on Arty's belt exploded into globs of Magma Dust infused paint, "Lightning," the yellow paintballs exploded as well, "And why not Gravity?!" the violet paintballs exploded as well. The ensuing multicolored explosion was quickly followed by Sanguwalker throwing Arty across the room.

Orange, yellow, and violet all melted and swirled into the black tendrils snapping around behind her back. Arcs of electricity danced across the black expanse of paint, orange sparks jumped out from exploding tarry bubbles, and all of it glowed with a chilling purple haze.

"Arty!" Roland instinctively grabbed for a grenade, but froze. With Sanguwalker super-charged, there was no telling what she would do next, "Wait a second, Sanguwalker," he tried to quell the rapid-firing thoughts going through his brain. If Sepia could take on these guys without much of a hitch, then he'd try his best to mimic her, "Honestly, was this was your plan? That's… kind of disappointing…"

Sanguwalker tilted her head, "Excuse me?"

 _Just be Sepia_ , he tapped his foot in thought, "It's just that it all seems a bit too… flashy. Downright ridiculous, if you ask me," behind him, Sepia and Khimera's fight with Trex was grinding down to a confused halt, "Look, I'm no Grimm Brotherhood cultist or whatever, but I can say that this is all just… over the top? Cliche?" he held up his finger as if he found the words he was looking for, "I honestly feel like you guys are just getting full of yourselves. I mean, look at Trex over there. He does _not_ have the mental capacity to handle a job like this. If your plan is to kill us, take us, or whatever, then you should really cut to the chase. Your plan so far sucks."

"We're not a _cult_. You can throw words around however you like. Cliche or not, this is real life, not one of your _stories_!" Two of her tendrils whipped towards him. While a whip from one of the regular ones hurt, there was no telling what kind of pain would be involved with the new Dust upgrades.

He hooked one tendril with the curve of his blade and threw it to the side while ducking under the other, "I'd say that literature is one of the few arts that can come close to depicting life as it is. Ever read a biography?" he nodded his head back, hoping that Sepia would catch the signal, "However, I can throw words that are actually meant to hurt your feelings if you would like. For example, your tendrils are a lazy excuse for a weapon. You're probably about as smart as the bird you love cosplaying as. Your mask looks cheap, too."

"Oh damn…" Trex muttered from between Khimera and Sepia.

Sepia nodded to Arty and pointed down, ' _Get over here,'_ she signed while inching her way over to him. She and Roland both knew he was useless against Sanguwalker. After taking one chance, he didn't need to take another.

 _But my everything hurts…_ Arty groaned as he tried to shake off the pain from the Dust explosions and being chucked like a ragdoll. As Roland continued playing the best distraction that he could, Arty dared glance down at his scroll. His aura was very near breaking. If this was a tournament or Carmen's sparring, one more punch would take him out of the fight.

Next to his, Roland's aura was still very near full. _Go figure_.

Sepia's had taken a beating, but she was nowhere near as bad off as him.

His eyes widened as he watched Timbre's very quickly draining. _What the…_

He was snapped away when Sepia grabbed his arm and slung him over towards Khimera and Trex.

He needed to let somebody know, "Sepia! You need to-"

She cut him off as she held a finger to her lips and continued on her path to Roland.

"No! Sepia! You don't under-"

" _Umber_!" Khimera hissed at him, " _get over here!_ "

He didn't have a choice. Timbre was in trouble, but so were they. Trex and Sanguwalker were priority. He just had the sinking feeling that something much worse was on the way. He ran along the wall to reach Khimera. He held his bat out in preparation for Trex bring his attention back to the matter at hand. He seemed to relish in Sanguwalker struggling.

Sweat was building along Roland's brow. Dodging and redirecting Sanguwalker's attacks was beyond strenuous, but Sepia and Arty were about in position, "Above all else, you're just as stupid as Trex. If not, then you're _way_ more stupid than Trex."

That seemed to do the trick.

"How _dare_ you!" She began whipping around in a circle, repeating her barrage move from earlier. The tendrils began swinging around her in a spiral, each ready to slam into Roland. "You may think us incompetent, but facades can be a dangerous thing, _Faunus_!"

"Wow! Verbal irony! Excellent use of a literary device!" Roland shouted and hopped back to avoid her attacks.

Sanguwalker's tendrils homed in on him, "Would you jus-"

Bullets slammed into the backs of her knees like metal hail. Burning lead seared at the straps, and stray bits of shrapnel flew through the creases of Sanguwalker's armor to burn the aura just beneath. The stream of bullets whipped up and rang off of the device on Sanguwalker's back. Something gave inside whatever kind of machine was there. A jet of steam shot out from three of the ports on her left side.

The Grimm Brotherhood agent turned her attention to Sepia. Letting out an enraged yell, she shot two of her tendrils towards her. One fell away from her, flopping helplessly like a fish on the ground next to her.

"No!" Her weapon was compromised. Those bullets and precision were dangerous to someone like her. While she had been sent to counter Arty specifically, Sepia Hughes was too much of a wild card to be properly countered.

"Well… surprise surprise…" she was going to have to take a more head-on approach with this one.

Using her tendrils to push off the ground, Sanguwalker launched herself towards Sepia, bringing her foot down from the side towards her head.

 _Please have an actual plan…_ Sepia passed a glance at Roland. As Sanguwalker closed in, Sepia fell to the ground on her back. She aimed her guns up at her and fired.

While Sepia and Sanguwalker continued their dance of death, Roland looked to Trex, who was preoccupied with Arty and Khimera. He seemed to be holding his own, but faltered ever so much at Arty's shots from Palette. Apparently the combo of ranged and melee was difficult for him.

The hooked blade on Roland's arm came off with a swipe of Writer's Block's paper cutter. He chunked the discarded blade like a javelin at Sanguwalker's back, sending it piercing through another one of the rubber hoses the machine was using to move steam and paint. Another tendril fell.

"Guess she was right. Fighting defensively is the key with these guys…" he said to himself while clacking out a new weapon. A new straight blade was formed in the time that it took for Sanguwalker to realize what was going on, "Sepia! Let's work on Screenplay a little!"

She nodded and spring kicked Sanguwalker dead in the stomach to send her off towards Roland.

Sanguwalker knew she was cornered on both sides. An annoying mute brat with guns on one side, the disgusting Faunus with a typewriter on the other. She skid to a stop between them. "You two… need… to stop... _moving_!" With a loud burst of steam, the remaining tendrils shot out to her sides faster than Roland and Sepia could process. Stretched to their limit, they slammed and pinned the two to the walls on either side of the warehouse. "Trex! Just finish this so we can be _done_ with these cretins!"

"Roland! Sepia!" Arty called out as he saw them struggling against the black masses crushing them against the rough metal interior of the building. He didn't have a lot of time to react as he was batted to the side by something large and heavy. His heart sank as he felt his aura shatter and ripple across his body.

Trex stood over Arty, clacking the jaws on his gauntlet in a slow rhythm. He smiled under his mask as he kicked Palette away from Arty and planted a foot firmly on his side, "Well, looks like that's one for me."

Khimera lunged, ready to bring her battering ram down on Trex. What should have been the punch to destroy his mask ended in her being caught between the teeth of his weapon.

"Nuh uh uh. Your mommy might be the general of Atlas, but you should know that the world is a dangerous place for a scared little girl like you." The one remaining glowing eye of his mask looked back at her. Even though she knew that there was a real person under there, the savage intent of the Creatures of Grimm was there in all its terrifying glory.

Khimera could feel the teeth digging into her through her coat. No matter how hard she pried, Trex kept pressing the teeth in tighter and tighter. Her aura began to flicker in and out of her different states. She looked like a strobe light as her body flashed between red, yellow, blue and brown, something that only ever happened in the most stressful and dire of situations when all else had gone wrong. She was useless.

"Now, with you four out of commission for the time being," Sanguwalker said through the strain and pressure she was putting on herself to hold together Roland and Sepia's restraints along with the glob keeping Trex's mask from falling apart, "We just need to wait for Venice to show up with the pop-star and help us take the rest of you back to our Lieutenants," she glanced to Roland, "or maybe even Commander Maelstrom. They were very, very anxious about meeting all of you."

"Thanks for the name…" Roland snarled back at her, "I'll keep a look out."

"What do you want with us?" Khimera asked with her eyes shut. It took every ounce of her strength to keep herself together enough to dig for a little information, "It's clear that you want us for something… why?"

Trex leaned in close to her, "Wouldn't you like to know? Besides, how do you know we want _all_ of you? How do you know you aren't disposable?"

"Because you would have killed the ones that were useless to your cause," Khimera opened her eyes to show off the rapid flashing between red, blue, and yellow. She shivered, but retained her composure, "It's confounding to think that any one of us could help you monsters control Grimm."

Sanguwalker chuckled despite her discomfort, "You'd be surprised, Ms. Léon. You have no idea what certain people can do under certain situations. The right people in the right place, if you will. Right now, you all are in the _wrong_ place, or rather, one that isn't directly beneficial to us. That's why we're here."

"That what happened to Mom…?" Roland growled from behind Sanguwalker's binds.

 _Stay rational for once..._ Sepia glared at him from her bindings.

Sanguwalker leveled her gaze at him, "I guess you could say that. More of the right place at the wrong time with her. I don't know the full details on that. While we do sometimes cross kingdom borders to get work done, all the information on that is completely under Lieutenant Tursas and those involved with that mission."

"Again, thanks for the name…" Roland nodded slowly, "Thanks, a lot actually," he relaxed in Sanguwalker's grip, "I'm happy to add a few names to my list."

"Okay…" Arty felt a bit relieved after watching Roland calm down. _Yep. We'll be fine._ He gasped from beneath Trex's boot, "There are _way_ too many names getting thrown around now… every single one of your Lieutenants and your Commander person all have names I've never heard of before. You jerks are named after real Grimm… so… what the heck is a Tursas?" He turned his head as much as he could to look at Trex, "I mean… you could at least answer a question since you're leaving a nice boot-print in my spine."

Trex shook his head back and forth, "Tsk tsk tsk… stupid kid doesn't even know his own bedtime stories."

Arty frowned, "Okay, but couldn't you just tell m-"

A hollow voice echoed out from the entrance of the warehouse, "Objective complete…"

A figure dressed in black scraps of cloth and a mask resembling a deer skull stood in between the massive double doors. It held onto a bundle of metal wire that had been wrapped several times around their victim. Timbre was slumped over lifelessly and was being dragged along across the asphalt by Venice.

"Well, look who finally decided to show up." Trex snarled at the newcomer. "And she brought a present. Goodie. Now why don't you go home and let the _Captains_ handle the rest?"

"Come now, Trex. Play nice," Sanguwalker huffed behind her mask, "This was just as much of a test for her as it was for them. I mean, look at this! She got Timbre Forté without an issue, which is much more than we can say about these four."

Trex began to stammer as he tried to find an excuse, "We were outnumbered! She was one on one! My point is the _last_ time Tursas sent an Officer to retrieve her, they failed miserably."

Sanguwalker scoffed, "Just as bad as you have tonight? That's beside the point. While the last Officer failed to retrieve Timbre Forté, Venice has done more than enough to make up for his mistakes. Her fighting prowess is what led to her being sent on this mission with us, which is more than I can say for you, Trex."

"Why I oughtta-"

"She's done wonderfully, which I'll be sure to tell Commander Tursas _and_ Commander Chiman. Commander Hulud, on the other hand, isn't going to be as happy about the report she'll receive."

Trex tightened his grip on Khimera and pushed his boot harder into Arty's back, causing them both to yell out, "This is why I _hate_ working with people from the other branches. You always act so high-and-mighty."

"Bring the targets back with minimal damage," Venice muttered in Trex's general direction. She threw Timbre out towards Sanguwalker, "Neutralize insubordinates within the operation. Those are the Commander's orders."

Sanguwalker cocked her head back towards Trex, "It sounds like _she_ read the briefing packet front to back."

"Rewritten as well for comprehension," Venice stepped into the warehouse and kept her head turned towards Trex, "Need I keep on, or have I made my point?"

"Fine. Keep ganging up on me all you want." Trex suddenly threw Khimera towards Venice before kicking Arty in the same direction, sending them both sliding over the floor. "We've roughed them up already, so I guess you can say we did most of the job, but why don't you show off your 'fighting prowess' and finish things, hm? Because I am ready to be done with this mission!"

Venice's head tilted in confusion. Silence followed for a few moments. After mulling it over, Venice decided that breaking their auras and knocking them out was probably what he meant. She reached behind her back, grabbed onto the metal handles that rested there, and pulled out two sets of claws with Fire Dust edges.

Arty and Khimera could only watch as the claws on Venice's hands ignited.

Khimera flashed blue, " _Well?! Come on then! You Grimm Brotherhood cowards can never fight without any tricks or showing off! That's all you do! Fearmongering bast-"_

"Oh just shut up and fight the girl," Sanguwalker released her holds on Roland and Sepia. She stepped back and held out her arms, "Don't worry. I won't intervene."

"Oh, so I can still kick the crap out of them? Is that what you're saying?" Trex reared his gauntlet back, "What happened to her proving herself?"

" _You_ are going to go ahead and take Ms. Forté to the rendezvous." She walked over and nudged the musician with her foot, "She's our biggest priority at the moment, so the sooner we get her out of here the better. Come back afterwards. The rest should be incapacitated by then."

"Oh, right, of course I get stuck with the work meant for grunts," Trex raised his weapon and aimed it at Timbre, "Trex do this. Trex do that. Trex is the worst Captain in the whole Brotherhood. Blah. Blah. Bl-AH!" he stumbled back. Bullet holes dotted the black paint that was covered one side of his head.

Sepia glared daggers at him with her guns raised. An orb of light shone right over her shoulder. Dozens of others were glowing dimly in the rafters. She could see every inch of the warehouse, even the rats hiding in the corners. If anything was certain, it was that Timbre wasn't going anywhere.

"She's got the right idea," Roland grabbed Timbre by the wires that had been turned against her. Sanguwalker wasn't going to do anything. That much was clear. Trex was the real concern, "I don't like Timbre too much, but Team ARS just sounds gross. You guys can have Timbre when we're all down. I don't think any of us will let this go any other way. Arty agrees with me."

"I don't have Palette so I'm not sure I'm in any position to agree or disagree with anything right now…" Arty arched his back, cracking it loudly, "Aaaaand there's the fact my aura's gone, so there's that too."

Sepia darted off towards Arty's weapon, sliding right between Trex's legs to get to her destination. She grabbed it and chunked it over to her leader.

With Palette back in his hands, he gave off a weaker version of his usual cocky grin, "Yeah… okay, I can at least _agree_ now. Still don't have that aura I mentioned earlier, but I'll try my best."

"I'm telling Timbre that you hesitated…" Roland dragged Timbre all the way over to the wall farthest from Trex and Sanguwalker. He glanced at Trex, whose anger could be felt through his mask, "What's wrong? I thought this was a test for the deer over there too."

Trex looked back and forth between Venice and Sanguwalker. "Really? We're letting them do this?"

"If we take them all down, then it'll be much easier to get them all at once. If Venice fails, we can take the reigns. It won't be much of a problem now that we're not stalling," Sanguwalker's frigid sneer could be felt behind the sanctity of her mask, "It would reduce the likelihood of any of the kids slipping through our fingers."

"So am I not supposed to follow your highness's royal orders and take the pop-star?"

"The reason that you are incompetent is that you are the least flexible person any of us have ever met, Trex. A better avenue has shown itself," Sanguwalker began her stroll over to the back wall, "If that fails, we can step in."

Utter confusion fell over Trex, "B-but… then why did you complain about me not reading the briefing?! Wouldn't that make me the _most_ flexible?!"

"Because the briefing is not absolute! Gods, please take five seconds out of your life to think about what you say. Read the briefing. Try to follow the briefing to a tee. Adjust accordingly," Sanguwalker glanced over to the students as they eyed Venice, "Just shut up and watch Venice do her thing."

"I don't have to-"

" _I SAID SHUT UP,"_ she snapped and began stomping towards the back wall. She flicked her wrist, causing Trex to lurch backwards. The black patch on his mask tugged him along behind her, "This is a serious operation, and I am sick of you not treating it as such."

"Geez… and I thought _we_ were dysfunctional sometimes…" Arty commented as he watched the argument continue. He looked to Roland, "So… you got a plan or…?"

"You're the leader," Roland shrugged, "We need t-"

Cinders burned through the air. A tear of smoldering embers and ash appeared on the brim of the Roland's hat. Venice stood with her mask just inches away from his face. One of her claws burned beside his ear. Steam curled up from around her and mingled with the floating motes of fire dancing around her.

With Sanguwalker now playing spectator, Arty saw his chance. It was too bad she had taken some of his favorite Dust to weaponize. Luckily, she left the kinds he had used against the Grimm Brotherhood before. While Roland and Venice went back and forth, Roland punching, blocking and kicking while Venice slashed and dodged, Arty loaded all the Nova Dust paintballs he had on him into Palette.

"Roland! Duck!" He aimed and fired towards the scuffle, strafing around it in a wide circle to give his partner cover fire.

 _No time for that…_ Roland snapped at his waist to set off one of his grenades prematurely. A web of black ink wrapped around him to cover him from the ensuing explosion. When the blindingly light cleared and the ink fell to the ground, Venice was gone, "What?!"

Red hot tears cut into an orange plate on the side of Palette. Molten metal dripped from the weapon's wounds. Venice slammed her foot into Arty's gut like a jackhammer and sent him sprawling to the ground. Steam hissed from the metal frames around her boots.

Arty's vision went white from the pain. He thought the steam-based tech that the Grimm Brotherhood used hurt before, but now he felt like he was absolutely dying without his aura to protect him.

Venice began making her way towards Arty. Whether to finish him off or incapacitate him, nobody could tell.

Khimera wasn't going to take any chances.

With the battering ram firmly attached to her fist, Khimera charged the deer-masked monster. Upon reaching her, she reeled back, charging up a punch strong enough to get her to back off.

Embers surged in a wave around Venice as she whipped around. She ducked under the battering ram. Only one of the points on her antlers was caught and snapped off of her mask by the weapon. Her claws shot out from her sides and raked against Khimera's sides. Fire Dust particles burned at the new tears in Khimera's coat.

Khimera stumbled back as a yellow shimmer passed over her body. Her weapon molded and shifted, the ram's head being replaced by the snake's fangs as the segmented blade fell out of the bronze contraption. " _I refuse to let you people win."_

No response came from behind the bone mask. She just jumped back out of the way of Khimera's attacks. Dodging a sword was child's play.

Blunt force slammed into Venice's back, but the instruments being used in the feeble attempt on her life bounced off with a metallic clang. Sepia went in to slam the butts of her guns into Venice once more, but she was only met with the metal frame of a boot to the side.

Venice kicked off of Sepia's side and flew into Khimera. She caught her target between two of her claws and pinned her to the ground. Fire seared against Khimera's neck from the blades. Her other claw was raised and ready to finish the job.

Despite the impending doom over her, Khimera tried to use the saying her leader, Fenix Flare, told her whenever she got so worked up her emotions were in such constant flux that she became useless in a fight. ' _Deep breaths, Léon. Ignore the fact that you're in trouble and just_ breathe _.'_ Khimera closed her eyes, inhaling and exhaling slowly as Venice's claw was ready to plunge down into her. The blue details of her body began to slowly disappear as red took their place. Metal clanged together on her arm as the sword slowly began to shift into a cannon.

She opened her eyes, burning red with hatred and ferocity. " **YOU SHOULD HAVE RETREATED WHEN YOU HAD THE CHANCE!"** Khimera threw her arm up as a large fireball began to stir within the gun. As soon as the bronze lion's head touched Venice in the side, an explosion launched her off of her would-be kill.

Arty, now pushing himself back to his feet after Venice's last attack, barely had time to register the black and red form flying towards him. His hands flapped around his weapon as he tried to activate the mechanism to switch it's forms, but the damage received from Venice's claws had apparently broken it, keeping it stuck as a paintball gun. ' _Dammit.'_ He cursed as he stepped his right foot back, remembering the Kokonatsu he had killed back in the forest outside Mikado.

Swinging his leg around in a wide arc, Arty's boot connected with Venice's side. While the force sent the Grimm Brotherhood operative sliding, it also sent a jolt of pain up Arty's leg.

He gripped his knee hopping on one foot as he winced in pain. "Ouch ouch ouch ouch ouch! That _really_ hurts without aura… oooooh OUCH!"

Venice tumbled to the side. Steam hissed out while she struggled to regain her footing. A black line appeared across her mask. Ink dripped from the new tear through bone.

Roland raised his blade once more to plunge it down into Venice's side.

Antlers rammed into his middle. Venice yanked her head back up to get her bearings from the quick headbutt she gave him. Her boots screamed with steam through the air, and one slammed into his knee.

" _ **AH!"**_ his leg gave out and sent him crashing to the ground. He brought up Writer's Block just in time to catch Venice's claws with it. The Fire Dust burned straight through the paper, but got caught on the weapon as the blade attached to it wrapped around the claws.

Sepia ran forward with her guns at the ready. She jumped up to get over head and began unloading her bullets into Venice. Once again, they clanged off of the metal plates underneath the bits of cloth. She kept shooting, but then let out a silent scream and tumbled behind Venice and Roland.

Blood trickled out from the two new cuts on her cheek. Her tan aura shimmered as it broke around her. She held a hand up to stop the bleeding. The source of the wound could be seen as plain as day from the dozens of angles that she had in the rafters. Venice's second set of claws had extended out at least another meter. Fire Dust glowed along the thin, needle-like edges.

Roland watched in horror as the claws retracted back to their original lengths. He released his hold on her weapon and scrambled to get some distance on her. Walking wasn't much of an option any more. His damaged knee throbbed and slowed his effort. Though his aura wasn't broken, it was damaged enough to keep him from being able to simply shake off a blow like that.

Venice stood still. Roland and Sepia were no longer a threat, and Timbre hadn't been for a long time. Khimera and Arty were left, and Arty was hanging on by a thread. She raised her claws again and turned towards Khimera, her molten eyes glowing in the dim warehouse.

Arty grabbed Khimera by the arm and pulled her behind him. In that moment, Venice froze. Just as he figured, she wouldn't risk actually killing one of them them to get a shot in.

" **UMBER!"**

"Not now, Khimera. Just… Hear me out."

Just from looking at him, Khimera could tell that he wasn't doing well at all. If she could just use her Semblance, than maybe they could have a chance, but the warehouse was far too cramped for that. Was that part of their plan, too? Did they know she'd tag along? " **DO YOU HAVE A PLAN?"**

Arty held a hand to his ear, "You really gotta work on the whole yelling thing when you're red, you know that?" _Nova didn't work, but maybe…_ "I have some stuff Roland and I have been working on. I might be able to get it to work if you can distract her long enough," he pulled a vial off of his belt, "Just… it might help if you could use your sword instead. Adding more fire could be an issue."

Khimera nodded, and focused on her breathing, " _I sure hope you know what you're doing, Umber."_ She ran around Arty and towards Venice, sword drawn in preparation for the distraction.

"Trust me. I hope so, too." Swirling white and blue paintballs danced between his fingers as he loaded his gun. Bits of frost and ice began to appear on his skin.

Venice slashed at the segmented blade of Khimera's sword. Unlike the weapons of the other four, no damage was being done to the weapon itself. Her burning claws didn't leave so much as a scratch along the metal. She kept slashing away at the metal as it came down at her over and over.

Arty scrambled to get the newly patented Rime Dust into Palette. Despite them not being activated, the freezing temperatures coming off them made his fingers numb. This only lengthened the amount of time Khimera needed to act as a distraction. The clanging of metal told him she was still holding her own.

"Come on… come on… There!" Arty smiled to himself as the last of the paintballs went into the hopper. Twisting the top, he crunched them all, releasing the paint inside. _At least I can still activate Dust._ He was ready to put his plan into motion. All he needed was Khimera to get out of the way while he doused the madwoman in the paint and-

As he looked up, he could see Khimera lying on the ground. Her weapon had returned to the strapped shield as she lay on the ground unconscious.

Between him and her, Venice was making her way towards him, slicing her claws together. Sparks and embers lit up the deer skull mask in the darkness of the warehouse.

Arty aimed his gun at her, ready to hopefully coat her in a thick layer of ice that even her claws couldn't melt through until help could arrive. "Get back! I'm warning you!" _I don't even know what this stuff will really do…_

The claws extended into the muzzle of Palette. Fire Dust and metal plugged up the barrel. With Arty's finger already pulling the trigger, pressure built up inside the weapon. The cap on the hopper exploded. Fog billowed out from the top of the weapon and coated the ceiling in a thick coating of ice. Snowflakes danced around them and melted as Venice retracted her weapon.

Arty was launched backwards by the force of the blast. Palette flew from his hand, leaving him defenseless. His whole body was sore and the Rime Dust was his last chance at helping his friends and stopping these psychos. It was his last chance, and he blew it. He could feel cold, wet flakes of ice speckling his face as he watched Venice draw closer.

She raised her claws to put an end to Arty's retaliation. They cut through the air with embers tailing in their wake. The tip of one claw sliced through Arty's shoulder, but then disappeared.

Venice flew past the other four fallen students and slammed into the wall next to Sanguwalker and Trex. A shackle of ice held her against the wall.

"What the hell?!" Trex shouted.

Sanguwalker's remaining tendrils whipped to life, "Great… someone we don't care about keeping alive. Welcome to the party," she mused towards the newcomer.

The newly created snow dusted the ground around Arty, but also dusted the man standing above him. The tattered red cloak and patched up shirt was unmistakeable. The short Dust infused scythes in each hand were foreign, but Sepia's words from the previous semester flashed in his mind, _We talked about it a lot in class back home because it was a great example of a good Dust-based weapon._

"What kind of winter-wonderland is this?" Vincentas growled with a lollipop stick bouncing between his lips. He raised one of his scythes at Sanguwalker and Trex, "Whatever. This could be the deserts back in Vacuo for all I care. If these kids get too roughed up, my pay gets docked, and I have my night off to get back to. This is going to be quick."


	42. V2Ch14: Deer in the Headlights

"Please don't tell me you're here to beat me with a door again…" Arty whined as he held his injured shoulder, the grizzled Huntsman standing above him.

"I would if I could. It's harder to do my job when you all go off and get yourselves in a situation meant for Huntsmen," Vincentas raised his lip in disgust when he looked back at Arty, "You better believe that you kids are gonna have eyes on you from now until you graduate."

"But we-"

"Are inexperienced little brats that I'm going to have to watch more closely," he sighed and pushed back the urge to bash Arty's skull in, "I better get a pay raise for this…" he turned his attention back to the three Grimm Brotherhood members, "Now, let's get this over with."

Trex held his weapon at the ready, teeth open for a victim, "So, _Captain Sanguwalker_ , did your briefing happen to say anything about annoying, washed-up bounty hunters showing up?"

Sanguwalker shook her head, "It doesn't matter, Trex. Just kill him."

"Wait, Trex?" Vincentas crossed his arms with weapons still in hand, "Aren't you one of those punks that robbed the museum…? You know, my wife gave me hell over that… Thanks, bud…" he grinned at the thought of the scene, "My son did say that his girl gave you guys quite a beating before you ran off with your tail between your legs."

Rage began to build up in Trex's mind. He swung his arm back, shattering Venice's icy restraint. "I don't know what you're talking about, old man."

Venice slumped to the ground. She rubbed her neck and stood back up slowly. She could still feel the chilly line around her neck from where Vincentas caught her. The frost still growing around her collar was even more uncomfortable than the choking feeling, though.

"You don't know what I'm talking about?" Vincentas held out his arms mockingly, "Or do you just not wanna talk about how a Faunus beat you down? That must've bruised your egos, considering how much you hate Faunus, huh? Bet it also didn't help when my boy turned those fossils against you."

" _Shut up, you old geezer!_ " Trex began to charge, but found Sanguwalker tugging on the back of his cloak.

"Trex, try not to let your _emotions_ take control, okay?" Using her black tendrils, she pushed off the wall and landed daintily on Trex's metal jaws. "Just do me a favor and use that hydraulic spring system in good old Premaxilla to launch me at our new friend." She glanced back at him, " _Then_ you can charge him and tear him apart. Deal? Besides, there's three of us and only one of him. Granted, there were _five_ targets and we came out victorious, so I don't think he'll be much of a problem against us. Strength in numbers didn't help them, but it looks like it'll be in our favor with our _uninvited guest_. "

Venice stepped forward and held out her claws, "I will get behind him and we can take him from three angles. Does that work with you both?"

"Yeah. Fine." Steam began to spew from Trex's weapon as pressure began to build, "But if you tell _anybody_ from the Vacuo branch that I took orders from a damn Officer, I'll kill you both."

The jaws snapped closed, sending Sanguwalker flying through the air in a vortex of black paint. As she whipped towards Vincentas, Trex began to laugh, "I have to say though, I like the idea of ganging up on this guy and tearing him apart. Nobody's gonna miss this show off."

"Oh," Vincentas watched as Sanguwalker closed in with her tendrils ready to rip him to shreds. To him, it didn't matter too much that they were psychos. They were obviously kids. No amount of crazy weapons or masks could make up for a lack of experience, "No, I don't think that'll be the case, sweetie."

When Sanguwalker was in range, he stepped to the side and held out his scythe. The sharpened edge glowed with a familiar red. Fire Dust was more than just coating the blade like Venice's weapons. It was worked into the metal. It glowed even brighter when her tendrils wrapped around it.

"Thought that smelled like oil paint," he shoved the scythe forwards to hook her around the waist and toss her to the side. Her tendrils were burning, and the blade of his scythe was just fueling the fire even more, "That kinda sucks, doesn't it?"

Sanguwalker shouted out in anger as her tendrils fell limply to the ground in large puddles. Burning away from the fire. The snow that had fallen began to melt, casting an eerie glowing reflection that made it seem like the whole room was burning. Her paint gone, Sanguwalker was forced to go hand-to-hand, "You'll pay for that Vincentas Saurus…"

She ran at him, ducking under the burning hand-scythe as he sliced horizontally at her. Throwing herself behind him and over his shoulders, she kneed him square in the jaw, sending him a few steps back before landing on her feet.

" _ **OW!"**_ shouted someone from outside.

Vincentas spit out the lollipop stick that was in his mouth and went to crunching the remainder of the candy, "Wow, look at that. You made me break my favorite sucker," he raised an eyebrow at her. He didn't even seem phased from the blow, "Is that really all you've got?"

His other scythe, one that was glowing bright blue, straightened out and split open. Metal grinded against metal, and what was once a scythe had become a silvery blue single-barrel shotgun. He brought it up and aimed at Sanguwalker's head. A gunshot split through the echoing warehouse.

Sanguwalker couldn't see through the ice that was now encasing her mask. She stumbled around, yelling angrily as she tried to break the results of Vincentas's shotgun blast.

"Okay, so," he turned to see Trex looking around helplessly, "you gonna charge me, or what? You seemed so eager to do so earlier."

The remaining burning eye of Trex's mask glanced back and forth between Sanguwalker dancing around as she punched herself in the head and the Huntsmen who had gotten her to do so.

Sanguwalker had probably stopped focusing on holding his mask together. He reached up and felt a drip of something wet, confirming his suspicions. Looking at his hand, he saw a large splotch of black paint. _Dammit. I can't let him of all people see me…_ "You know what? Change of plans old man!" Trex threw the jaws of his weapon towards Vincentas from the sanctity of the darkness around him.

"Ah… got it…" Vincentas nodded. The snapping jaws got closer and closer. Twenty feet. Ten feet. Five. Two.

He jumped. Nothing too special, but then he came back down on the chain with his boot planted firmly in the middle. A red disk of fire spun through the air. The chain went slack. Molten puddles of steel cooled on the ground between a severed link of glowing chain. The jaws themselves crashed into the chainlink fence outside the warehouse.

"So how old are you kids?" Vincentas began strolling towards Trex and Venice, "I don't care too much, but Alabastard is gonna be pissed if I don't get some intel to him. So, what are you? Eighteen? Nineteen?"

Trex was dumbfounded, but now he was downright scared. He could fight without his weapon, sure, but the man standing before him had just destroyed one of the stronger weapons handed out to Captains of the Grimm Brotherhood, "B-b-but… You…" He looked off behind Vincentas, "Yo! Venice! What happened to 'attack from three angles?!' You kinda left Sanguwalker and I to take the heat for you!"

"No," Venice stood just out of the range of the snow shower that the Rime Dust was producing. She looked at her claws and then up to Vincentas. It was clear that this wasn't a fight that she could win without Sanguwalker or Trex.

"No answer then? Rude little brat." Vincentas passed his glare over to Venice, "So how about you, deery? I'd be happy to throw you across the room again. That might land me a bonus…"

Venice made the only reasonable decision. She darted past him, grabbed Sanguwalker by the arm, and ran towards the wall. Two quick swipes of her claws and a kick was all it took to make a molten hole in the side of the warehouse for an escape. She pushed Sanguwalker through and disappeared.

"Are you kidding me! This wasn't part of the plan!" Trex yelled at them through their escape route. "What about our targ-" A hiss of steam and the sound of someone clearing their throat behind him made his heart sink.

Vincentas held up a silvery blue and dull red double barrel shotgun, made from the combined halves of his weapon. Steam curled out of the muzzle and every other nook and cranny on the gun. He fired once more without hesitation. A blast of hot steam exploded out of both barrels. Twin projectiles spun through the air, one glowing hot and the other producing an icy haze. Both struck Trex right in the chest and sent steam billowing out around him.

Trex was launched through the hole Venice had made during her and Sanguwalker's escape. He bounced off the ground a few times before finally coming to a stop upon hitting another warehouse. Groaning in pain, he reached up to his head. He felt tufts of hair sticking out from his mask. The paint was beginning to melt much faster, pouring off of him. _Dammit! Dammit! Dammit!_

While he wasn't a huge fan for rules, he knew he couldn't let somebody see his face. If that happened, then he'd face dire consequences from Lieutenant Hulud… or possibly even Commander Maelstrom. Both had very little tolerance for failure, and his cover being blown would be the tipping point for them.

As he saw the silhouette of the Huntsmen walking towards him, cloak billowing out behind him, he began to panic. That only intensified when the blue and red object in his hand unfolded, taking on the shape of a double-bladed scythe.

"Screw this!" Trex scrambled to his feet and began sprinting for the rendezvous point. Hopefully Sanguwalker and Venice hadn't ditched him to save their own hides.

Vincentas stopped at the edge of the hole, "Team Royal! Go after those freaks! I've got the kids!" he shouted outside. He held up his hand and clenched it. A red flash burst out from around the glow of what appeared to be his aura and dissipated immediately, "My curse is off of you, Ray! Feel free to get as hands on as you like!"

Arty felt like bashing his injured shoulder against the floor to end his pain quicker. First the Grimm Brotherhood, then the Huntsmen that beat him with his own dorm door the semester before, and now the dreaded name Team RYAL, "Why why why why _why_ god WHY!?"

"What's wrong, man?" Roland lifted his head up. He was just a few meters from Arty, still where Venice had left him. After finding that he wasn't going to be up on his feet for the rest of the night, he hadn't moved too much.

"Besides feeling like I got hit by a truck and having a very painful burning sensation in my shoulder? Well, my team's all beaten up, General Leon's daughter is battered and unconscious so she'll probably blame me for that, and we took on a bunch of psychos without telling anybody. To top it all off…" he winced, "my old bully from Atlas just showed up…" For whatever reason, he made the last item in the list sound the worst.

"You're a Huntsman in training and you're worried about a _bully…_?" Roland raised an eyebrow, "We just fought terrorists, and you're worried about a bully…?"

"Well it's kinda different when it's your dad's boss's son… who's also massive and is able to beat the ever-living crud out of 99.9% of the people he runs into."

"Okay? So?" Roland slowly pushed himself up into a sitting position. He could see Sepia running to Timbre to begin the process of unwrapping her. She held her own bloodied cheek, "Hey! Sepia! Should Arty be freaked out by a schoolyard bully now that we've fought four different terrorists and their goons, a Minotaurus, a Trex, and a whole band of Kokonatsu?"

Sepia yanked off a length of wire from Timbre with her only free hand. Without looking back, she just shook her head.

"See, a bully is really low on the totem pole, Arty," he pointed out while examining his knee. He grabbed it by the sides to see how well it could move. The bolt of pain that fired through his leg made him yelp, "That's… that's gonna need to be looked at…"

"I think all you brats are gonna need some looking at. Physically _and_ mentally. What were you even _thinking_?!" Vincentas growled as he walked up to Khimera, who was still out cold.

"That people were blowing up places in the city and people might be in danger," Roland shrugged, "That my girlfriend got caught in the middle of those whackos and needed a hand getting out. That Arty was seriously in a bad spot and fighting with someone that he hardly knows how to work with at his side. That none of us knew where Timbre was," he counted up the reasons on his fingers, "So… yeah. We had quite a bit going on. Did I forget anything? Arty? Sepia?"

Arty fell flat onto his back, "No… I think you got it all."

"Great…" Roland looked over to Vincentas, "That's most of what we were thinking. Going headlong into danger is kind of what we're trained to do."

Vincentas shoved a white hard candy into Khimera's mouth and held her mouth shut, "Don't try and act like you brats are anything even remotely close to actual Huntsmen. All you five did was make my job harder. I already got a call from Alabaster about the other friends that you left. You've all just created a massive headache for me."

Khimera sputtered and gagged, spitting the candy out onto the floor. "Blech! God, what _was_ that?!"

"Morning, princess…" Vincentas stood up and yanked Khimera up with him, "Your mom is beyond pissed, ya know?"

"Her big brother, on the other hand, is _elated_ that he could come to the rescue."

"Oh crap…" Arty muttered to himself. That deep arrogant voice brought back tons of memories of being beaten to a pulp and relentlessly berated. He wanted to shrink back into the shadows and just pretend like he wasn't there. Given his current condition, he couldn't do that, so he was stuck watching as a tall man in a full suit of gold armor walked back into the warehouse with a black-cloaked figure over his shoulder. He was obviously related to Khimera as they shared the same brown hair, olive skin, and eye color… when Khimera wasn't flipping between aura states, that is. While Khimera's hair hung down in curls, her brother's was combed straight and slicked back to what could only be described as a lion's mane. Ray Leon obviously took great pride in his Faunus roots.

Khimera grumbled and sneered, her brown flashing blue for a split second, " _What do you want, Ray?"_

Ray mocked offense, "Why, Khimera, is that any way to thank your big brother? Especially after I helped take down these freaks?" He dropped the person he was carrying, revealing the bird skull mask.

" _If anybody did anything it was the Huntsman that actually fought them."_ She hissed as Vincentas helped her to her feet. " _What exactly did_ you _do besides chase down wounded prey?"_

"He acted as my damage sponge, that's what." Vincentas touched Khimera's shoulder. A dull red light enveloped her and faded. He pinched the back of his hand, but Khimera was the one to let out a light 'ouch', "My Semblance. I just call it the Curse. If you don't resist it, it works great," the light appeared over them both, but flashed bright around Vincentas as it faded from Khimera, "I can make someone take hits for me."

"Wow, so you're just naturally a jerk. Here I thought you just weren't a people person," Roland glanced over to Sepia again. Thankfully, she wasn't banged up too bad. The cuts were the worst of her injuries. Her aura had already begun healing the ones that weren't too deep.

Vincentas balled up his fist, "No, no…" he relaxed his hand and strolled over to Timbre, "Anyway, take the bird chick to the cops, Ray. I hope you and your team got the other two. I'm sick of dealing with you and want to be done with this job," he knelt down to see that Sepia had freed Timbre of her bonds. Another hard candy seemingly appeared in his hands, and he shoved it into Timbre's mouth, "And run by the candy shop down the street and pick up my bill. Your mom is handling that in exchange for saving Khimera too, but she doesn't know that yet," he informed Ray while holding Timbre's mouth shut.

Ray grinned widely as he threw the unconscious Sanguwalker back over his shoulder, "Of course we got the other two. You better start being nicer to me old man. Don't want me and my team giving you bad reports on this 'job' do you?"

"Like I care? I mean, you're Atlas. I'm Vacuo… and a freelancer. Like I haven't had bad reviews before. Not many people care if you're polite when they're hiring you for a bounty. All they care about is if the job gets done. In the _real_ world, there isn't enough time to deal with pleasantries and politeness." Vincentas went on while shoving another hard candy into Timbre's mouth, this one neon yellow in color, "I'm serious about the bill, though. I'll hand deliver it if I need to."

"Whatever. I'm sure Team RYAL will be getting a nice reward for bringing in some of the garbage that blew up half this podunk town anyways." With that, the Lion Faunus went to leave out the large warehouse doors, but before stepping out of sight, he turned back, "Nice to see you've really been working with your training, sis. And it's a shame to see Beacon's training is so lackluster compared to what you could have had back home, Umber. At least it suits you." He let out a loud hearty laugh as he disappeared into the night, his golden cape flowing out behind him. The fluttering fabric seemed to simply vanish as it moved out of the moon's light.

 _Well… at least he didn't literally kick me while I was down._ Arty groaned as he tried to push himself up.

"Okay, Girly, this one is too sour even for me. If it doesn't wake you up, you're actually very dead," Vincentas pulled out another hard candy. Electric blue powder coated the sharp green ball of pure sour flavoring. He pushed it between her lips and held her mouth closed to keep the morsel from coming out.

The last thing Timbre could remember was Venice hitting her hard on the back of the head with one of her steam-powered kicks. It only felt like seconds later that her whole face was burning.

She woke up screaming and gagging. Her shouts were cut off as she suddenly began choking on whatever pure evil was attacking her tastebuds. Tears streamed down her face, partly because of the fact she couldn't breathe, but a majority was because of her face wanting to cave in from the sheer sourness filling her mouth.

"Aw geez…" Vincentas slapped her hard on the back, causing the three candies to come shooting out of her throat and roll across the floor, "I swear you kids are infinitely more trouble than you're worth…"

Timbre continued screaming and retching, until she ultimately vomited on Vincentas. She spat and cursed uncontrollably for a few moments until the pain and sourness finally subsided. "Wha-... what the hell _was_ that?!"

"You know that stuff they put on sour candies to make them, you know, sour?" Vincentas looked at his soiled clothing, "Hey, Doodles, bring your backpack over here."

Arty pointed to himself, "Are… are you talking to m-"

"Who else here has a backpack?"

"Right…" With some effort and a lot of pain in his shoulder, Arty made his way over to Vincentas and held out his bag. "I don't see why you need my b-"

Vincentas snatched the bag and began wiping his pants off, "Now, I'm escorting you brats to the airship docks. Who's gonna carry the otter?" he passed the soiled bag back to Arty and stood up.

"Um… I guess that's gonna be me." Arty held the bag at length, looking at its new color in disgust before reluctantly putting his bag back on, careful to avoid hitting his injured arm. "Gonna have to do a _lot_ of laundry when we get back to the dorm…"

"Here… let me help." Khimera walked over and helped Roland to his feet, throwing his arm over her shoulder. "It's the least I could do for getting you into this mess, Umber…"

Arty was going to respond, but she shot a look at him. Her piercing brown eyes told him that their discussion would have to wait until later.

"By the way…" Roland glared at Khimera while Arty got into position to help him hobble along, "You, Arty, and I have a lot to talk about... _with_ Timbre and Sepia. No blackmail. No secrets. No snapping at each other this time. Sound fair?"

They all nodded, excluding Timbre, who looked ready to throw up again.

"I just want to go home…" she said weakly before covering her mouth to stifle another wave of nausea.

Sepia nodded in agreement. Golden bits of glass-like particles rained down from the ceiling. She slumped her shoulders. Exhaustion hit her like a crashing wave as her vision and hearing returned to normal, ' _It's good that we're all safe and sound…'_ blood trickled down from the newly uncovered wound on her face. It didn't matter too much to her, though. It was just a flesh wound after all.

Upon exiting the building, the five students found the warehouse surrounded by police cars and people looking on from behind barricades. Apparently the panic had died down enough for the citizens of Vale to come back into town and then let their curiosity draw them towards the brawl going on in the warehouse district.

Sanguwalker, Trex, and Venice were being loaded into a police cruiser. All of them had their masks ripped and broken off, presumably by Team RYAL. Sanguwalker was apparently a dark complected woman with light blonde, nearly white, hair and piercing green eyes. One of the tendrils on her back twitched and tried to attack the officers holding her, but it just fell limply to the ground in defeat.

Trex was being loaded in next. His snarl and annoyed glare passed over Team ARTS and Khimera as he was pushed down into the back of the car. He didn't look particularly strange, as far as appearance goes. Brown eyes, brown hair, fair complexion, and a tiny bit baby-faced. That had to have been a plus when trying to blend in with a crowd.

Finally, Venice ducked her head to slide into the police cruiser. Short red hair, tanned complexion, bright blue eyes, scars on her face. She certainly looked to be dangerous, and certainly had the rugged look of a criminal. Neither Trex nor Sanguwalker looked very dangerous, but this one had the eyes of a killer. Had she not been forced to keep Team ARTS and Khimera alive, she would have almost certainly killed them all.

"Oh gods…" Timbre shrunk back from the murderous gaze of Venice. She let out a sigh of relief once the car door shut, "Glad this wasn't all for nothing at least... I'm having enough trouble sleeping already…"

"Well…" Arty put a hand on her shoulder, "maybe knowing that they're not going to be causing any more trouble will help you sleep a bit better." He looked over to the back of the police car, where Ray was jovially explaining to some police officers how his team had caught the three Grimm Brotherhood operatives with Vincentas standing nearby to give the real details and make corrections when needed. "Maybe it also helps that there are a few people who can actually fight back against a bunch of them at once…"

"Yeah…" Timbre smiled, "and it helps tha-"

"SEE YA LATER! FREAKS!" Roland shouted at the top of his lungs. He stumbled a bit, but Arty and Khimera caught him before he could fall, "It's _really_ good to see those psychos get caught. Man, we know _so many_ names now. The hierarchy, guys! The. Hierarchy. Even this Commander Maelstrom guy!" he grinned wide, "And we know they have more planned, which means we just have to wait for what's to come! I can pack up all my notes and newspaper clippings!"

Sepia's eyes lit up. She stood back up straight and looked between Roland, Arty, and Timbre, ' _Did he just say he was putting up his notes?!'_ she signed frantically.

Timbre nodded, "Yeah… I think he did…"

"Wow…" Arty looked shocked towards his partner, who was still beaming from the flood of new information. "Maybe _I'll_ get to sleep tonight, too!"

"Yeah! In the… infirmary… beds…" Roland's face went slack. Images of bandage changes and being forced to take pain killers in that wretched room flashed through his mind, "They're gonna make us stay in the infirmary at least for the night… Not again…"

Arty winced as he grabbed his shoulder, "No kidding… I could barely stand that place when I was just _visiting_ last semester… but at least we can use the time recovering to figure out what just happened to us tonight…"

"Yeah…" Khimera cocked an eyebrow, "Wait, what's so bad about the infirmary?"

* * *

"This sucks. This sucks. This sucks. This. SUCKS!" Rime whined from her bed. All she had to cover her was the white hospital gown that the nurse had put over her and the blanket to keep her legs warm. Thick bandages wrapped around her middle like white pythons. Every single movement made it feel as though they were constricting even more, "I hate this! This is _so_ stupid! Why can't I stay in my own room?! I'm getting _way_ too hot with this blanket!" she kicked at it, then groaned and held her stomach, "Ow…"

Lurida was in the exact same position as Rime, but the nurse had been kind enough to give her a lavender hospital gown and matching blanket. Unfortunately, Lurida explicitly hated lavender. Every time she tried to get comfortable, the vase of flowers on her side table, the blanket over her legs, and whatever else wasn't nailed down began to float for just a moment before being dropped back in place, "I swear… if Xannie doesn't sneak me in some coffee… I am going to kill somebody…"

' _If you do, can it be me so I can stop hearing everybody complain?'_ Sepia signed half-heartedly. This certainly wasn't her first rodeo in a hospital bed, nor would it be the last. The cuts on her cheek still throbbed, but they seemed to be healing nicely. The nurse even said that it probably wouldn't scar, ' _It isn't that bad._ '

"At least we have each other's' company…" Timbre commented meekly, "As if… that really means much right now…" She added upon seeing Lurida and Rime begin bickering over the lack of gravity knocking things onto the floor.

"Well, we've got plenty of time to talk about what happened tonight," Roland looked around the room. He would have gotten up to help secure Rime and Lurida's things, but that was impossible. His knee was in a brace, and his leg was elevated by a sling. He wasn't going anywhere anytime soon.

Khimera and Arty obviously felt uncomfortable, especially since Rime and Lurida were in the room. As far as they knew, they weren't involved in the fiasco.

"You sure that's a good idea to do that now, Roland?" Arty asked, adjusting the bandages wrapped around his torso to cover his shoulder.

Khimera closed her eyes to hide the fact that they were turning blue, " _Now's a better time than ever. Once we're out of here, I have no doubt my team and my mother won't let me anywhere near Team ARTS."_

"My mother already spoke with your mother and Alabaster… as well as the Vacuo headmaster, Vivian Willows," Dante shivered underneath the pile of blankets over her. After having her Semblance backfire, listening to her mother's lecture after she was picked up from the hospital, and being placed in the infirmary, she wasn't feeling fantastic, "As long as we keep quiet about most of this and not scare the other students, we're fine. Mother told me about that Onyx Alabaster had a theory about an infiltrator within Beacon and I imagine that theory extends to the other three academies. That considered, I think that it's best that we all be open with the information that we have. Knowing who isn't an infiltrator can be just as useful as knowing who is."

Khimera nodded, "Well I think it's safe to say any of us that got the hell beaten out of us tonight isn't one of them… so… How about we start by just going over what we've figured out, hm?"

Roland looked over to the nightstand at his hat. He plopped it on, the new singed tear in the brim bouncing and sending flakes of ash falling onto his hospital gown, "From what I could overhear from those loud-mouths talking, there are titles within their little club." He began counting on his fingers, "First, the Commander, who heads the whole group. Then there's a Lieutenant in each of the four kingdoms. And then there are Captains, who seem to be the major enforcers and take direct orders from their respective Lieutenant. Finally, Officers, who I imagine is pretty much a fancy name for 'grunt', with Venice being an exception for whatever reason. We've seen two Officers with fancy Grimm masks and weird weapons, Oro and Venice. The Captains that we've seen, Sanguwalker and Trex, had the same…" he tapped the brim of his hat as he thought. "It seems to be a sort of status symbol or sign of power within the Grimm Brotherhood. Then we know the names of the Lieutenants: Hulud, Tursus, Chiman, and one that I can only guess is named Koloss. We also know a Commander Maelstrom. Anyone know why those names are significant?"

Dante perked up, "Well… I do, but you know why I know. We read the 'Epic of Virtuous Warriors' together when we were kids."

"The who of the what now?" Rime asked, finally picking up on the conversation.

"I second that." Arty added.

"What…?" Roland raised an eyebrow, "You've never heard of it…? Dude, that piece is studied extensively in the preparatory combat schools for its literary _and_ historical context. Mom went over that thing daily for an entire month back at Sanctum."

Everyone except for Dante and Khimera stared at him blankly.

"I swear…" Roland groaned up at the ceiling, "I'm guessing that none of the other schools that you guys went to had very good literature programs…" he crossed his arms, "The short version is that it's a story about humans rising from the four cradles of civilization in Vale, Mistral, Vacuo, and Mantle. Atlas used to be called Mantle, for those of you that might not know. Five giant Grimm were created alongside the regular ones that we're training to fight. These giant Grimm were the God of Darkness' greatest creations, but they were destroyed by two warriors from each cradle. The Grimm over the area of Vacuo was the Hulud. Over Mistral was the Tursus. The Chiman was over Mantle. The one over Vale was called the Koloss, hence why that's probably the fourth Lieutenant's title. The fifth one resided in the seas around what would eventually become Vytal. It was known as the Maelstrom, and it was said to direct and communicate with the other four. It was known to be much more destructive than the others, and it took all eight off the warriors to destroy."

"It's much more enriching when you read it all for yourselves. It's one of my favorite epics… such a wonderful fusion of poetry and narrative…" Dante smiled sleepily. Apparently one of the few times that she loosened up was when she was talking about poetry.

"So in other words, the Grimm Brotherhood made their little cosplays and naming system correlate to this old legend?" Lurida grumbled, "No wonder everyone thinks that they're some sort of cult..."

Roland nodded, "Considering that they're behaving similarly to the old giant Grimm would indicate that they are, in fact, a cult. It sounds like they're taking the evil depictions in old religions and emulating them. Those things didn't even exist in the first place. It's just a story, an allegory for the rise and triumph of mankind as they managed to build safe havens and defend themselves against the Creatures of Grimm, but they seem to be taking it all to heart."

Khimera glanced over to Roland, "I guess this is the point where I tell you the things I _shouldn't_ know… My brother's team, Team RYAL, and my team, Team FNKS, are some of the upper-year teams helping combat the Grimm Brotherhood in Atlas. My brother fights the Grimm Brotherhood the general public doesn't know about. You see, back home, they seem to be a bunch of bumbling idiots, and those are the ones that my team fights. They seem like a bunch of bumbling idiots because that's exactly what they want everyone to think, and the military is forced to play along. In reality… we're having trouble. Weapons, supplies, even vehicles are getting stolen almost on a daily basis back home. Those are the operatives my brother fights. There'd be mass hysteria if people knew what was really going on."

"And about your mission a few months ago?" Arty asked.

Khimera sighed, "My team and I were sent to intercept what we thought were the weaker facade group as they tried to break into an airship hangar near the edge of the main glacier. Turns out, our info was a bit off and they weren't just a facade group. One of those maniacs they caught tonight was leading a big group as they stole a few airships. We fought back and managed to take in a few of the grunts, but Sanguwalker managed to get away with the remainder of her group and the ships." She shook her head, "Didn't even get any worthwhile information out of the ones we caught."

"So why couldn't you tell us that tonight? What does hijacking a bunch of military airships have to do with Vale getting attacked and them targeting us?" Roland glared at her. He wanted more answers, but all she was giving him was more questions.

"Even though we're here for the Vytal Tournament, Team RYAL is still doing work fighting the Grimm Brotherhood as a collaboration between Atlas Academy and Beacon. I'm supposed to sit by and act as the goody-goody daughter of the general." She sighed, a flash of blue flaring in her eyes before fading quickly, "My mother sent Ray out on a mission a week or so ago to the surrounding towns. He fought against one of the other Captains, Echo. He managed to get ahold of his communicator and take pictures of a few of the messages from some of the other members including Echo's Lieutenant, Koloss…" she looked over to Roland and Dante, "They were basically instructions for what happened tonight."

' _Which is why Vincentas was there to save us,'_ Sepia signed. She pursed her lips in thought. Something didn't quite line up right with Khimera's account, ' _Did the messages mention any of us by name?'_ she looked to Timbre to translate.

Timbre looked to Khimera while fidgeting with the unplugged audio jack of her headphones, "She wants to know if the messages your brother intercepted mentioned any of us by name."

"They do seem to know a ton about us… and they talked about taking us tonight…" Arty muttered quietly.

Khimera couldn't look at Timbre as yellow seeped into her eyes. "Y-y-yes… they did. As Alab-b-baster told us, they seem to be targeting T-t-team ARTS for some reason. All four of you were on the list. B-but Dante, Ray, and I were as well. I imagine it was b-b-because we're the children of the headmistresses. What they wanted to d-d-do with us, I don't know, but they had explicit p-p-plans to have us in Vale tonight…" she looked solemnly down to her bunched up fists as her aura returned to normal, "And I pulled you right into it all…"

"Not necessarily." Lurida piped up, "You only dragged Arty down there. Timbre came with Rime to see a counselor. I took the lead on our ensuing investigation, but Timbre would have probably come back here had it not been for that."

"Then Dante, Epazote, and I went down to get away from things for the night. That was a mutual decision between us. In fact, it was mostly to give me a break from everything I've been working on, which also means that it was explicitly not involving you, Khimera," Roland added.

Sepia signed something to Timbre and nodded for her to translate.

"Um…" Timbre thought on the gestures, "Sepia says that she went down to Vale to catch up on all the new movies and to clear her head."

"Which means a lot of it was chance. So how does a plan like this involve us?" Roland asked.

Khimera unballed her fists, "Well, the list said that Team ARTS, Dante, my brother, and I were targets, but there was a note of a priority. One of us couldn't die no matter what," she shot a look to Timbre.

Timbre looked shocked, " _Me_?! Why would _I_ be a priority?..."

"It wouldn't be the first time they've been after you, right?..." Rime asked, remembering the discussion she had had with Timbre about Koruss Stadium.

' _That's right… The first time any of us had experienced the Grimm Brotherhood was that night in the Emerald Forest… except for Timbre,'_ Sepia looked between Dante and Khimera, ' _Well, that goes for Team ARTS.'_

Roland nodded, "That's kind of weird that they'd go for Timbre first. There isn't anything special about her other than her status. No offense, Timbre."

Timbre ignored Roland's comment. She didn't know what to think, "I never did anything to them! I thought tonight was supposed to be payback for, y'know, bruising their egos by killing their Trex last semester."

"I'd say that the Trex was pretty trivial," Roland rolled his eyes, "What I'm saying is that it's weird that only one of us has been targeted more than once… but… wait a second… the trade routes…"

Dante's eyes lit up, "The Grimm Brotherhood's attacks on the barges…" she nodded, "If they could put Mistral Trading Company in a bad position financially, then we wouldn't be able to sustain tight security… We'd have to keep hiring Huntsmen, and there's no telling who half of them really are. It'd be much easier to get close to Mother and I that way."

"So they want to get close to people in positions of power," Lurida thought aloud, "but that leave Arty and Sepia out."

"Their attacks on MTC aren't to get close to me," Roland placed his hat into his lap, "Sanguwalker confirmed that my mother was killed as part of a 'right place at the wrong time' situation, whatever that's supposed to mean. The operation was carried out under Lieutenant Tursas."

' _I'm not an outlier, either. I apparently am connected to CiCi too!'_ Sepia signed frantically.

"You… you're… what?!" Timbre acted as her translator as her fingers continued to fly about, "Sepia's parents were part of Team CIRS while they were in training, and later in their careers. The members of that team were CiCi Oscura, Indy Hughes, Ripley Hughes, and Shirley Nozium."

"Wait, what?!" Roland and Dante both shouted in unison.

Arty fell flat on his bed, covering his head with his pillow, "I'm. So. Confused. First my mom and Timbre's dad turn out to be childhood friends, and now Roland's mom and Sepia's parents knew each other," he shook his head, "We're all from different kingdoms… so those can't be your average run-of-the-mill coincidences…"

Rime felt like her brain was short circuiting.

Lurida, on the other hand, was following along just fine and listening intently. At some point, she had pulled on one of her gloves. How she got it past the nurse, nobody had a clue. She sat there typing away on a holographic panel, moving shapes and diagrams about as she tried to keep up with all the information being presented.

"Sepia's parents died when they were overtaken by Grimm, but CiCi and Shirley managed to get away. Sepia's auntie-mom made it clear that she thinks that's the reason that CiCi went to teaching, and Sepia thinks that's the reason that Shirley pursued becoming a headmistress," Timbre watched Sepia's hands carefully, "Which means that Sepia is loosely connected to CiCi. It's a stretch, but any connection during these circumstances could mean a lot more than what it might seem…"

Sepia nodded in satisfaction and stopped signing.

Dante looked to Roland, "I didn't know that Mother and Professor Oscura were on the same team, though."

"Yeah… neither did I…" he tried to wrap his mind around them working together as teammates. How could a woman like CiCi mesh at all with a woman like Shirley? "If Mom was targeted, then it isn't much of a stretch to think that Sepia, whose parents were connected to both of them, is connected in some way." He still couldn't believe that he had a previous connection with Sepia. It was surreal thinking that maybe, in some other life, they would've grown up together.

Arty's brow furrowed in confusion, "That wouldn't make Sepia a target of the Grimm Brotherhood though, would it?"

Rime interrupted, raising her hand.

Realizing the room went quiet, Lurida looked over to her, "Well?... What is it?"

"Executive decision to refer to them as the GB from now on? It's getting real tiring hearing Grimm Brotherhood over and over…"

"Is now really the time to suggest something that… trivial?" Dante glanced over to Rime.

Rime lowered her hand. "S-sorry…"

Timbre looked to Sepia and began translating once more, "She says that she has made a few films that critics haven't been too incredibly happy over. Apparently, she's tackled a few controversial themes before. Other than that, the only thing that comes to mind is her being the child of two of Team CIRS' members, but she has no clue as to why that would matter."

"So what about Arty…?" Roland looked to his partner.

Arty gazed out the large windows across from him into the dark night outside,"I guess I'm seriously the only one on there for those bruised egos we mentioned… I did land the killing blow on the Trex after all."

"There's something that's still bothering me. If Arty and I were in Vale to fight the Grimm Brotherhood, and you all just seemed to be there by coincidence... then…" Khimera's eyes widened in realization, "Then maybe the old man isn't as crazy as we initially thought…" she looked to the other four targets, "Isn't it a little strange that you all managed to be down in town the _night_ they decided to put their plan in motion? Arty and I make sense, we knew that something was going to happen. But… you guys..."

"Get to the point, Leon," Lurida griped.

Everyone half expected Blue Khimera to snap back at Lurida, but she stayed her normal shade of brown, "What did you say about an investigation earlier?..."

"Frost's life story makes no sense," Lurida told the group flatly.

"Who?" Khimera and Dante asked together.

Rime raised her hand again, as if scared to say anything, "She's my team's leader."

Lurida nodded, "Team FREZ along with Team ARTS are two of the three first-year teams that my team, Team GLXY, mentors. Frost has told people her father died in a Dust mine that doesn't exist. Her mother is supposedly a counselor that works at a clinic that Xannie and I's therapist, Sofaira Weaver, is stationed at while she's visiting Vale from Mistral. However, Frost's mother didn't exist when we questioned the receptionist, but then Mrs. Aurora suddenly appeared when we went back to get some questions answered. In short, Frost's mother does and does not exist, so we tried to break into the clinic after it closed. It blew up right as I was about to go in, and Timbre saved me from the explosion. That's the full story."

Rime raised her hand yet again, "I was there, too!"

"Right…" Khimera kept processing everything, "Roland said he, his sister, and friend went down to get some supplies… and Sepia saw a movie."

"What are you getting at, Khimera?" Arty felt concerned. He had the haunting suspicion he wasn't going to like what he was about to hear.

"Has Professor Alabaster talked to any of you about a potential infiltrator at Beacon?"

Lurida and Arty nodded.

"And we thought at first it was just _coincidence_ that all of the targets on Echo's list were in town the night the GB attacked? Bombing the buildings they did wasn't something they could've thrown together last minute. They _wanted_ us there… I think that whoever Onyx's infiltrator is somehow managed to convince all of us to be down in Vale tonight."

"That's a bit of a stretch don't you think?" Despite sounding as if she didn't believe Khimera's theory, Timbre's face still went pale.

Everything around Lurida began to float lightly, their weight becoming nonexistent as her Semblance flared. "Aurora… she was the whole reason Timbre was still down in Vale when the bombs went off."

"But that was you finding holes, Lurida. Frost never directly said anything to keep us all down there…" Rime spoke up.

"But this wouldn't be the first time that Frost was acting suspicious," Roland pointed out, "Turf and I ran into her on the roof after there was an intruder in the Team ARTS dorm. She immediately got very cross with me when I suggested that she couldn't be trusted and that she could be in the GB," he explained, "After that, she's pretty much ignored me. I've never known her that well, but she's always waved at me across the hall or been fine with a little chat. She acted normal, but now she acts like I don't exist. In fact, Turf mentioned to me that it's been the same way for him."

Rime shook her head, "No. There's no way she is… there has to be a reason for her to be hiding something."

Lurida slammed her fist against the sheets. "You saw the same thing Timbre and I saw, Rime! You heard the receptionist, too! Everything that happened there earlier today pointed to something being off about the whole situation!"

"Wait!" Timbre jumped up, "Lurida… that's it."

She glanced over to Timbre, gravity still weaker around her, "Excuse me?"

"The receptionist! The only people in the room were you, me, Rime, and the receptionist!"  
"Your point?"  
"So, Mrs. Weaver couldn't have told us about Mrs. Aurora! You saw the way she glared back at the guy before you… got… scary. What I'm saying is, the receptionist was the only one who directly lied and or didn't tell us the truth. What if he just so happened to be there to confuse us, and then came back to spray-paint Roland's wheel on the door? That would explain why Mrs. Weaver and Mrs. Aurora also had no clue what was going on!"

Lurida mulled over what Timbre was saying, typing out everything in words to try to use logic to see if there was any inconsistencies in her reasoning. She waved her hand down, closing the panel. "Okay, so you have a point, but that doesn't take care of the mine. I lived in the area my whole life and that place _does not exist_." She crossed her arms, "If you ask me, Frost is still Alabaster's infiltrator."

Arty shook his head, "Uh… not really. He explicitly told Alice, Frost, and I he trusts we are who we say we are. I know the man can be a little strange sometimes, but his judgement's been pretty sound from what I can tell."

"When exactly did he tell you this?" Timbre looked over to her leader.

Arty was quiet for a moment before responding, "Well… earlier today, after the mock mission with McGouran. He called the three of us up to his office to show us a cloak that the faculty had found out in the Emerald Forest where we fought the Trex. He talked about how Oro seemed to know way too much about the first-years and believed he was being paranoid, making a connection that didn't mean what he thought it meant. Like two puzzle pieces that don't fit together but look like they should. Unfortunately, it looks like he may be right to believe that there's an infiltrator at Beacon, but I refuse to believe it's Frost. Even after the way she's been acting and her story not adding up."

"Unless the old fool's letting the Grimm Brotherhood in right under his nose…" Lurida grumbled.

Rime looked offended, "Hey, Professor Alabaster's been more than great to us, not to mention all the privileges he gives your team to help him out as much as you do. He's a smart man."

Before Lurida could snap back, Arty cut back in, "We don't even know if there even is one for sure. He just has a hunch. Who knows, maybe Khimera's theory _is_ wrong and we all just happened to be in town at the wrong time. Sepia was just seeing a movie for crying out loud!"

"We've got a face for Trex, Sanguwalker, and Venice," Roland pointed out, "but not for Oro. She had _personal_ information on us. Not just general stuff. I think that it's safe to say that Oro is likely the infiltrator," the facts all felt muddled in his brain. A few things weren't quite piecing together, but he couldn't pinpoint exactly how they would in the first place, "I'm willing to bet that Oro, or whatever other infiltrators there might be, was the one to lure us into position. How she managed that is up for debate, but we're dealing with people that have things we don't fully understand, like weapons that can make short work of aura. There's no telling what else they're capable of."

Lurida looked as if she still wanted to argue, but she restrained herself. She pulled up the holographic screen again, "I took notes on everything… It's all in my files. I'll report what we learned to Alabaster in the morning."

"Would you be so kind as to forward the files you made to all of us, Lurida? I'd feel much safer if we all had the information that you compiled…" Dante pulled her blankets over her head and shivered, "You can just forward it through our scrolls if you're willing…"

Lurida sneered, "It'll take some time… but I guess I can since we're all… involved. None of this needs to leave us or Alabaster, though."

"I won't for my own sake. I've received threats from people who don't care for Father, and I certainly do not want more of that…" Dante shrunk down into the mattress.

Roland nodded, "At least we learned something from this."

"But does all this mean that there's nobody we can trust? Outside this room I mean?" Timbre plugged her headphones into her MP3, ready to get some sleep. After all the running, stress, and getting beaten, she might actually get a good night's sleep for once.

' _There are, but not with this stuff,'_ Sepia let out a silent sigh and grinned, ' _Until we know more, it's probably best that we just enjoy our time and keep our heads low. It'll be good to finally just… relax."_

"Well…" Rime mused as she let out a loud yawn, "We have the wonderful mess that's midterms coming up, and then after that we have prom. Nothing more relaxing than that… right?"


	43. V2Ch15: The Grass is Always Greener

Bits of cardboard dotted the floor of Team MTLC's room. Fractured sheets of cardboard were duct taped to Curie's bedframe, but had been torn asunder amidst the yelling and screaming. Bright orange corn chips had been scattered across the room, and puddles of neon green soda had begun soaking into the carpet. In one corner that had been spared by the tornado of nacho cheese and sticky soda was Ledning, who was trying to take a nap through the chaos. He was never one to take part in Midas and Titian's… antics.

Midas had latched onto the hood of Curie's pull over. He held on tight and threw Curie's gaming controller over to Titian, "GET IT TOGETHER, CURIE!" he shouted frantically enough to shake a few torn bits of cardboard from his shoulders, "YOU'RE GOING TO PROM!"

"Dammit, Midas I don't wanna!" Cure flailed as she tried to escape Midas's grasp. She already hated having her game-time interrupted. Due to midterms, she hadn't had much time to play, so her team was _not_ going to get in the way of some long-awaited gaming.

"If she makes a break for it, use your Semblance on it, T!" Midas shouted at Titian, who had her back to the wall to avoid getting an unhealthy coating of junk food and cardboard on her armor, "Hide the thing!"

"Nah, that'd probably tear her soul out if I did that." She chuckled as Cure finally managed to break Midas' hold on her hoodie. Titian held the controller high above her head as Curie jumped and reached for it. "Okay there Caffeine Creature, calm down a little and hear us out."

Midas put on his winning smile, "You're going to prom with Arty, so we're going dress shopping."

"I. Don't. Do. Dresses." She shook her head vigorously as she glared between the two of them, "And I don't. Do. Proms."

"You do now, or I will use _my_ Semblance on the screen of your handheld," Midas dove across the room and snatched up the device on Curie's bed. He held up the device, a little screen with a bright green plastic casing and buttons, and pressed his finger to the screen, "You won't be able to see a _thing_."

"Do you both want to die?" Her serious demeanor fell to one of pleading, her lower lip quivering a bit due to the threat of her devices getting destroyed. "C'mon you guys… please…. Don't make me do this…"

"What's the big deal?" Ledning lifted his head up from his pillow, "Just throw on some cheap dress and deal. Why are you so freaked out over this anyway?" he sat up and swung his legs over the side of the bed, "All of you are making this a bigger issue than it really is."

The other three members of Team MTLC stared blankly at him before they continued bickering.

"Curie, stop it!" Titian found Curie's palm being pushed against her cheek as the smaller girl tried to climb her to reach the controller, "Jusht go down teh Vale and look around, okay?" She held Curie out at arm's length, "You might find something you actually like. We're down there for two hours at most, and then you can come back and veg out. Deal?"

Curie stuttered as she fought her social anxiety. She looked over to Midas, who just taunted her by waggling her handheld around. She crossed her arms and humphed. "Fine!... I'll go… but _two_ hours!" She pointed at Titian, "You don't keep your promise and I'll rearrange the components of your guns and turn them into a fancy glowing egg-beater!" As Midas began to laugh, she pointed to him, " _And_ I'll combine Chrysos and Drachma into one transforming weapon."

Midas fell silent. He slowly nodded in agreement, but kept quiet. If he said one thing wrong, then he would have a brand new weapon that was just like everyone else's. Knowing Curie, she would even add a new form. It would be a nightmare come to reality.

"You wouldn't dare…"

"Try me, Goldilocks."

"Fine…" Midas grabbed his wallet off of his nightstand, "Team MTLC moving out. Two hours in Vale on the dot," he cringed at his own militaristic snappiness, "And shoot me the next time I sound like that…"

* * *

"Timbre, no. Nuh-uh. I can't do it. Not her." Arty shook his head as he tried to bury himself in his sheets. "Just… just leave me alone and let me draw for a little bit."

"You finally admit that you have a crush on Curie, and you expect me to just let it go? Um, 'nuh-uh'. You're not going to prom alone. You're asking Curie," Timbre latched onto Arty's sheets and threw them off of him, "Come on, Arty! Let your feelings out for once! Fall to love, Arty! Fall! To! Love!"

"Did… did you just use some of your song lyrics to try to convince me to ask out one of my _childhood friends_?..."

"The fifth line of the second verse of 'Miles Above' on the album _Downtown Blitz_. Yes," Roland said without looking up from an omnibus of H. E. Loverust's works, "Replace 'Arty' with 'baby' and it's the same line."

Sepia sat with him on his bed, wedged between him and his book so that he'd have to read over her shoulder, ' _You listened to the albums I leant you?!'_ she signed in front of the pages.

"Yeah? Not my usual type of music, but not bad," he rolled his eyes, "There's a few songs I like from Timbre's discography."

"Wow… thanks for the… compliment?" For all the times Roland called her music 'emo' or 'self-loathing', she was surprised that he actually took the time to learn that it was actually the exact opposite. Yeah, her music was emotional, but nowhere near the level Roland always mocked her for. _Thanks, Sepia_ , she thought to herself as she returned to the matter at hand.

"Ask Curie, Arty," Roland flipped a page, "If you don't know how to ask the girl, then I'll take a few excerpts from Mom's romance novels. You can practice those lines to prepare, or just memorize them. Whatever works."

Sepia's eyes flashed gold as she remembered something. Somewhere in the newly repaired cinema, an orb of golden light flashed in and out of existence. All Sepia saw was bits of flying popcorn as someone fell over. _Geez… maybe I know that place a bit too well if I can make an orb there from this far away…_

She shook off the thought, ' _We should take him to see 'The Sketchbook'! That's a perfect romance story for him to copy!'_

"Or just have him read the book. The book's always better," Roland batted back.

' _Because movies can't copy your imagination. Sorry, but films bring actual life into a book,'_ Sepia quickly signed back.

"And limited by time. You can read a book at your own pace, but you can't watch a movie at your own pace."

' _You can if you pause it!'_

"You don't have to pause a book. They have chapters."

' _So do movies! They just don't have clearly marked chapters!'_

"Books are better!" Roland finally shouted.

' _They're a dead form of media!'_

Silence fell across the room. Before Timbre or Arty could interject, Roland and Sepia both burst out laughing.

"Are you two… okay?" Arty said from beneath his blanket sanctuary.

"It keeps us from actually getting angry with each other if we turn arguments into a joke," Roland had to hold back his laughter as Sepia went on about how movies were objectively better in every way, "And that debate comes up a lot with us, so yeah. We're better than ever!"

Timbre wanted to keep asking questions, but decided to just ignore them and return to playing matchmaker. "C'mon Arty. I've seen the way she is around you. Her whole serious demeanor breaks every now and then when she talks with you. Just…" she grabbed Arty by the arm and yanked him out of his bed, " _go ask her._ "

' _Go get her some flowers and chocolates or something. Sappy crap like that works all the times in movies. There's a reason it's a cliche_.'

"See, that's the reason that books do romance better. They actually use _new_ ideas that the movies steal!" Roland slammed his book shut, "' _Nights of Our Days',_ page 427, line 3, starting on word 2. 'I don't want flowers, Tyrius! I want y-'"

' _Stop. Please, for the love of the gods stop!'_ Sepia reached up and covered his mouth.

Timbre continued dragging Arty towards the door. "Flowers and chocolates it is."

Arty tried to dig his hands into the carpet, but he knew very well that Timbre was much stronger than she looked. Resistance was futile as he was finally taken into the hall.

"Wanna go along? We could catch that movie you wanted me to go see with you. What was it… 'True Pit' or something…?" Roland set his book down on the bed.

Sepia hopped up and pulled him up on the way. It was decided. After they finished harassing Arty and Curie, it was date night.

.

"Hey, I was thinking that maybe we could go to prom together since we've spent so much time together and you've had my back and I've had yours and I'm a really good boy- no. Stop. That's stupid," Turf ran his fingers through his hair. A fingernail clipped one of the dog ears on his head, "Ow!" he shouted at the bathroom mirror, "Ugh! Just get it together and ask the girl!" he shouted at his reflection.

"What in the _bloody_ hell are you doing?..."

Turf yiped and spun around to find Alice standing in the open bathroom door. He thought he was alone in ANTE's room. Despite his sensitive hearing, he hadn't even heard Alice come in.

"You know that ya can be 'eard from out in tha hall, right? You're gettin' pretty loud an'… desperate soundin' to find tha right words." She rolled her eyes, "Who exactly are ya doin' all this for? Let me guess, it's Timba idn't it?"

"I- uh- um…" Turf grabbed onto an ear and tugged, a nervous habit he'd developed from spending a little too much time with Set, "She's a celebrity, Alice! I'm a freaking dog! Literally! Well… at least halfway literally… but the point still stands! I'm screwed…"

"Oh bugga…" Despite the time she'd spent trying to disassociate herself from her past prejudices, she couldn't help but feel awkward when trying to be personal and nicer towards her partner. Hesitantly, she grabbed him by the shoulders and turned him towards the mirror. "Listen, you can't keep puttin' titles like that on everybody. You're not a dog. You're Turf. Timbre's not a celebrity. She's Timbre. You talk to her on a nearly daily basis an' yet you can't ask a simple question? That's a load of bollocks if ya ask me." _Please tell me that was good advice. Please tell me that was good advice… Please tell me I'm gettin' betta at this…_

"I… you… she…" Turf looked at Alice in the mirror, "I… guess you're right. I'll go ask her," he pulled away and went straight for the door. He whipped it open just in time to see Timbre leading Arty towards the stairwell with his hand in hers. His ears flattened out atop his head, "O-oh…"

"Turf? What is- oh... bollocks…" Alice was able to catch a small glimpse of what Turf saw right before Arty and Timbre disappeared into the stairwell. _Be supportive, don't get mad, be supportive, don't get mad._ "Ummm… look, Turf. I'm sure it's not what it looked like. Timba spends _way_ too much time with ya to blow you off for Umba of all people…"

"Half of Team ARTS is already a couple… it makes sense if Arty and Timbre get together…" Turf slowly shut the door, put his back to it, and slid down. He could hear Roland and Sepia's footsteps in tandem as they followed Arty and Timbre out, "It's fine… I'll just… go with you guys or something. You, Navy, and Ebon don't have dates either, right…?"

"Well… not exactly…" She couldn't help but feel hurt as Turf looked up at her with his big sad green puppy-dog eyes, "Navy's been tryin' ta make up for bein' such a jerk ta me an' you and asked me ta go with 'im as a friend." She tried to give him a slight smile, "Ebon's still dateless as far as I know. Ya could always ask him to go ta prom with ya."

Turf just lowered his head and held it between his knees.

"Right, right… not the best time for jokes…"

"It's cool… I guess I'll just…" he thought for a few quiet moments, "But why would Arty hold her hand so fast? He's awkward," his ears perked up, "Alice, I need your help."

Alice looked around as if looking to see if there was anyone else in the room, "You're… askin' _me_ for help?... Why d-"

"Help me figure out what's going on. I've got good hearing, and your eyesight is better than perfect. We're gonna go see what they're doing," he stood up and whipped open the door once more, "We can hang back and watch. If it isn't what it all looks like, then I wanna know before I go ahead and ask Timbre to prom. That way I don't make a fool of myself if Arty and Timbre _are_ a couple."

"Dontcha think you're… overreactin' a bit, Turf?"

"Then think of it as mission! Come on, just help me out for once," Turf's ears drooped, "It'll be like an exercise to become… closer as partners… I guess…"

"Riiiiight… okay then." _Is this how I'm supposed to get betta at this? Would it be rude to tell him he's off his rocka and should just go talk to her?... Whateva makes him happy I guess…_

"Awesome!" he grabbed Alice by the wrist and pulled her out the door.

* * *

"Okay, you can't go to prom in _that_ , Curie…" Titian leaned against the wall. The changing room of the dress shop had been cleared out just for Curie, as she refused to change if anyone she didn't know was even remotely close by.

Curie glared at Titian from behind her spectacles. Though she hadn't received a full-on makeover, Titian had gone out of her way to clean the grease out of her hair and tidy up here and there. Her glasses were free of sugary spots, she actually smelled alright, and her usually messy hair had been tied back in a neat ponytail with an actual ponytail holder.

"Don't give me that look. That's a granny dress," Titian waved her finger up and down at Curie.

As much work as Titian put into cleaning Curie up just a little bit, Curie had a way of making it all for naught. The dress that Curie had picked out to try on was the very definition of 'tacky granny dress'. Neon green paisley covered the material of the dress. The only bit that didn't have the nauseating pattern across it was the massive leather belt that went around her stomach. Never had there been a collar so high and frilly, or at least as far as Titian had seen. Long sleeves puffed like radioactive marshmallows around Curie's arms, and the insult to fashion trailed all the way down to the doily-infected cuffs that hugged her wrists. Perhaps the worst part of the dress was the skirt which covered even Curie's ankles and made her look like a formless energy drink can from the waist down. Killing the abomination via cremation seemed like the only viable way to deal with that _thing_ that Curie was wearing.

"I like it. It makes me feel…" Curie hesitated. The word struggled to get past her lips, but finally clawed its way out, "...pretty."

 _So this is why Atlas is clear on thinking with your brain and not your heart..._ Titian forced back a gag as the dress fell back into her peripheral vision, "That's really great. I'm really happy that you found something that makes you feel pretty, but…" she bit her cheek. Words weren't flowing out of her as naturally as they normally did due to the nausea that filled her gut, "It might up-show too many people, you know? A dress that… classic might make people feel… inferior to you?"

"I don't care about that. I like this one, Titian," Curie pressed on.

"What about this one?" Titian grabbed one of the dresses that Curie hadn't tried on from the hook on the door, "This is nice!" she waved a more form-fitting dress with bright green sequins in front of Curie. It was much more in line with modern style, but far more revealing.

"That would make me feel like a…" Curie searched for words that Titian would understand. Saying that she would look like a 'barbarian's fifth wife in Azeraltia' wasn't going to mean a thing to Titian, "It would make me look like a hussey."

"It would make you look stylish, Curie. Come on! It's cute!" Titian held the dress that she plucked from the hook up over the abomination that Curie picked out, "It's much less… unique than that dress, but you and I can match a lot better with something like this!"

"No."

"Please."

"No."

" _Please."_

" _No._ Titian."

"What if I buy you the new DLC for Huntsman's Requiem? You know, that pricey expansion pack that you didn't have the money to buy last week?" Titian put her hands together like she was praying, "I'll even buy you the deluxe edition with the swimsuit skins and the limited edition figurine. Please, Curie."

Curie stopped and actually considered Titian's offer. While it _was_ very tempting, she was snapped out of it when she looked back at the neon-green floozy dress. "As… tempting as that is… I'm still going to say no."

"What if I threw in that new gaming controller that I saw in your search history?" Titian's mouth slowly curled into a smile, "The one with the low-friction analog sticks."

Curie narrowed her eyes, "You have no idea what that means in terms of actual gaming performance… do you?"

"I know it's been in your search history every day for the last week. That's all I really need," Titian held out the dress, "I'll get it in neon green. I'll have your emblem put on it."

"My answer's still no, Titian." She turned around, her back to her, "Unzip me. I'm getting this one and no matter of bribing me with stuff I… actually want is going to stop me. You wanted me to buy a dress, and I'm getting this one."

Titian rolled her eyes and pulled down the zipper running down Curie's spine, "I can't tell if you actually like it, or you're just doing this to spite Midas and me."

"I like it. I really like it. It feels pretty and still functional. It also feels secure, like a hoodie. I like this dress," Curie spoke almost robotically. She wasn't used to showing off so much emotion at once. Looks never even came to mind in her morning routine, so dress shopping was like taking an exam without going to classes first.

"Okay, fine. We'll get the dress…" Titian shut the door to give Curie privacy to get changed, "Just hurry up so we can get back to Midas and Ledning."

* * *

"Okay, red roses are for romance like the kind in ' _Days of our Nights'_ , white roses are for funerals, and daisies are for children," Roland held up the bouquet that Arty had picked out, "So why did you pick out a bouquet of all three of those flowers, Arty?!" he shouted in the middle of the flower shop, "What kind of signals are you trying to send?! You're sorry for her child that passed on and want to hook up with her while she's in emotional _distress_?!"

"Because… I don't look purely at the symbolism of these kind of things…" Arty looked at the odd combination of flowers, "I kinda just look for stuff that actually _looks_ nice instead of trying to find a bigger meaning behind it." As he examined the flowers a bit more, he realized Roland was right, "Yeah, let's not do that…"

"Thank you. It's a shoddy bouquet anyway," Roland shoved the flowers back into their receptacle, "Back to the basics…"

A giant bouquet of bright marigolds shot towards Arty's face. Holding the stems was Sepia, with a giant smile on her face. She held up her scroll for Arty to read, ' _They're really pretty and orange. They'll make Curie think of you until they wilt and die. They're also a symbol of the sun, saying that your love for her will burn brighter than any star!'_

Arty pushed the flowers away from his nose so that the pollen wouldn't make him start sneezing, "What is it with you guys and all the symbolism? Can't you just take things for what they are every now and then?"

"Then how about these?" a bouquet of bright yellow flowers appeared over Arty's shoulder, "Daffodils. Nothing too special. They're just simple and pretty flowers," Timbre stepped around Arty and stood in front of him with the flowers. She took a long whiff from them and held them out to him, "and they smell lovely."

Seeing the flowers sparked a series of memories. He, Curie and Midas for years would meet after school at his mom's flower shop. Despite the cold, it was always comfortably warm and pleasant there, feeling almost like the middle of spring in the confines of four brick walls. Every time they went to the store since they first met, Curie always seemed attracted to the simple yellow flowers. She could never give an explanation as to why, but occasionally with her allowance, she'd buy a few to keep in a vase in her room.

"You know what? Daffodils it is." He took the bouquet from Timbre, "In fact, I just remembered that they're Curie's favorite."

"Perfect!" Timbre clasped her hands together, "Then let's grab them and get going! We're off to the barber next!"

Arty gave her a blank stare, "B-b-barber? Why?"

"I need a haircut while we're in town, and you need a shave," Roland said over his shoulder. He examined a bouquet of freshly bloomed lilies and set them down, "Maybe a haircut for you too. We can get that orange out no problem."

"B-but… that's my natural hair color, Roland…"

"Oh, I'm sure it is. Right. And my tail is actually red, and I just dye it brown," Roland rolled his eyes, "Let's be real, Arty."

"But… it is… you met my mom. I got it from her…"

Timbre giggled, "Some people have different hair colors, Roland. Just think of Ms. Perry. Or Xannie. Or Frost. Green, neon yellow, and grey aren't exactly 'normal' colors for people to have. Well… grey for someone Frost's age. Besides," she reached up and tugged at some of her red bangs, "I'm fairly certain Lurida and I are the only people we know that dye their hair."

"But that's not how… having two hair colors… genetics…" Roland glared at Arty's hair, "That's… I don't… what…?"

' _It's okay. I was confused when I first met him. I even looked at his roots while he was sleeping one night to see if it really was natural,'_ Sepia cautiously looked at Arty's hair, ' _I did the same for Timbre, but that was for funsies.'_

"Ooooookay then." Timbre grabbed Arty by the arm, "C'mon. Let's go get your hair fixed up."

"You seem anxious to get to the barber. You getting your hair done for anyone, Timbre?" Roland gave a split second glance out the window of the store, "Like Turf?"

Timbre's face flushed red, "Um… no… I just… prom's… you know… gotta get it done regardless. Haven't really done anything with it since we got… you know…"

"Our butts handed to us? Yeah, but that doesn't have too much to do with your hair. The Grimm Brotherhood hasn't been active, and we've already got eyes on us to keep us from getting into trouble again," Roland leaned in towards Timbre, "But that doesn't have anything to do with you getting your hair done. Who is it for, Timbre? Who asked you?"

Timbre gave him a confused look, "Who asked me to get my hair done?..."

' _Who asked you to prom?!'_ Sepia signed frantically.

"N-nobody!... Yet… I mean…" she let out a sigh, "Okay, I'm hoping Turf will ask me, okay? I'm pretty sure he will. I'm just… I'm preparing for prom because I'm _pretty sure_ that I'm going with him."

"Right…" Roland nodded to the door, "Then let's pay for the flowers and head out."

* * *

"Why are they all in the flower shop together?" Turf asked. He and Alice knelt behind a dumpster just about a block down from the entrance of the flower shop that Team ARTS were shopping in, "Wouldn't you think it would just be Arty and Roland? It makes sense that they'd want to buy flowers for their dates, but… why are Timbre and Sepia there?"

"Well…" Alice tried to think out the possibilities, "we know all of Team FARTS are pretty… odd, so it makes sense that Sepia would go aroun' with Wells, even if he's pickin' out flowers for her. I bet ya anythin' that I was right. Timbre's helpin' Painta-Boy pick flowers because, let's face it, he's pretty much hopeless an' _needs_ a girl's touch ta help him out with romance. I think he has a _different_ date in mind, Turf."

"But _who_?" Turf asked, "Look at the way she smelled those flowers. You don't just do that unless you like the person, Alice. And look at how he looks at her. All that smiling and… ugh…"

"They're _friends_ , idiot…" she stopped herself for a moment to process her insult, "I mean… friends smile at each otha all tha time. I'm tellin' ya, she's waitin' for ya ta ask her." _How did I let myself get dragged inta this? Do I_ really _need ta do this ta make up for all tha crummy things I've done?_

"How can you know that, though?" Turf watched Team ARTS carefully, "I mean, I ju- GET DOWN!" Turf pushed Alice's head down behind the dumpster and squished himself down beside her.

"Turf… why can't ya just… I dunno, _talk_ ta eitha one of them?" She sat down, her back against the dumpster, "You're friends with both of them, aren't ya? I'm sure you could just walk up ta Umba and _literally just ask_ 'Do you have a date to prom yet?' and he'll ansa truthfully, I'm sure."

"I… guess…" Turf peeked over the dumpster and then dove back down, "We'd better head back to campus. Roland's onto us, I think."

Alice leaned behind him to peek as well, but stopped when she heard her scroll chime.

 **Roland Wells: Hey guys, what's going on? Enjoying the scenery?**

Alice peered back around the side of the dumpster and saw Roland looking at them. He gave them a slight wave from behind a bouquet of lilies, which she hesitantly returned. "Yeah, he's onta us… Good goin' Turf."

"Great…" Turf sighed, "I'll just ask Arty later…"

* * *

"I'm really having second thoughts, guys…" Arty looked at himself in the mirror. Looking back was somebody he barely recognized as himself. His normally messy spiky hair had been trimmed and slicked backwards to have some semblance of an actual hairstyle. For some reason, his team had insisted he wear some cologne, whatever that was. He also held the bouquet of daffodils in his shaking hands. The mixture of smells of the flowers and whatever Roland had sprayed on him were making him light-headed. "Yeah… I can't do this…"

"I will make you read every book I own if you don't," Roland threatened. He knew that Arty hated reading, and that Arty knew how many books were hidden away in the dorm, "I will sit here and watch you read them, Arty. I will strap you down to a chair and read them aloud to you. Is that what you want?"

"Roland, I'd be dead before I manage to get through _half_ … that's not exactly a fitting punishment…"

Sepia wanted to point out that the threat was a little too much in the first place. Instead, she jotted down something on a sticky note and pressed it onto one of her favorite horror movies. It just so happened to be one that Arty knew, and one that she knew scared the life out of him as a kid. She held it up to his face, the note reading: " _We will have a movie night tonight with this film if you do not ask Curie. I will invite Midas to call you a wuss for screaming while we watch it."_

"You guys suck…"

"But we're doing all of this so that you're happy, Arty. Trust us. You'll be happier that you asked her once you've asked her," Timbre put a hand on Arty's shoulder, "If things go bad, then we've got your bad. Nothing can go wrong."

"Except for… you know… _everything_."

Roland let out an exasperated sigh, "You're saying this after you already encouraged me to ask Sepia out last semester…? What a hypocrite…"

"Well… I didn't exactly _encourage_ you. You just asked permission… and I told you I didn't care if you did or not."

"Valid point, but we already bought the flowers, so now you're financially obligated to _ask Curie to prom._ "

"Money's just an object… embarrassment can last a lifetime."

' _It's gonna be more embarrassing when I take this DVD and-'_

"Sepia!" Timbre shouted, "That's waaaaay overboard," she opened the door for Arty to be on his way, "Just go ask her and get it over with. She's going to say yes."

"I'm really not sure that I-"

Timbre shoved him out the door, "Roland, push."

"On it," Roland grabbed Arty by the shoulders and began shoving him down the hall to the stairwell.

"Stop it stop it stop it _stop it_." Arty protested, but it was too late. His team had already shoved him out the door.

* * *

"Yeah, I'm done waiting," Midas grabbed Curie's wrist and began pulling her out the door, "You're asking Umber now. It's been twenty minutes since we got back, and I don't feel like waiting twenty more."

"No! You guys told me if we got the stupid dress, you'd leave me alone!" Curie protested, wishing she had one of her batteries on her. She thought Midas desperately needed a good jolt.

Titian pat Curie on the back, "Well, we already got the dress, so it would be a waste without a date. I think it was kind of a given."

"But according to your so-called, 'real world', the guy's supposed to ask the girl. If he wants to go to prom with me, _he'll_ come _here_ and ask _me_. _We_ don't need to go _anywhere_."

"It doesn't matter who asks who. Just get it over with so I can take my nap…" Ledning said, his voice muffled by the pillow he was using to cover his face.

"You heard him." Titian pushed Curie from behind as Midas kept pulling, "Get out of here so Ledning can go beddy-bye."

Midas yanked Curie along down the hall, "Quit squirming and let yourself be happy with another human being, Curie!" he shouted as she futilely pulled against him.

.

"Roland, stop! Please! I'll get you a new book!" Arty pleaded as he was being dragged up one of the stairwells of the Atlas dorm building by his team.

"There isn't one in Vale that I haven't read!" Roland pushed Arty up the stairs while Timbre and Sepia each took an arm, "You aren't getting out of this one, _Burne!_ "

"Please… I think my heart's about to stop. I can't deal with this kind of pressure!" Arty pleaded. They reached the top of the staircase, and Roland, Timbre, and Sepia all began pushing him down the hall.

"You've fought Grimm that can destroy whole _towns_ before. You've fought _terrorists_. You can ask a _girl on a damn date_!" Timbre yelled as she planted a boot firmly on his back and pushed him into the hall.

"No! You are not weaseling yourself out of this! Come! ON!" Midas shouted from down the hall.

Curie glared back at her leader, "I'm going to take one of my batteries and shove it-"

The force of Timbre's kick sent Arty flying forward and slamming right into somebody. A jolt of pain went through his forehead as it collided with someone else's.

"Ow…" he winced as he felt the new welt on his head. When he looked up he found himself looking into Curie's neon green eyes behind her crooked spectacles.

Curie held her forehead and took a step back away from Arty, "Oh… Burne. Sorry. My team is being utterly… ridiculous…" she glanced back to see that Midas and Titian had vanished, "Sorry, I should go back to my dorm. Midas pulled me away from a really important match to play one of his games."

Arty could feel his face turning a deep red. He imagined it was a similar shade to Titian's hair, "Yeah… my team's being… weird, too…"

His scroll dinged.

 **Sepia Hughes: I will skin you alive if you do not ask her.**

Sepia sat beside Roland and Timbre down on the floor below. They retreated just as Midas and Titian had.

Arty was fairly fond of his skin, so he didn't want to cross Sepia _too_ horribly. "Um…"  
"Um…" Curie parroted as she fixed her glasses. "Your… your hair looks nice."

"Thanks… yours too…"

"So… what are… what are the flowers for?..."

In his panic, Arty had completely forgotten about the daffodils. He felt his spirits drop even further when he saw that they had gotten a little crunched up upon headbutting his lifelong friend. "Oh… they're… they're for you." He held out the bouquet. A few stray petals falling to the floor. "I… actually had something to ask you…"

"We should do that prom thing together," both of them said in near perfect unison.

They sat there looking at each other in shocked silence.

Arty couldn't find any words. Thankfully, Curie did the speaking for him.

She snatched the bouquet quickly. "Great. Glad that awkwardness is over." Hesitantly, she used her free hand to hug him before hurrying back to Team MTLC's room, where apparently Midas and Titian had been watching from the doorway.

Arty couldn't help but smile stupidly to himself as he heard the door slam loudly. He knew she wasn't angry. She was probably going through the same anxiety-driven rush he was feeling. After another minute or so of stunned silence, he began heading back to the stairwell to let his team know he wasn't a complete failure.

He got to the bottom of the staircase only to find that Roland, Timbre, and Sepia had left. Maybe they decided to give him some space, or maybe they thought it would take longer than it did. Either way, they were nowhere to be seen. He left the dorms without much of a second thought.

"Hey! Arty!"

Arty turned to see Turf running towards him from down the sidewalk.

"Oh. Hey, Turf." Arty was still smiling, his rush not entirely leaving quite yet. "What's up?"

"I meant to ask you something earlier," Turf's smile was awkward and strained, "I figured that Roland and Sepia were going together, but I was wondering about you and Timbre too. No one's heard anything. Do you have a date to prom?"

Arty laughed, finding it funny that, if he had been asked no more than five minutes before, his answer would've been 'no'.

"Yeah. In fact I do. I do have a date to prom." He kept repeating it to himself as if in disbelief that it was true.

"Oh…" Turf looked down, "Right… got it…" he turned around and began walking right back towards the Vale dorms, "I'll… uh… see you around… I guess…"

Arty was confused by Turf's sudden sullen mood. "Hey, Turf. You okay?" He called after the Dog Faunus.

"Yeah, I'm alright. Have fun with your date," Turf went on with his shoulders slumped. His theory was right. He wasn't crazy.

Arty was now extremely confused. _Was… was he about to ask me to go to prom with him?... I thought he really liked Timbre… Weird_.


	44. V2Ch16: It's Not Me, It's Definitely You

_Okay. Work it. Work it. Turn. Full spin. Pose._ Sepia put one hand on her hip and one up in her hair in the middle of the dress shop's dressing room. She wore a lovely sequin dress that came down to her knees. Tan and gold glittered across the form fitting dress. It seemed almost like a longer version of her normal battle attire, but was thinner around the shoulders. With the dress, she also had a coffee brown choker with a huge plastic chocolate gem on the front.

"Eh…" Roland sat on a stool just across from her. They had thought ahead enough to occupy the handicap dressing room so that he, Timbre, and Sepia could all fit in there comfortably, but they had the full intent of leaving if someone who needed it came along, "I don't know… It seems too… usual for you."

"The girl does love her sequins." Timbre laughed as she thumbed through the collection of dresses hanging on a nearby hook.

' _Okay, then avert your eyes,'_ Sepia signed to them both.

Roland covered his face with his hat while Timbre turned her head to the side and covered her eyes with her hand.

 _Let's see… this one!_ Sepia slipped off the dress she was wearing and into the next one within the span of ten seconds. She clapped to tell them to look, then took on the same pose that she made for the last one.

This time around, she wore a khaki-colored strapless dress that reached down to her ankles. It wasn't anything spectacular and didn't have the same gaudiness of the last one, but still remained fashionable. Upon closer inspection, threads of gold could be seen shining within the fabric, ' _It isn't good for fighting, but it sure is comfy! Feel this material!'_ she held out the end of the dress for Roland and Timbre to feel.

Roland ran the fabric between his fingers, "That's really soft…" he thought for a moment, "I like this one a bit better. It's not as flashy, but the hints of gold are… fitting for you."

"Well, you don't need to worry about _fighting_ in these dresses." Timbre felt the coarse fibers of the dress. They were silky with little patches of roughness here and there, "And I agree, this one is definitely better, but honestly, you could rock _any_ dress, Sepia. You could probably show up in that awful neon green thing we saw coming in and everyone would be just as awe-struck."

' _Yeah, no. I don't do paisley. No one does paisley,'_ Sepia twirled around in the dress, ' _I do like this a lot, though. I'm thinking… this choker with it,'_ she removed the choker with the fake gem and replaced it with a thinner one with a golden wire square with clips to put a charm in. It was designed to have a charm with the wearer's emblem inside. The only downside of the choker was that it didn't quite cover the twisted scar around her neck, ' _See, I love this one. It's just…'_ she ran her finger along the visible edges of where the wire had cut into the flesh of her neck, ' _People might stare…'_

Roland shifted at the sight of the scar. As often as he saw it, it still made him feel oddly guilty when he saw it, and even more so after he found out about Team CIRS. Had CiCi stayed in contact with the families of Sepia's parents, then maybe they would have grown up together and he could have prevented that incident. It was all completely unreasonable, but it still stuck in his brain as a huge 'what if'.

"Who gives a crap if they stare?" Timbre jostled her partner playfully, "If they wanna stare. Let them stare. Remember what Carmen told us last semester? Scars are a part of us and aren't something you should be ashamed of." She threw a light punch into Sepia's shoulder, "Show your flair with pride, girl!"

' _I know, but it wasn't some battle that gave me this,'_ Sepia brushed her fingers across the edges of the scar, ' _It was my screw up. Kinda lost a lot more than just a career with this.'_

"I like that choker," Roland said flatly, "Hey, if you can learn how to be comfortable with your scar, then maybe that'll help others become more comfortable with theirs. Set an example, Mom used to say. If you're self conscious of something, then you can use that help other people who are self conscious of the same thing."

Sepia perked up, ' _I… guess you're right,'_ she smiled and looked at the choker in the mirror. The worst part of the scar could be seen through the hole that a charm was to be clipped in. A twisted divot where her voice box was removed could be seen clearly through the gap, ' _Just kind of gruesome, I guess. I mean, it's crazy to think that I lived through something like that.'_

"Well, very few scars have happy or fun stories behind them. I imagine Carmen must have a doozy for the one she has…" Timbre pulled the armful of dresses off the hook and gestured to the door, "So. If you ask me, you're set. I'm gonna go put these back."

"Yeah, I'm gonna wait outside. We should go grab some lunch. I heard the cafe is already close to being rebuilt. It's only taken a little over a month. The workers in Vale have made seriously quick work of the places that got… blown to smithereens," Roland plopped his hat back on and began stepping out of the changing room, "We can figure that out in a-"

"I'm tellin' ya, I seen Row-land head this way with that hussy of his and his side girl!" someone from the front of the store, "He's been avoidin' me this whole semester, Peppa! I cannot believe that he wouldn't even say 'howdy' to me!"

Roland slammed the door shut and slapped the lock closed with Timbre and Sepia still inside. A stream of curses came from under his breath. His face was ghostly white. Every hair on his tail stood on end. The fingers that wrapped around the doorknob trembled.

"Did somebody say your name just now?" Timbre glanced over to Roland. "And… why are we quarantining ourselves in the handicap changing room?"

"Shut up, Timbre," Roland snapped. He looked to Sepia for help, "Make a few orbs and make sure they go unnoticed. Tell me what the two people that just walked in look like."

' _On it,'_ Sepia slammed her eyes shut and formed an orb right outside the door. It zipped out into the main room of the dress shop and dipped into a rack of dresses. She signed out what she saw, ' _A ginger school girl, Haven uniform, and… a really… really good looking… wow…'_ a trickle of drool began leaking out of the corner of Sepia's mouth. It took a light thump on her head from Roland to snap out of it and cause the orb to shatter, ' _Purple cowgirl. Literally. I mean a purple cowgirl. Cow horns. Blonde braid.'_

"Great…" Roland groaned. He pressed his back to the door, "and that's a really interesting bit that I just learned about you, Sepia. Fascinating, really."

"What the heck is going on?" Timbre went to peek out of the door but Roland latched onto the handle. "Wait… Haven uniform? Roland…" She lowered her voice to a whisper, "Is one of them your ex you told us about? The one your friends Epazote and Cayenne are always trying to find a reason to avoid?"

"Yeah, and we also just found out that Sepia's into girls, too," Roland spouted off. He glared at Timbre, "If you open that door, I will end you. We are waiting for them to leave."

Timbre glanced sheepishly at Sepia, "Sepia… I changed in front of you." She nodded and looked on in thought, "I guess the poster makes a lot more sense now that I think about it…"

' _Hey, I never complained. It was a dream come true,'_ Sepia signed with a slight smile, ' _Don't worry. I'm not going to go after you… unless Roland dumps me. Then it's free game,'_ she thought for a moment, ' _Why did you think I was so excited to have you as my partner? Just because you make some music that I listen to?'_

"I honestly thought you were just a big fan considering the first time we met you asked for my autograph. And you're also going to have to wait and see if… Turf and I… go anywhere… before I become 'free game' like you said." She chuckled. "Don't get any ideas, Sepia. I don't want Turf to hate me, especially if it's because one of my best friends might be a little jealous. It took us a whole semester to get on Team ANTE's good side… or… at least not their bad side. I don't know where we stand exactly… but you get my point."

' _Timbre. I'm happy with Roland. Don't freak out so much,'_ Sepia glared at her partner, but then her eyes lit up, ' _Wait, hold on. Are you saying that there was a chance before you met Turf?'_

"What happened to being happy with me?" Roland gave Sepia a concerned stare.

' _I am, dear! Truly! I'm just a little… curious, you know?'_ she nudged him with her elbow.

"Oh, you're so funny," Roland groaned, "Wait a second… Timbre. You should go out and distract them. You're a good talker, and they might be in awe of your presence. I mean, Mom did take her and I to one of your concerts while you were in Mistral. She knows who you are."

"Okay, sounds goo- wait you've been to one of my concerts before? Why did you always act like you didn't know my music the-"

"Shut up, Timbre," he opened the door and pushed her out, "Now go. Please. Please help me on this."

"Okay, fine. Anything I should know before heading out there? Like… can one of them turn into a wolf and kill me, or perhaps turn ink into a sword… or collapse the ground beneath me? What I'm saying is, one of them sounded pretty angry and we know some people with some pretty dangerous Semblances."

"You're good with Saffron if you're not into girls. Pepper… I don't know her too well. I just know that people feel gross around her," Roland explained.

Timbre pat him on the back before leaving the safety of the dressing room, "Thanks, Roland. Helpful stuff."

"Just. Go," he pulled the door shut, "Now… how to get out of here…"

.

Timbre walked through the store with the stack of dresses in her arms. She held them up high enough to cover her face from the two girls at the counter. Peeking over the mountain of fabric, Timbre could see the two girls Sepia had described. The louder one was the blonde with the ponytail and, as Sepia said, she was dressed like a cowgirl, decked in tans and purples. A streak of light purple ran through her braided hair. Sticking out from her hat was a pair of freshly filed cow horns. _Sepia wasn't wrong, she is fairly pretty_. Shaking that off, she looked ot the loud girl's sidekick, who looked to be nothing more than a schoolgirl, but the dark plaid skirt told her all too well that she was a student at another Huntsmen Academy. Why she was wearing her outfit when her friend was in more… casual wear, Timbre had no clue.

"Is your friend not getting any of these, Ms. Forté?"

Timbre nearly screamed as one of the store employees seemed to just appear behind her. A few of the dresses fell to the floor, enough so that she was unable to hide her face behind her stack anymore without looking too suspicious.

"There she is!" the blonde Faunus cowgirl shouted from across the store. She darted between racks towards Timbre, her lavender eyes filled with bloodthirsty rage. If there ever was a female Roland, it was her, "Where is my shuga, gal?!"

"I'm sorry?..." Timbre shrunk back, giving up and dropping the rest of the dresses to the employee's dismay.

"Where," Saffron latched onto one of the shoulder strap of Timbre's top, "is," she pulled her in close so that they were eye to eye. The brim of her hat was smashed up against Timbre's forehead, "my shuga?"

"Um, Saf?" The redhead spoke up meekly, "Are you sure you should be doing that?... I mean… she's… she's T-T-T- _Timbre Forté!_ "

"Uh, so? She just makes that horse-hockey pop music. What's the big deal?" Saffron took her attention away from Timbre for a long enough moment to address her partner, " _She's_ the one that's been hangin' round Roland and such. Same for that gal that Cai and Epa keep rattlin' on 'bout."

"Horse-hockey?" Timbre didn't know what she was more confused by, the fact that somebody like Roland would tolerate a girl like this for more than five minutes, or the fact that she suddenly felt like sneezing. Despite this girl's rudeness, she didn't want to spray snot all over her. "I'm sorry… I… ah… really need to… Achoo!"

"Aw! Really?!" Saffron let go of Timbre's top and began wiping the snot off her face. That might have been a dream come true for one of Timbre's creepy stalker fans, but it was utterly disgusting to her, "Peppa! I love that Semblance, gal, but you've gotta tone it down," she wiped her hands off on a handkerchief, "Ugh… anyway," she turned her attention back to Timbre, "I'm only gonna ask ya one mo' time, girly. Where. Is. My. Shuga?"

"I honestly don't know who you're talking about. Now, could you please _let me be on my way_?"

"Oh, drop the crap. I _seen_ ya come in here with him and that hussy."

"Why do people keep using that word all of a sudden? Look, I don't want any trouble." Timbre flipped down her arms, sending both halves of Klavier to her fists, "but if you actually want to pick a fight, can we at least not ruin this nice store? They've been good to me and my family for years, and I don't want to ruin that relationship."

"Please… I don't need more of you students fighting in my store…" the shopkeeper murmured from behind a rack, "Please… the last time students were in here, a rack of dresses turned gold and some guy had metal hands..."

"Oh! I'm sorry, dear! I ain't even seen you there!" Saffron waved at the shopkeeper, "Sorry to bother! I'm just trackin' down my boy-toy, ya know?"

"Rol broke up with you, Saf…" Pepper twiddled her thumbs, "Like… a long time ago…"

"He _thinks_ he broke it off with me, but I ain't done yet! Now he thinks he can move on so quickly to that _director_ gal from _Vacuo_. Me an' him ain't even worked things out!" Saffron glared at Timbre, "If you won't… tell… well, hey!"

" _ **RUN!"**_ Roland darted out the front door with Sepia's hand clutched tightly in his. He ran down the block, looking over his shoulder in hopes that Saffron wouldn't follow.

Saffron's face flashed red, "Oh… I'm gonna get 'em!" she shouted and darted out the door after them.

Pepper was left with Timbre. She murmured to herself while trying to come up with something to say. Nothing came to mind, and now her lifeline had already sprinted out the door, "I will… I'm just going to..." She ran out of the store, but stopped at the door on her way out, "I meant to ask… I am a huge fan… can I still have an autograph… and maybe a selfie?"

" _Peppa!"_

"Coming, Saf!" She gave a small wave to Timbre before chasing after her bossy friend, "You… you really look wonderful in person. I hope I can see you again…!"

Timbre could only stare on in disbelief.

"What just happened?" The store owner said as she picked up the fallen dresses.

"I… honestly have no clue, ma'am…"

.

"I've needed my bike twice in Vale, Sepia. _Twice_. On the first time, I was being chased by a terrorist! Now I'm being chased by my ex! That's arguably worse, and worsened by the fact that _MY BIKE IS STILL IN THE SHOP FROM THE TERRORIST!_ " Roland shouted to Sepia as they juked and jived around other pedestrians. The hope was that having people to stand between them and their pursuers would slow them down, but the incessant shouting of disturbed passersby seemed to say that this was not the case.

' _Hey, at least your insurance plan covered the damages. Who knew that having your bike nommed on by a terrorist's weapon would be covered?'_ Sepia signed while running beside him. She thought for a moment, ' _How does a Huntsman in training stay covered? I got the coverage on my van revoked when I signed up for Beacon. I became too much of a liability.'_

"One, this isn't the time. Two, Dad handles my insurance for the most part," Roland looked back to see Saffron and Pepper closing in, followed by a sea of staring and sneezing pedestrians. He could already feel his eyes watering and his nose starting to run, "The roofs! Find a fire escape or something!"

Sepia sneezed. She tried to activate her Semblance, but her eyes didn't start glowing gold as they normally did, ' _I can't focus! I feel like my head is going to implode!'_ she tried to wipe her nose, but more snot came pouring out, ' _I hate being sick! What is this?!'_

"The ginger's Semblance I think!" he shouted back. He racked his brain for something that might help, "Wait! Call Opal! She's got your back, and hopefully mine by extension!"

' _On it!'_ Sepia sent out a text for help to Opal and told her to call. She held her scroll up so that Roland could do the talking when she called.

.

Back on campus, Opal was lounging in her dorm room, which she had obviously made more like home as she was swinging back and forth in a hammock she had hung from the ceiling, opting for that instead of a bed. For her, it was odd being the only naturally loud member of Team STON. Shorla didn't like talking, Torbern just… never talked, and Namib found that the only words that needed to come out of his mouth were ones necessary for survival. Opal on the other hand, was a chatterbox _and_ a loudmouth, which got on her leader/partner's nerves constantly.

Opal was torn from her daydream as her scroll began to ring.

"Ello, ello! Opal Uluru of the Vacuo office of bein' cool and badarse speaking. What can I do for ya t'day?" she chanted happily into the device.

"Opal! Remember when you, me, Sepia, and Damascus grabbed lunch last week and Sepia made me tell the horror stories of my ex?!" Roland shouted from the other end of the line. Wind whipped by on his and Sepia's end. Sneezing and shouting could be heard from the crowd of people that it seemed like they were running through, "She's after us! We need help! Where are you?!"

"Um… well g'day ta you, too, Roland!" Opal laughed, drawing the attention of her present teammates. For some reason, Shorla, their leader, had buggered off somewhere. Opal assumed she left to find a quiet dark corner to listen to goth music in. "Um, well, I'm in tha room with my mates Namib and Torbern. Why ya askin'? Ya want us ta beat some arse for ya?"

"Not enough time!" Roland huffed, "You didn't mention Shorla! What about her?! Is there any chance that she _specifically_ is in Vale?!" A girl with portals would be incredibly helpful given their present situation.

"Sorry, mate. She's not exactly one to share everythin' about herself." She held her scroll away from her face, "Oi! Namib! Shorla say where she was goin'?"

Across the room at the desk that he had claimed was a dark complected boy in tattered khakis and a dusty button-up shirt. His hair was unkempt and coated in a dusting of sand, and a beige strip of cloth covered his mouth like a scarf. He looked up from a small box of sand that he was toying with using a tiny wooden rake, "No."

"Nope. Notta, clue. Sorry 'bout that. Anythin' else I can do for ya today?"

"We just need backup of some kind! Please!" Roland shouted.

From somewhere in the background, a girl was screaming at the top of her lungs, " _GET BACK HERE! I WANNA TALK 'BOUT THINGS! WHY IN THE HELL DID YOU GET WITH THAT LITTLE HUSSY?!"_

"Please, Opal!" he pleaded.

"Alright alright. Just stop screamin'!" She jumped out out of her hammock, "I'm headin' down. I'm sure we'll be able to find ya due to all the…" more screams echoed through her scroll, "that… Okay, see ya in a minute!" Opal shoved her scroll in her pocket and began walking out of the room, but stopped to grab Namib and her other teammate, Torbern, by the backs of their shirts.

"Please. No," Namib motioned for Opal to let him go, but didn't do much to stop her. He didn't have the will to protest. If Opal wanted to drag him somewhere, then he was going to be dragged somewhere.

The other young man, Torbern, didn't do much to protest either, despite the fact that Opal was probably stretching out the fibers of his grayscale tye-dye shirt. The gray-haired teen looked over to Namib and just shrugged, as if to say ' _Whatever, let's just go with it and see what happens. Nothing exciting has really happened to us since we got here_.'

Namib and the girls always found it amazing how many words Torbern could get out by simply shrugging his shoulders.

"Right, then! Off to the races!" Opal charged out the door.

.

"Please work. Please work. Please…" Roland shut his eyes. He clutched Sepia's hand tightly to calm him down enough to focus through his filling sinuses. The newspaper box just up the sidewalk shuddered. It exploded into a whirlwind of paper and ink as soon as they passed it, "Yes! I can't believe that- ow… ow!"

Sepia looked up to Roland to see that he was holding the side of his head. _We need cover until Opal and the others can get here…_ As Saffron and Pepper were caught in Roland's makeshift trap, the sneezing and drainage seemed to slow as they got further away from them.

Stores, restaurants, and other businesses lined the street that they were on. Down the way was the sign for an arcade, one of the few buildings that Sepia believed that Saffron wouldn't check. _That'll do!_ she thought while yanking Roland inside.

The room was dark, but tons of brilliant neon lights and flashing LED screens lit up the inky black inside the arcade. Loud repetitive electronic sounds blared as tutorial screens played or the occasional patron won a round of whatever game they were playing. Sepia and Roland weren't here to play though, they just knew it was perfect as the windows were tinted and unable to be seen through from the outside.

They both huffed as they took refuge behind an air hockey table.

"R-Roland? Sepia?"

In their rush to get away from the psychotic cowgirl and her schoolgirl lackey, the couple didn't even notice that the air hockey table was occupied.

They both poked their heads up over the side of the table. The plastic puck bounced back and forth between two players, both in green and both with glasses on. Epazote's eyes were trained on the puck. He slapped it back to his opponent at lightning speed, and it was deflected back at him by a less-than-put-together looking girl with a green hoodie, the hood pulled up over her head. Curie.

"Hey, what's going on, guys?" Roland straightened his hat.

' _Please help us,'_ Sepia signed.

"Destroying Epazote in air hockey. H-B-U?" Curie said in an almost bored-sounding monotone as she slammed the puck straight into Epazote's goal. "That's game. B-T-W."

"You… wait…" Roland furrowed his brow, "Is that text-talk? That sounds like text-talk…"

"Sorry, I do that when I'm in the ass-kicking zone." Curie laughed as she went over to fist-bump her defeated opponent. "So… uh… why are you guys hiding in the arcade? I know _Sepia's_ kind of the gaming type..." she sounded a bit infuriated just saying Sepia's name, obviously still disgruntled over the _Huntsmen's Requiem_ incident earlier in the semester, "but I'm pretty sure Epazote told me you abhore video games, Roland?"

"They're confounded and lazy ways of telling stories. Yes, I abhore vid-"

Epazote cleared his throat, "Is now _really_ the time to go on this tirade again, Rol? You wouldn't be hiding in here if it wasn't an emergency." He suddenly began looking around anxiously, "Don't tell me those Grimm Brotherhood freaks are back again?!"

"Worse. Saffron found Sepia and I and she's _not_ happy," Roland glanced towards the front doors of the arcade, "Could you keep some orbs outside to keep watch, Sepia?"

Sepia nodded and shut her eyes. She caught a glimpse of Saffron and Pepper ducking into a restaurant a block away, ' _It'll be a while before they get to us.'_

"Good…" Roland nodded, "Anyway, yeah. Saffron is on our tails."

"Oh Gods…" Epazote began rubbing his temples, "This is the _last_ thing we wanted to happen today… Yo! Cai!"

"Saffron? I've never met her, but Epazote and Cayenne have told me _plenty_." Curie leaned over to look to Roland, "Sorry you had to go through all that."

"In the middle of something, Epa!" Cayenne stood on her hands over the controls for a dancing game. Her palms came down over and over again on the panels. Every arrow that cycled up on the screen exploded into the word 'PERFECT!' with a slap of the giant controls that had been intended for someone's feet. Arrows exploded one after another at a blinding pace. Cinders flew out around the soles of her flailing boots. She kept her balance perfectly, "What's going on?"

"Saf's here." Epazote replied bluntly.

"And I'm about to break my high score, so… yeah," Cayenne went on with her game. Each move that she made sent the combo counter up more and more, and the numbers in the corner went up at least a few thousand with each move. It was already up into the millions, "And with my hands, no less!"

"I honestly don't get the appeal to dancing games like this," Curie walked over and leaned against one of the game's handrails that kept the player from falling off if they lost their balance, "I much prefer shooter games… like that one over there." She nodded to a game a a few yards away. In front of its large screen were two plastic guns raked in place and held to the machine by wires. "But hey, everyone has their preferred genre I guess."

"Aaaaaand…" Cayenne slammed her palm down on the center space. The song that was playing shut off, and the score screen popped up to calculate all of the bonuses that she had collected. Numbers spun and rearranged themselves. When the digital dust was settled, the score displayed was '2,147,483,647', "Hey! My combo was way too high for it to be just that! I beat my high score, but only by five points?! Nuh-uh!"

Curie pushed her glasses up. Again, a member of Team SPCE was showing their lack of knowledge when it came to electronics. "You did beat your score by a lot more, it's just you got a score so high the machine couldn't count high enough to display it properly. If it was a 64-bit system… then it definitely could have."

"Oh…" Cayenne examined the machine. She raised her fist, which began to glow with fiery power. Embers seemed to seep out of her pores, "If I break it, they'll have to replace it with a better machine… hopefully they have insurance on the thing."

Epazote shot forward and grabbed her hand before flames could shoot from her palm, "No no no no no, hold on there Pyro. She means that it's a 32-bit system. Two-billion-one-hundred-forty-seven-million-four-hundred-eighty-three-thousand-six-hundred and forty-seven is the highest number a 32-bit system can count. It's just how it works. I doubt the creators thought that someone could manage to get _better_ than a perfect score at their game…"

"Hm… so it appears you _do_ know a bit more about electronics than I first thought." Curie smirked.

"Eh, I started researching a bit more after you called me an idiot when I mocked you for thinking there was a goat in your gaming system when you were actually talking about memory…"

"Glad you went to correct your mistakes then."

"Don't flatter yourself, Cure." Cayenne stepped down from the machine, wiping sweat from her forehead. "He goes on little 'research binges' whenever someone corrects him on something. A few months ago, Eden told him that he did a shotty job when he tied down a practice caravan and he began studying all kinds of knots for weeks! Our room was just full of little bits of rope tied into all sorts of shapes. It was kinda cute… until he started tying our stuff together and forgot to tell us how to undo them…"

"Then there was that time that I corrected him on a saying from a book. He read an entire series of twenty books just to get to one line in the final book… on the fifth to last page," Roland explained, "And then there was the time that I told him that he was wrong about the explosive charge I use in my grenades. That was… horrifying. Then his mom get freaked out about the books on explosives that he was buying… and borrowing from my mom."

"Okay guys… we get it…" Epazote groaned, "I have a problem when it comes to people telling me I'm wrong. Sue me."

"Or you could go get us some more tokens. I'm ready to beat you again at air hockey." Curie began walking her way over to a vending machine, probably to get an energy drink and something crunchy and nacho cheese flavored.

 _ **BLAM!**_

The front door of the arcade slammed open. Drywall cracked when the knob struck the wall.

" _WHERE IS HE?!"_ shouted someone from the front of the building.

Roland ducked behind the air hockey table beside Sepia, "I thought you were looking out for them!"

Sepia's eyes still glowed bright gold, ' _I got distracted! Sorry!'_ she signed.

Epazote began walking his way to the front door, "Don't worry guys… I'll… try something. Just try to get out of here and back to campus as soon as possible while they're distracted." He waved to his team's leader, "Hey, Saf! What's… what's going o-"

"Shut up!" Saffron palmed Epazote's face and pushed him to the side, "Where. Is. He?"

Cayenne stepped forwards to get between her and Epazote, "Saf, what's going on-"

"List'n, I know you's both hiding him," Saffron crinkled her nose.

"I don't even know who you're talking about, Saf," Cayenne bit the end of her thumb. She angled a finger over to Epazote, "Him? Did you mistake Epa for a potted plant?"

"You know damn well who I am talkin' 'bout! Roland! He's runnin' 'round with that hussy!"

"I… just want things to settle down… please..." Pepper said meekly, "Roland's being pretty… inconsiderate and has been running away instead of hearing Saf out…"

"Woah, woah, woah. Maybe Rol would be a little more 'considerate' if Saf wasn't constantly bombing his phone about meeting up for a 'catch up'," Cayenne tightened her fists. She hoped that Sepia hearing that bit of information wouldn't set her off. After all, Roland had only shown Epazote and herself the messages before deleting them in hopes that Sepia wouldn't become upset and take matters into her own hands, "Maybe if Saffron would quit going on about how 'if Roland wanted to break up with her, then he was going to have to say it to her face,' and move on with her life, he wouldn't actively run away from her. Face it, Saf. You're just pissed that Rol left you because you didn't even _attempt_ to comfort him after what happened. You're pissed that he didn't want to deal with _you_ while he was grieving. Who does that?"

Saffron was taken back, as if she had a right to be offended. She adjusted her hat to make sure her horns were clearly displayed through the holes in the sides, "Don't even _try_ to act like I wasn't allowed to be hurt in that. We _all_ loved Professor Oscura. We _all_ needed a shoulder to cry on."

"Yeah, we all did. I cried on Epa's. Epa cried on mine. Rol didn't need someone crying on his. His situation is _different from you because he had it worse than you in that._ " Cayenne ran her fingers through her hair, "Seriously, that is beyond self-absorbed."

"Oh, come on. Don't even try an' make me feel bad for hurtin'."

A light sneeze came from behind the air hockey table. Sepia slowly stood up with her hands cupping her nose to keep the… situation contained. She glared at Saffron from across the table, _I'm about to snot-slap the crap outta you…_

"Oh, hey! The desert fox! Where's the man that you've so _kindly_ taken away from me?" Saffron half-snarled at her.

"Actually, she didn't really take me away. She acted like a decent human being and helped me through the issues I was having, a lot of which was done before I started dating her. Cayenne hit the nail on the head," Roland stood up beside Sepia. Instead of leaving her to wipe the snot off on her skirt, he pulled off his neckerchief and passed it to her. Hearing Saffron try to defend the way she acted, he knew he was going to have to face her head-on, "I broke up with you over a text because I didn't want to see you again. I finally saw just how selfish you are when Mom passed and you expected _me_ to comfort _you._ "

Saffron froze, "W-what…?"

"And I still didn't want to see you. I ran away, for crying out loud. You're acting like a psycho. On top of that, you're acting like I'm cheating on you or I can't move on until _you're_ content. That's all positively ridiculous!" he walked around the table. Snot ran from one nostril, "Crap… now I don't have anything to take care of this…"

Sepia held out the now snot-soaked piece of violet cloth back out to Roland.

"Hold on," Cayenne raised her hands. She yanked out a bright red hankie and handed it to Roland, "I've got you."

"Thanks," Roland took the hankie and held it over his nose, "Listen, I'm avoiding you because you're acting completely ridiculous."

"I'm… I'm… what…?" Saffron's eyes seemed to redden, "I…"

Epazote stood between the two warring groups, hands out in case he needed to prevent anyone from punching each other, "Okay, guys? Can we take a step back and cool our heads for a second? People are starting to stare." He looked around to see the few patrons of the arcade watching on in curious horror.

"I know I am." Curie mused from the corner, taking a sip from her drink and shoving a handful of chips into her mouth. "I'm not one for drama, but I'm curious to see where this goes."

"Wow… thanks, Cure." Epazote felt sweat pouring down his face as he felt like he was sitting between two ticking time bombs while Curie was off having a snack break.

"Hey, I'll intervene if I _really_ need to," She reached into her hoodie pocket with a cheese-dust covered hand and pulled out a sparking battery.

"Uh… Saf?" Pepper tapped her leader on the shoulder, "Who… is she…?" She lowered her voice to a whisper, "and why isn't my Semblance working on her?..."

"To answer your question," Curie took the last sip of her drink and licked the remaining cheese off her fingers before throwing her trash away, "I've been taking allergy medicine since I got to Vale. I can deal with flowers, but it's tree pollen I can't tolerate, so that might explain why Hay Fever isn't working on me, Ms. Paprika."

Saffron and Pepper were shocked.

"Now how in tarnation did ya-" Saffron began.

"I've grown quite fond of the other half of your team, so they've told me quite a bit about you two. Also, one of my best friends and… date… to prom… is Roland's team leader, so yeah, I'll stand up for them… I guess. Whatever." She held a saliva and nacho cheese scented hand out to the two girls, "I'm Curie. Nice to meet you."

"Um…" Saffron glanced between Curie and Roland. If she kept acting as she had, then she would just prove his point, "I…" she groaned and begrudgingly shook her hand, "H-howdy…" she screamed inside of her mind as the spit and cheese coating Curie's hand soaked into her pores. It took everything in her not to vomit.

Pepper shook Curie's hand with the tips of her fingers, "H-Hello… It is… nice to meet you…"

Curie shrugged before bluntly speaking, "I honestly don't care what you two think of me."

Saffron, despite the moment of understanding and self-awareness, was upset by the presence of this disgusting girl. "Exactly how many more girls ya got in yer harem there, Roland?! Tryin' ta cover all them bases? Mute and short, famous and pretty, now… someone as nasty as a cow pie?"

Curie turned back to her group, unfazed, "She really has problems, doesn't she?"

"Yeah," Roland kept his glare settled on Saffron, "I don't have a _harem_ , Saffron. I have friends, and I have a girlfriend who is _specifically_ not you. You want me to tell you that we've really been done since I left Mistral to your face? That's what I'm telling you."

"I see…" Saffron looked down, "I… I'm sorry… I guess I was just, ya know, hopin' for the best…"

At that moment, the door to the arcade slammed open, letting in a flood of sunlight. Three other teens jumped into the room, looking ready for a fight. Opal had her boomerang ready to throw at any enemies she faced. Namib had his twin weapons, two circular blades with sharp teeth lining the edges. They glowed with red and white light. Dust if anyone had to guess. Torbern stood with a shield in one hand and a bladed gauntlet on the other. They looked like a misfit attack squad ready to throw down.

"Roland! Where are they?! We're ready ta help ya!" Opal shouted, much to the shock of the other arcade patrons who had survived the commotion.

Roland looked over to them bewildered, "How did you guys-"

' _That's why I got distracted. I led them here,'_ Sepia signed, then held her fists up once more.

"I see…" he scratched his chin, "You guys have really bad response time…" he glaced at Torbern and Namib, "Oh, don't look at the cowgirl directly, guys. You might feel the effects of her Semblance."

"You heard 'im!" Opal grabbed the two boys by the shoulder and spun them around to face away from Saffron. "Ow's that? Don't worry, they'll be ready for a brawl if it comes to it! Just wanna get a look at tha situation first!" She was grinning ear to ear. Did she _want_ a fight to break out?...

"It's… reasonably okay. Sepia and I were going to head out to meet back up with Timbre. I would hope that Saffron and Pepper would be on their way too," Roland passed a glance to Saffron, then back to Opal, "You can put the gun down, and wipe your lip."

Opal reached up and wiped a bit of dribble away. Apparently she was _really_ going for a fight. "Damn. An I was right roarin' for a good tussle…"

"Got it. It happens to me too sometimes, but when I'm _really_ angry. Like when Arty hid my favorite book," rage started to appear on Roland's face as he relived that wretched morning. He snapped out of it and snatched up Sepia's hand, "Okay, we're gonna head out. Epa, Cai, you two are welcome to hop on Sepia and I's date night. Double dates are more fun, anyway."

"I'm down," Cayenne nodded, "What about you, Epa?"

Epazote loosened up now that it seemed a brawl was averted. "Please… I could use a break."

"Curie, do you wanna drag Arty along?" Cayenne asked.

Curie's face flushed red, "Um… no… I… we'll…"

"Got it. You do you," Cayenne looked over to Opal, "Epa and I would love to get to know you and Damascus a little better. Sepia talks about you quite a bit, and it wouldn't be fair not to invite your boyfriend along too."

"Ya got it! We'll be there!" Opal gave her a thumbs up.

Saffron huffed, "Maybe me an-"

"Still gonna need that space," Roland said low, "Thanks."

Saffron nodded quickly, "Right, got it. Have fun, Cai, Epa, and… Paul?"

"Opal. Sepia's bestie." She latched an arm around the shorter girl in sequins. "You cross her, you cross me." She held up her boomerang with a smile and flipped a short piece in the middle. It made a cocking noise like a shotgun. "Got it?"

Epazote looked over his shoulder as he walked hand-in-hand with Cayenne out of the arcade, "You better listen to her, Saf. She can kick some major ass."

"She will skin you alive, Saf!" Cayenne cackled back. Sure, she was just trying to lighten the mood with a joke like she always tried to do when there was an inner-team spat. Giggling, she hurried out the doors with Epazote.

"Right… We should head out, too," Roland stepped towards the door and nodded for Sepia to follow, "We should all get going before they kick us out."

Sepia ducked down out of Opal's hold and skipped up beside Roland. She waved to Opal as she and Roland left.

"Well… Pepper and I should get goin', so… see ya!" Saffron went to leave, but froze when Opal planted her hand right into the pit of her shoulder.

Opal's wide smile faded as she leaned into Saffron's ear, "If I hear that you did anythin' else like stalk my bestie through the streets again, I mean it. I _won't_ hesitate to pummel ya into the dirt." She glanced over to Pepper, "You too, Freckles." She flashed one more giant grin and winked to the pair as she left the arcade, dragging Namib and Torbern behind her, "C'mon mates, we're done here. You can head up if ya want. Or stay here, I don't really care. Shorla'd probably like coming home to a quiet, empty, dark dormroom!"

Saffron and Pepper were left with the loud sounds of the games around them, both shocked and a bit confused by everything that had happened after coming into the arcade.

Pepper put a hand on Saffron's shoulder, "Hey… you really handled that well…" she smiled softly, "Can… we go and look at dresses at that shop…?"

Saffron looked down at her feet, "I… guess. I could use a dress. That… golden boy asked me to prom earlier, and I guess I should go with him... to take my mind off of things…"

.

"I guess I probably should have bit the bullet and talked to her in the first place, huh?" Roland walked down the sidewalk with Sepia's hand held in his. Epazote and Cayenne walked along right behind them.

Sepia typed out a message with one hand as to not ruin the lovely time they were having just walking along, ' _It's cool. I still had fun, anyway.'_

"Right…" he glanced up to see Timbre running down the street, "Oh, hey. You make it out alive, too?"

' _Sorry we left you!'_ Sepia let go of Roland's hand, ' _We're going a triple date later with Roland's friends and my friends! You should bring Turf and come along!'_

Timbre looked to Roland first, "First off, no thanks to you guys. Second," She handed a dress on a coat-hanger to Sepia, the one she had tried on at the store. The choker she had picked out hung from the hanger as well. "Picked up the tab for you."

' _You're so sweet...'_ Sepia looked over the dress before hugging Timbre. ' _Thanks, T.'_

"Third… I don't know… Turf hasn't really… talked to me for about a week now. I don't know what's up with him."

"He hasn't talked to you?" Roland looked at Timbre cautiously, "You didn't hear it from me, but he talks about you all the time at the Faunus table."

Timbre's eyes lit up, "Has he said anything recently? Prom's coming up in a matter of _days_ and… I thought he would've asked me by now. I mean… ask _somebody_ by now. Not exactly _me_ unless he, you know, _wanted_ to ask me, but…"

"Timbre, shut up." Roland put a hand on her shoulder, "Give it time."

"Not ta be rude." Opal laughed as she jogged up alongside them. "But she don't exactly _got_ time. Like she said, prom's _this week_."

Epazote tapped his chin, "Maybe you should… you know, pull a reverse. Instead of him asking you, _you_ should ask _him_. I mean, he does have a lot of... doggish mannerisms. A lot more from the animal his trait comes from than most other Faunus. I mean, yeah, Roland likes clams and has a special rock and my mom does seem to be transfixed by flies every so often and really likes knitting, but, hear me out, maybe Turf's just _too_ dog-like and is worried to break your loyalty. A dog may go to his master to beg for a treat, but ultimately the master's the one to give the command worthy of getting one. He's not going to ask you because he feels like there's the possibility you'll say no. If _you_ ask _him,_ then he knows the answer will be yes. There's greater probability that one will happen over the other."

Cayenne, Sepia, Timbre, and Opal looked over at him in shock.

"Hey, I'm half Faunus and Mom's a counselor. I get how it works."

Timbre looked between the couples and Opal, "Fine. I'll… ask him."


	45. V2Ch17: Clash of the ASHS

" _WAAAAAAAAAAAHHHHHHHHHHHH!"_

In a show of emotion Team GLXY thought they'd never see, Lurida was bawling her eyes out on Xannie's shoulder, sending her light purple eyeshadow streaming down her face and onto the dark material of Xannie's skinsuit.

" _WHY?! WHERE DID I GO WRONG?!"_ Lurida hugged Xannie's arm tightly, " _HE SAID THAT I'M SCARY, XANNIE! I'M NOT SCARY, AM I?!"_

Xannie rocked her sister back and forth in an effort to comfort her, "Hey, hey, hey. Calm down. You're not scary…" she looked up, which was technically down, at the floor from their spot on the ceiling. Just as it did when she was angry, Lurida's Semblance was acting up, turning the Team GLXY dorm into a zero-gravity chamber, "for the most part."

"Well, not when you get used to her!" Yamuna cartwheeled between the walls of their dorm effortlessly, "Weeeee!" her trip through the air was halted when her foot caught the edge of her bedframe. Just that little change in momentum sent her head smashing into the wall behind her bed, "Ow…"

"Yamuna… please. We're having a moment here…" Gavin sounded concerned for his teammate's emotional state. Despite not being in his combat attire, dressed in a tight-fitting black t-shirt and jeans, he was still wearing his boots. They had been designed to lock onto surfaces whenever Lurida used her Semblance. A bit of a modification he had made after being teamed up with the Rheas. Right now, he was only able to stay on his bed by latching the electromagnetic soles to a sheet of metal he had drilled to the baseboard of his bedframe. "Look, Lurida. You're… charming, in your own way. Just because Coral said no doesn't mean others wi-"

Lurida's eyes widened when she heard the name 'Coral'. She wailed out another sob against Xannie's shoulder, " _I'M A COSMIC HORROR, GAVIN! I MESS WITH A FORCE WE DON'T TOTALLY UNDERSTAND! I'M A FREAK!"_

"I don't think that it helped that you turned off gravity to get his attention in the first place," Yamuna peeled her face off the wall to look up at her teammate, "I mean, Coral 'Chris' Matte isn't the only fish in Team OCEN, or the sea here in Beacon. Sure, he's probably the best-looking fish, but you've got prime real estate in the hearts of the guys from Vacuo! I bet they'd think your gravity thing is totally great! They're just… lacking upstairs, typically."

" _I CAN'T DEAL WITH STUPID PEOPLE, YAMUNA! YOU'VE SEEN HOW I GET WITH FORTÉ AND YOUR BROTHERS!"_ Lurida struggled to get a breath in between sobs, " _I WANTED CORAL! I DREAMED ABOUT GOING TO PROM WITH CORAL ALREADY! IF I GO WITH SOMEONE ELSE, THE DREAM IS GONE, YAMUNA! THE DREAM IS GONE!"_

"Never took you for the type to fantasize about boys…" Yamuna shifted her lip.

"Even Lurida likes to be a princess sometimes, Yamuna," Xannie rubbed her sister's back, "and that's okay. We'll make sure you're the best princess at prom. We'll do your hair, makeup, and even go to a nice restaurant. Yamuna and I don't have dates! We can make it a girl's night! Heck, a team night! Gavin's here for you too!"

"I mean, that's true, but…" He held one of his pillows in front of him as a shield, "I… _do_ have a date. Oceana… you know...?"

Xannie glared at Gavin as Lurida fell into another fit of sobs. Apparently even mentioning the name of Coral's leader was enough to bring the waterworks.

"Hey! I'm sorry, okay? _She's_ a second-year team leader. _I'm_ a second-year team leader. We're from the same orientation group. It just kinda… made sense. Y'know?"

Yamuna did a short barrel-roll through the middle of the room towards Gavin, "Not good enough, Gav. By that logic, you coulda gone with Anu, as well." Upon reaching him, she bopped him on the nose with her index finger.

"I mean, that doesn't sound _that_ bad. Anubis would totally treat me right. As long as he doesn't try and kiss me on a first date, we're good," Gavin attempted to lighten the tension in the room with a joke.

" _I WANTED TO KISS CORAL ON THE FIRST DATE!"_ Lurida wailed from her spot on the ceiling.

"You're… really not the kind of romantic that I thought you were…" Gavin shrunk back away from Lurida. Apparently heartbreak was the one thing that could shatter Lurida's cold and callous demeanor. That was certainly the biggest surprise of the semester so far.

Xannie hugged her sister tightly. "Hey, like we've been telling you. Coral wasn't your only potential date. You have a few days until prom. We'll find you somebody."

.

"Listen, bro. We already played rock paper scissors for this. I'm asking Xannie," Sköll waved his balled up fist in front of Hati, "Rock beats paper, duh! I beat you. I ask Xannie."

"No it doesn't!" his golden twin said back to him with his hand held flat, "Who… who the hell taught you how to play rock paper scissors?!"

"I'm self-taught, bucko!" Sköll beat his chest with his fist. Frost dusted the grass at his feet. With a foot race, an arm wrestling match, a round of sparring, and ten bouts of air hockey all under their belts, he and his brother were tied up. It all came down to rock paper scissors, which Hati had the advantage of actually knowing how to play, "These are the Menagerie rules, bro!"

Hati couldn't tell if his brain had stopped working or if his brother was actually this stupid, "Sköll… bro… _I grew up in Menagerie with you_. I've _never_ heard of _anybody_ playing rock paper scissors like this!"

"Yeah, because you never went with me and Set to the secret desert arenas that rock paper scissors masters duke it out to see who will become the greatest master of this ancient art!" Sköll let out a warcry to the heavens with his foot propped up on a rock. Water roared down the simulated waterfall behind him. The customizable training rooms were great when Anubis actually managed to book one, "I am the ultimate master of this art and can say with utmost certainty that-"

"Give it up, bro. I've never even heard of a rock paper scissors arena back home," Set combed his hair in the reflection of the stream that split the room. The arena that Anubis had made resembled the taiga on the northern coast of Sanus. It was cold, wet, but surprisingly pleasant all around.

" _Thank you_." Hati looked back to his twin, "I think that means you're disqualified for cheating. I'm asking Xannie."

For the two years the five youngest Luna children had been at Beacon, there had always been a sort of competition between the two sets of twins. What made it easier, or possibly better, for them, was that they met another set of twins during their orientation. Luckier yet, their younger sister happened to be teamed up with said twins. From the moment the brothers were put into the same classes as the other two teams in their orientation group, they had their eyes set on the Rhea sisters, their hearts fluttering and their brains going empty whenever the neon duo walked by. There was only one issue, there were four Luna brothers and there were only two Rhea sisters. Sköll and Hati both fought for the yellow team, Anubis and Set fought for the purple team.

"I… well…" Sköll racked his brain for some loophole that would land him the chance to ask Xannie to prom, "fine…" he held up his hands, "Besides, Dad would be pissed to hear that I'm going after a girl…"

Hati bit his lip. "Are… are you trying to guilt me into letting you ask Xannie since we've already decided and this is your only chance to have a girlfriend?"

"I'm not trying to do anything. I just… you know… I might never have this chance again, you know…?" Sköll's lip quivered as he drew a quick breath, "I'm fine, though. You won fair and square."

Hati groaned, "Why do you _always_ resort to the puppy-dog pout?..." He shook his head, drawing his gunblade to continue their training and hopefully avoid Anubis' wrath, "Fine. You can ask first. But if she says no, _I_ get to ask. Deal?"

"Deal," Sköll held up his axe, "So, what about you guys? Anu? Set? Who's gonna ask Lurida?"

"Well, it's obviously gonna be me," Set stood back up from the bank of the stream, "Anu's way too socially awkward to do it."

"Excuse me?" Anubis said from his position off to the side of the arena. He always started training sessions like this, standing to the side in order to observe his brothers' actions before joining in on the combat scenario he had set in place.

"Not gonna argue about it, bro, and there's no way Lurida's saying no to me. I mean, look at me!" Set ran his fingers through his newly slicked back hair. In his red and gold battle attire, he looked like a gaudy mobster, "I'm the definition of devilishly handsome."

"More like the definition of devilishly trying too hard and falling flat on your face…" Anubis grimaced as Set practiced what had been dubbed ironically as his "lady-killer smile".

"You're talking about yourself, right…? I mean, when's the last time you even went out with a girl? If you even try to ask Lurida, it's just gonna come out like 'I wanna ask… I mean… you and I should… prom is fun… I'm the less handsome Luna brother… Set's way cooler than me… you should go with him' or something," Set held his fan axe between both hands. Anubis was much more fun to fight when when he was pissed off, "You suck, Anu."

Anubis' brow furrowed. He could feel his blood pressure rising. "You're trying to make me angry, aren't you, Set?" He drew his twin pistol-khopeshes, Rishat Almaat, and pointed the furthest points of the blades at his brother.

Set shrugged, "Well. Duh. It's my _job_ to make you angry." He was used to his brother's speed, but he wasn't ready for Anubis to start so quickly. One second his brother stood in front of him, the next, he was gone. Even with his sensitive ears, he could barely make out the sound of Anubis' sandals slapping against the simulated rock formation they stood on. Having two smaller weapons definitely let him have more mobility.

"And my job is to actually take my training seriously."

Anubis spun, throwing his foot straight out in a hard kick right towards Set's back.

A metallic clang rang out as Anubis' foot struck the golden rod of Set's axe, "But you're fighting your twin. I'd say that's a disadvantage."

Set's weapon was held across the small of his back by the bends of his elbows. He released his weapon from its hold in his arm only to grab the butt of it. Golden light flashed around him in an arc, the blade whizzing through the air as he twisted it in a tight circle around himself. His blade met both of Anubis', the ensuing scraping of metal sent shivers down both of their spines, "As I said before, you suck, Anu."

Anubis wasn't going to let his brother's teasing get to him. Keeping the fan axe's blade caught in the curves of his own weapons, he turned the barrels of the guns to where they were aimed right at Set. With the trajectory set, he held down the triggers on the grips.

"Woah!" Set ducked. He tried to pull away, but Anubis had him firmly in his grasp. His weapon, Shinra Minisfet, wasn't going anywhere. Letting go wasn't an option, and Anubis was pushing to get an angle for a better shot. The fan-axe just wasn't doing it, so Set pressed the button on the side. The weapon split down the middle and shoved Anubis' swords either way beside it.

Anubis watched as Set pulled an arrow from the quiver on the side of his shendyt, or "dude skirt" as many people began calling it thanks to a certain Otter Faunus. While he still had a grip on Set's weapon and didn't have to worry about the blade, the now-unfolded bow had access to its string, and a nocked arrow would be aimed right at him.

The string of the bow snapped taut between Set's fingers, "Do I need to say it for a third time, Anu?" he asked with an arrowhead pointed at Anubis' head, "You su-"

" _Will you stop saying that?!_ " Anubis, still holding Set's weapon, kicked his foot up into the arrow's head. The gold-tipped arrow shot in an angle over his head and into the wall across the room from Set. It was only then that Anubis freed their weapons, but he wasn't going to let Set have a chance to prepare another arrow. He began swinging, bringing the khopeshes down on Set repeatedly. "You _never_ take things seriously. Not training. Not our futures. You know Dad would rather us have this all figured out before we graduate instead of having to duel."

Set awkwardly blocked Anubis' onslaught with his bow's frame. "Where the hell is this all coming from? Wait… are you trying to use the whole role decision thing to say you should ask Lurida to prom?!" Set laughed, "Seriously, bro?"

"It has nothing to do with Lurida! I'm trying to make you _listen_ for once! I try to talk to you, Set! I try _every day_!" Anubis shouted back at his brother, " _I_ don't want to fight about this for another two years! We both know _I'm_ the better fighter! _I_ should get to be the Huntsman between us because _you_ can't deal with responsibility!" he pushed his swords harder against Set's bow, " _You're_ the reason that we don't have a plan, Set!"

Set was the one getting mad now. The entire concept and responsibility of their family's oldest tradition bothered him on a deeper level. What had started as playful taunting had turned into an all-out argument, "Then maybe that's why I _shouldn't_ be the patriarch! You're the one that has some idea of what it's like to be responsible for others! I've always been more of a lone-wolf anyways!"

"All _you_ want to do is goof off! The only reason you're even here is because Mom and Dad told you to and the only reason you know _anything_ about fighting is because our family made you!"

"So you're saying I don't make _any_ sense whatsoever?" Set kicked his brother away, giving him enough time to fold his weapon back. "The _responsible one_ between us should be the one who gets to have a family, right? That would be _you_ , Anu. Honestly, I don't think I could ever settle down with some girl, bro. There's a _wiiiiide_ open world out there and being a Huntsman's the only way I'll get to see it."

Anubis snarled as he began firing his automatic pistols again. "Stop. Calling. Me. ANU!"

Set ran as the streams of bullets began following him around the imitation tundra. He was still angry, but he could tell his brother was out for blood at the moment.

"I'm sick of you being lazy. I'm sick of you not being a team player. And I'm sick of you _only looking out for yourself! You don't have what it takes to be a real Huntsm-_ "

Anubis was suddenly tackled to the ground, a wave of heat passing over him and making it feel as if the air was being sucked out of his lungs. His khopeshes slid away as massive paws held his arms to the ground. Upon looking up, he saw the snarling maw of a golden wolf looming over him. Small flickers of flames curled off of its fur.

"H-Hati! Get off me!"Anubis struggled to get out from under his brother. Unfortunately for him, Hati had only gotten heavier after undergoing his Lunacy transformation.

"Hey! Lemme go, Sköll!"

Anubis looked over to see Sköll, not under the effects of Lunacy, dragging the much shorter Set away with one arm while holding Shinra Manisfet over his shoulder with the other.

Hati watched as his twin led Set out of the training room. As soon as the door closed, he stepped of of Anubis.

"What the hell is the matter with you?!" Anubis snapped as he pushed himself to his feet while Hati was surrounded by a swirling ball of fire.

"No, what the hell is wrong with _you_ , Anubis?" Hati stepped out of the fire, no longer a wolf. He stormed towards his leader and shoved him, sending him back a few feet. "What was that just now?" He held his arm out, gesturing to the bullet holes scattered around the training room's simulated biome.

"He doesn't listen, Hati."

"That's no reason to insult him like that and try to beat the living crud outta him!"

"He doesn't tr-"

"Stop lying to me. Stop lying to yourself, bro."

Anubis glared at his brother. "I'm not lying to anybody."

"So why bring up the role thing? That started as you two trying to figure out who's gonna ask Lurida to prom! You basically started berating Set and telling him he only fights because Mom and Dad want him to. He wants to be a Huntsman, so let him stick with his decision for the time being." He looked down almost disapprovingly at his younger brother, "Did you seriously say all that just so he'd let you ask Lurida to prom?"

"No. I was trying to make him realize that he can't have everything go his way all the time so we can finally figure things out. He thinks the world revolves around him and the one thing right now that would make him realize that is for me to ask the only girl he's had his eyes on since we've been at Beacon."

"That has nothing to do with the decis-"

" _Of course it does, Hati!_ " Anubis took a deep breath in an attempt to calm himself down, "Unlike you and Sköll, Set and I haven't been able to… agree on which of us will become a Huntsman and which of us becomes a Luna patriarch."

Hati felt like he was beginning to understand. "You think he wants to become a Huntsman because he thinks it means less responsibility."

"Well… why do you think he's such a player right now? He wants to get it all out because he's so adamant about not being a family man in the future." Anubis began to remember what their father, Fenris Luna, told them before they left for Beacon Academy.

* * *

They were in the sitting room in the middle of their home back in Menagerie. The octagonal-shaped room was lit from the sunlight streaming in through the windows that took up three of the eight walls. Anubis could clearly remember seeing the thatched rooftops of the other houses and the ocean leading to the continent of Anima stretching across the horizon further on.

Their father, Fenris and uncle, Lycaon had called them in there. Anubis, along with his brothers Set, Sköll, and Hati, sat on the floor cushions facing their elders. Decades earlier, Fenris and Lycaon would have been doing the same with their father and his twin.

Like Team ASHS, Fenris and Lycaon were twin brothers. Ever since they arrived in Menagerie, the Luna family had consisted of a long line of pure Wolf Faunus twin brothers. Every time there was a birth in the Luna family, it had always been a set of identical twin brothers. Every generation consisted of at least one set of brothers, but could consist of as many as six as that was the case with Fenris and Lycaon's generation.

As per tradition, each twin in a pair fulfilled one of two roles upon reaching maturity. After being trained as warriors at Beacon Academy, the Huntsman Academy set up in the kingdom the Lunas originated from before moving to Menagerie after the Great War, there was to be an agreement set upon by the brothers.

One brother would remain in Menagerie to start a family with another Wolf Faunus like themselves and take on the moniker of 'patriarch', and would use his training to defend his home and family. The patriarch from the eldest pair of twins in any given generation were to live in the ancestral home, while the younger sets of twins would make their homes and families scattered across Menagerie. As Fenris was the eldest patriarch of his generation, Anubis and his siblings had the opportunity to grow up living inside the home built by the first of their family that arrived on the island, Amarok Luna.

The other brother would become a Huntsman, normally staying in Menagerie to do jobs outside of the four kingdoms but would willingly take the odd job in nearby Mistral or Vale. As the patriarchs were the ones charged with continuing the Luna bloodline, the Huntsmen were to never have children, living a solitary life devoted to protecting the settlement that their ancestors helped build nearly a full century before.

More often than not, the brothers could agree on who would become a patriarch and who would become a Huntsman, but it was not uncommon for the brothers to both desire the same role. If they could not agree by the end of graduation, they would take part in a duel upon returning home to Menagerie, going far out into the desert in order to carry it out without worrying about prying eyes. The victor would take on the role being fought over, while the other had to begrudgingly take the other.

As Fenris and Lycaon covered the history of the Luna family and their traditions, the Luna boys couldn't help but ponder over the implications of their decisions and the decisions of their older brothers, Cerberus and Shuck.

Fenris had refused to look at his sons as he stared out the window, stroking his greying beard as he looked towards the sea. "As you four know, Shuck was to be the next patriarch of the ancestral home after I pass on. But… considering the fact that he is no longer with us…" Fenris had to close his eyes for a moment. Lycaon pat him on the back before continuing the explanation.

"With Shuck being in the next life and Cerberus in place as Huntsman, there is no other option than Sköll or Hati taking over the home as the next eldest patriarch."

"Say what now?" The two older brothers had said in unison.

"Why can't Cerb take it? He's… much more qualified for your place than us, Dad." Hati couldn't believe what he was hearing. He knew that there had been cases where someone in their family had died, but never was it the next in line to be head patriarch.

"He got the role he fought for! It's _tradition,_ Hati!" Fenris' bellow was enough to silence the room. Even the breeze outside seemed to stop. "And Lunas don't break tradition…"

* * *

"I'm tired of this tradition running our lives, Hati," Anubis looked away from his older brother, "and do not tell me that it's just how things are. It's been one hundred years of the same crap, and each of us goes along with it."

Hati was taken back, "You know that's not quite how it all is-"

"We would still have Shuck if this damn tradition wasn't in place, Hati. Shuck is dead because of a stupid rule, and take a moment to think about how it's affected Cerb," Anubis snapped, "When Yamuna was losing control over her Lunacy, it finally brought him out of his little hut up in the mountains. He wants to be part of the family. He cares about us. He wants to help us, but he couldn't even say a _single word_ while he was here on Family Day. He can't even help himself at this point, and it's all because of this stupid tradition."

If their father was there, he probably would've hit Anubis for saying that, but as they sat there discussing their oldest brother, he couldn't help but agree. "Sköll and I made our decision last semester, but you and Set still have a full two years. Maybe… you guys can figure something out. For the time being… maybe you should just let him be him and you try to find another date, okay?"

"Bu-"  
"I know you like Lurida, too, bro, but… after that little… _thing_. Maybe you don't need to be mixing your anger and her rage in one big pot, y'know what I mean?"

"Right, so I'll just ask Khimera instead," Anubis crossed his arms at Hati, "That's the other thing I have a problem with, you know? I mean, if this tradition is to go on, then there shouldn't be a restriction on who we can and can't be with. That Léon girl doesn't seem half bad, you know?"

Hati suddenly went pale, "Don't be ridiculous, Anubis." He walked over and picked up Anubis' weapons. "I can get behind your issue with the Huntsman-patriarch thing, but… I mean… a Léon is a Léon, bro… On a scale of women Dad would be okay with," He held his hand flat near the top of his head, "Wolf Faunus, up here," He lowered his hand a bit to be equal with his shoulder, "Then any other Faunus, which he would _still_ be against you marrying… if you… you know… patriarch," he crouched, putting his hand against the cool damp rock, "then there's humans… and my hand would have to go through all of Remnant in order to reach where the Léons are on his scale…" he handed his brother his twin blade-pistols.

Anubis snatched back his weapons, "It doesn't matter all too much if someone is a Wolf Faunus, any other Faunus, a human, or a Léon specifically. Not to me, anyway. I think that's all that should really matter. Luna is a family name, not an entire creed, Hati."

"Not… the way Dad and Uncle Lycaon and… like… every other Luna before us do. They'd probably string you up by your ears if they heard the last five _seconds_ of this conversation. No telling what they'd do if they heard the whole thing..."

"Do you think that I'm wrong?" Anubis pressed further while hooking his weapons to his belt.

"I mean… if I said that you're wrong, then that'd make me a hypocrite since I'm currently arguing with Sköll to ask out a _human_ girl. Remember?" he bent back down and placed his hand on the ground for a second time, "They're down here on Dad's scale." He stood up, dusting off the dirt from his hand, "But… heh, I have absolutely no intention of _marrying_ Xannie… just take her to prom..."

"Why not marry Xannie, Hati? Why not say screw it and go for it? It's not illegal to live the life that you want," Anubis started walking towards the doors, "We have free will."

"What, you don't believe in fate, bro? What about luck?" Set said as Anubis and Hati came out of the training room.

Before Anubis could get another angry word out, he suddenly found his twin brother latching onto him, hugging him tightly.

"I don't want us to hate each other… and I don't want us to end up the same way as Cerb and Shuck, bro… but can we hold off… for just a little bit longer?"

Hati couldn't believe his eyes. He almost feared he'd have to go Lunacy again to keep Anubis from trying to kill Set again. "Geez, Sköll… since when did you know how to actually talk to people about emotional stuff?"

"I don't. Set had his ear against the door the whole time," Sköll shrugged.

"Set…" Anubis half-growled. His muscles tightened at Set's hug, but slowly relaxed. Instead of pushing his brother away, he wrapped him up in a hug too, "I'm sorry for how I snapped at you. I think…" he held his brother at arm's length, "we should both ask Lurida. No fighting. No choosing. Just leave it up to her. I don't want to fight with you now, and I don't want to later. I don't want to choose now either, but… I just want you to realize that we have to at some point."

"I do. And I have your back on that," Set nodded and kept his hands on Anubis' shoulders, "and that's why I want you to ask Lurida. Not me, just you," he looked over to Sköll, who had a grin plastered across his face.

Sköll winked back. "Okay, pansies. Let's go get some lunch. I'm starving and I got a smoking hot girl to ask to prom!"

.

" _HEY, COOOOOOOOORAL!"_

Coral "Chris" Matte spun on his heels as he nearly jumped out of his skin to face what he could only think was an enraged Ursa that had learned how to talk. Upon facing the noise echoing down the way between the lecture halls, he found the Rhea twins walking towards him. Lurida didn't look happy as she more stomped her way down the hall towards him, her heavy boots echoing deep thuds in both directions.

"Hey, hey, hey!" he waved his hands, trying to get Lurida to be quiet, "Lurida… I told everybody not to use my real name last year for a reason."

"Hi… Chris…" Xannie said meekly, as if trying to counterbalance her sister's anger.

"No! You stop that! No nice greetings!" Lurida snapped at her sister. "Look Matte, I don't care if you think your name is girly, all I care about is knowing why you turned me down to prom."

"Oh god…" Xannie stood back, knowing that there was nothing she could do to stop Lurida. Since their incident at the therapy clinic a month prior, Lurida had forced her to promise to never use her rings as restraints on her again. Considering Lurida's growingly rampant temper, Xannie promised quickly, especially after seeing the damage Lurida had received that night after her run in with Agent Venice.

Chris ran his fingers through locks of pink hair. Between the pale eyes, pink hair, and button nose, Xannie could see why Lurida might have found him attractive. On the other hand, she also knew that Chris had a certain… reputation.

"I heard that you were seeing a therapist," he told Lurida without so much as skipping a beat, "I didn't wanna open the door to a relationship with a crazy person."

Both Rheas looked offended.

"E-excuse me?..." Xannie asked, sounding hurt.

"We were going to a therapist because, let's face it, some pretty messed up stuff's been happening around Remnant. Not to mention nightmares, which only _one_ of us needs to have at a time, so that means that I get Xannie's. She gets mine, so that's not exactly good for one's mental state." Lurida began stepping towards Chris, "And, not to mention, I was _attacked by a damn terrorist_." She pushed her face closer to his, "So, let me ask again, _pretty-boy_ , what makes me a crazy person? Other than thinking that somebody like you would be a good date for prom with your… perfect blue eyes… and… beautiful pink hair… and…"

Xannie cleared her throat to tell Lurida to get back to the point.

"What reason did you have to turn me down if I'm not crazy?"

"Well…" Chris shifted, "I don't think I really need one. I mean, it isn't like you've ever been precisely stable."

Gravity's hold on them began to weaken. Rage swallowed up Lurida's heart as all three of them began to levitate. That pink hair and those pale blue eyes quickly lost their meaning, "So you're just so inconsiderate that you didn't ask…?"

"It's not my job to keep up with who's 'all there' or no-" Chris was silenced when he slammed into the ceiling.

Lurida watched as he looked around, terrified that he was stuck to the wrong surface of the hall.

"What the heck is _wrong_ with you?!" Chris yelled, "Just like I always tell my team, you Rheas really _are_ freaks!"

"What exactly did _I_ do…?" Xannie commented as she held onto one of the hall's decorative columns.

"Woah, woah, woah. So you told Oceana, Ebb, and Nautilus we were crazy, too?" Lurida looked back to her sister.

"It'd explain why our teams don't exactly hang out as much as we did last year."

"Does Gavin know about this?!" She shouted back at him.

"Ah… Of course he doesn't! If Oceana told him I'd called his precious 'Twinkle Twins' freaks, he'd have my head!"

Lurida tilted her head, "Okay… so, first I thought you just didn't want to go to prom with me, but now I learn you've been talking about us behind our backs, purposely ruined any and all cooperation between Teams GLXY and OCEN, insulted my mental health instead of, you know, asking if I'm okay, and you called my sister and I freaks."

"Well what else would any sane person do when dealing with somebody who does _this_ on a regular basis!?"

"Use my Semblance? You know, emotion is tied to the soul, the soul is tied to aura, and aura is tied to a Semblance. Don't you pay attention in Carmen's class?!" Lurida spun so that she was standing on the ceiling, "You just called me and my sister freaks. You made me mad, which is an emotion, which is tied to my soul, which is tied to my aura, which is tied to my Semblance. Wanna see what happens when I'm positively _livid_?"

Chris couldn't respond, he just cowered against the ceiling as Lurida's piercing purple eyes dug into him.

"Woah… are uh… is everything okay in here?... Up… there?"

The three floating students looked down… up… whichever direction towards the floor. There they found a pale boy with silver hair and a grey hoodie looking up at them. Apparently, being so high up near the ceiling, he wasn't caught in Lurida's gravitational field. Looking back, Lurida and Xannie would think that they were lucky that the field didn't reach the floor and a teacher didn't happen to walk in just to go shooting towards the window or something.

"You're one of Arty's friends, aren't you?" Lurida asked. The anti-gravity field began to fade. All three of the students fell to the floor, the Rhea twins landing perfectly while Chris fell flat on his face.

Ledning looked down to the boy with pink hair lying dazed on the ground, his arm bent awkwardly behind his back. "Yeah… I'm not exactly what I'd call 'friends' with Umber, but… yeah. Go ahead and bunch me in with the rest of Team MTLC then…" He nudged Chris with his shoe, "Did you kill him or something?"

"No… I'm alive…"

"Oh… so, uh…" Ledning looked back up at the ceiling high above them. "What exactly's going on here?"

Chris jumped to his feet, apparently glad he could tell someone about the Rheas. "These two lunatics jumped me after I refused to go to prom with one of them!"

Ledning looked to the twins. "Huh… weird, because from what it sounded like to me, you talked about these two behind their backs, ruined relations between their team and yours, and then called them crazy _and_ freaks. I haven't exactly talked to either of them before, but Umber and his friends talk pretty highly of them and actually kind of understand what they go through… so… yeah.' He turned his stone-cold gaze to Chris, "I don't think I can exactly take your side on this, _Coral_."

What Lurida originally considered a pretty face was now turned into what she could only picture as a bright red onion.

"Back home in Atlas, if somebody did _half_ of what you did on _accident_ , they'd be out of the school so fast they wouldn't even have time to register that their bags were already packed."

Chris looked to Lurida and Xannie, "So you've even managed to convince people from the frigid hive mind that you're _normal_?" He shook his head, "You two psychos really ar-"

"No," a blade of dull grey metal shot out of one of Ledning's bracelets, formed from the metal making up the band, " _You_ convinced me that _you're_ a massive prick. We're in training to be Huntsmen and Huntresses. None of us are what any sane person would consider normal."

Chris eyed the blade carefully as it was pointed towards his nose. He chuckled. "What's your little silly-putty butter knife gonna do to me, huh? If you're gonna try to save the not-so-damsels in distress, you should at least bring a real-"

A few locks of dull pink hair fell off of Chris' head. Ledning's blade had whipped through the air and sliced off a good chunk of his previously fashionable 'do' before returning back to the bracelet.

"Most of the other guys are getting haircuts before prom, and I'm not too shabby as a barber," Ledning jabbed a thumb at the exit, "but I'm really only great at crewcuts and trimming a little off the top," he wagged his finger, pointing to the new gap in Chris' hairline, "You could use a new do."

Chris reached up. His lip began to quiver as he felt his now exposed scalp. "Yo, you people are crazy!" He watched as Ledning jabbed towards the exit again, telling him that he expecting him to run.

Chris did just that. His shoes echoed as he bolted for the exit, his hands over his head as he tried to hide his new bald spot.

They could hear Chris still yelling for another minute until his cries finally vanished further off into the main building.

"Wow… and here I was agreeing with you for a year that he was cute…" Xannie muttered in semi-disgust.

"No kidding… I honestly don't see why I was so upset about him earlier..." Lurida turned her attention to Ledning, "So, you were eavesdropping on us. Chris might not be a saint, but that's a bit sketchy, too."

"I wouldn't exactly call it 'eavesdropping' considering you three were yelling… on the ceiling… in a large echoey hallway… in the main building of the school I'm an exchange student at… I think you'd call that more… 'existing and having working ears' than 'eavesdropping'."

Xannie held up her index finger, "One, I wasn't really part of that," she added her middle finger, "two… I think he has a point, sis..."

"I guess…" Lurida slowly smiled at Ledning, "Thanks. I might have actually hurt Chris had you not… interrupted us. Alabaster would have had my head."

"Well, I imagine trimming the cotton candy off his head might get me on General Léon's bad-list, but it's not like I'm not already on it."

"Yeah, she could afford to loosen up," Lurida giggled, "I haven't spoken to her very much, but Mrs. Weaver mentioned that she's had a few run-ins with her. Apparently it rubs her the wrong way when Mrs. Weaver tells Atlas students that they can afford to goof off and enjoy themselves every now and again."

"Right… no clue who you're talking about, but I'll take your word for it." Ledning actually afforded a slight smile, an uncommon sight for him. "Oh… but, yeah… that guy was a jerk… wasn't he?"

"Yeah he was," Lurida nodded, "Now leave, Xannie."

"Wait, whaaaaaaoooooooooh-kay." Xannie smiled. "I get it… okay." She turned, waving as she left the opposite way Chris had been sent running. "I'll catch up with you later sis. It was nice to meet you..." She paused, realizing she didn't know Lurida's new acquaintance's name.

"Ledning."

"Lurida…" Lurida said, not even caring that Xannie was the one that had originally asked for his name. But that didn't matter at the moment as she found herself liking grey a lot more than pink and blue.

.

 _Wow, that was a fast rebound…_ Xannie chuckled to herself as she left the hall and out into the main courtyard. She expected her next stop to be the Team GLXY dorm, but she found herself stopping early as two familiar Faunus twins stood before her. Had they not seen each other in time, they probably would've ran her over.

"So, Xannie," Sköll puffed out his chest. Finally, it was time to ask the big question. Either he or Hati would get the date, or neither, "Got a date to-"

Hati shoved him a bit to the side with his elbow, "What _I_ was gonna ask was…"

Before he could get the question out, Sköll tackled him into the nearby bush.

"Back to what I was saying," Sköll clawed his way out of the bush, "Has anyone asked you to prom yet?"

"Um…"

"Because if no one has, then-"

Hati pushed Sköll's head back into the bushes, "I was wondering if you'd-"

Sköll shot back up and shoved Hati once more, but Hati had already dug his heels into the ground.

"We should go to prom together!" the twins shouted in unison as they scrambled to their feet and try to be somewhat presentable.

Xannie was taken back by their simultaneous shouting. "Well… um… wow…" Looking past them and their wide smiling faces, she could see their bushy wolf tails wagging back and forth. She couldn't help but giggle. "This _definitely_ wasn't one of the possible forecasts for today…" She said, pointing to her temple.

"It wasn't…?" Hati raised an eyebrow.

"What _was_ in the forecast?" Sköll asked.

"Well… there were too many to actually _list_ them, but according to the paper it's supposed to be sunny with a few clouds this evening." She looked to find the twins staring at her. "Oh… you meant… Probability, right. Um…. well, mainly just helping Lurida with her… prom deal, but after that, nothing really 'came to mind'."

Hati waved his hands in the air as if to clear up the situation, "Okay, but-"

"will you go to prom with _either_ of us?" Sköll finished.

"Oh… you guys…" Xannie was extremely flattered, but the choice was pretty difficult. If only one had asked, then she wouldn't be so conflicted, but that obviously wasn't the case. She refused to lie to them and tell them she already had a date. Yamuna would never let her live it down if she did something crummy like that. "I can't choose…"

Hati and Sköll looked at each other. Both their tails flopped down in disappointment as their hope-filled smiles faded.

"But… let's do this. Let's cut the choice down the middle. Forget Door #1 and Door #2. I'll pick Door #3…" She walked over and grabbed the hand of each twin, "Or… would that be Door #1.5?... What I'm saying is, how about you _both_ take me to prom. I'll let you fight over first dance so I won't feel bad. 'Kay?"

Both their tails flicked back up, returning to their excited rhythm.

Sköll grinned wide, "That sounds…"

"great! That's about the best that we could have hoped for!"

* * *

"It's good to be back in action!" a woman clad in a black robe with red fissures running through it paced around the spire atop the CCT Tower. Her bone mask resembled a kangaroo's skull, and had molten glowing eyes sunken back into the sockets. Wind caught the back of her robe, billowing it out against the railing. A black canister flew between each of her hands over and over to form a kind of rhythm, "How have the kids been doing?"

"Careful with that!" Another figure, much larger and built more masculine, tried to snatch the canister as it was midway between her hands. As she moved it away just out of his reach, he glared back at her, four artificial Grimm eyes burning in his bat-skull mask. "If one of those go off prematurely, _I'm_ going to be the one in big trouble. In case you forgot, we can't _get_ more of those, so treat them with a bit more respect, Oro."

"Oops!" the canister flew over the railing. It clanked against the tile and rolled off the ledge. A few seconds later, it flew back over the ledge and into Oro's hand, "Just kidding! Now, you didn't answer my question," she shoved the canister into Echo's chest, "How. Have. The. Kids. Been. Doing?"

Echo snarled as he snatched the canister back, tired of Oro's tricks. "They're _fine_." He walked over to the large crate that Savannah Speeder, one of the newer agents under his command, had brought up to the top of the CCT in preparation for one of their future missions. He placed the black canister back in its place. Around it, there were similar canisters of different colors: red, orange, yellow, green, blue, purple, and white. They were arranged in a circle within the eight sectors of a large gear-like symbol, the calling card of the Grimm Brotherhood. He closed the lid with a loud _thunk_ and turned back to Oro.

"Umber's happy, as expected. Forté's still upset over her dirty Faunus boyfriend, and Wells and Hughes are… them. Mr. and Ms. Léon Jr. are a bit trickier though. The mother of monsters, has had them under close watch since that utter failure in town last month."

"Oh, the one where bad tech support led to a much more difficult mission than expected?" Oro cackled, "Like building bombs without something to anchor them in place, or at least making the bombs heavy enough to not be thrown by someone as scrawny as Sepia," she hopped up onto the railing for a seat, "That one was your doing, but at least you didn't screw up Trex's weapon. That thing got busted fast."

Echo chuckled, sending an eerie echo out of his mask. "See, this is why I _loathe_ working with agents from the other kingdoms' branches." He leaned in close to Oro, grabbing her by the chin with one hand, "Because I have to go _out of my way_ to explain _everything_." He pushed her back and turned around, "Trex played his part of the incompetent buffoon well. Too bad that it didn't exactly work when that damn Huntsman showed up… Losing half of his weapon could've been disastrous for the brotherhood. Luckily, Lieutenant Koloss is doing an excellent job of sabotaging Beacon's investigation into our weapons. It _is_ his tech after all. If they found out exactly how they worked…"

"We still have Grimm, Echo. I doubt that us not having weapons would be that much of a hinderance. Remember what Commander Maelstrom said: 'Our weapons are nothing in comparison to what we work towards.'" Oro wiped off her chin as if Echo had wiped something revolting on her, "Take a lesson from me for once in your life. Don't stress over the details. We'll get what we want even if things go haywire along the way, which they haven't yet. Sure, Beacon nabbed one chain length and a bear trap, but Trex didn't break character even once with Vincentas. And how Trex, Sanguwalker, _and_ Venice are right where we need them."

"Hmph. Whatever. Are our new vehicles from Atlas going to be able to get enough Grimm for this week?"

"Duh," Oro kicked her legs back and forth, "It's all going according to plan…"


	46. V2Ch18: Party Crashers

Green, blue, orange, and white lights flashed around the dancefloor in the center of the Beacon ballroom. Students crowded the room with staff poised as chaperones spaced around within the mass of flashy dresses and freshly cleaned suits. As was with any prom, the real fun was in the back of the room at the tables. Students played cards, chatted about whatever came to mind, and actually managed to get a little relaxation done after what seemed like ages of rigorous training. For the prospective warriors of Remnant's Huntsmen academies, this was paradise.

Then there were the students of Team ARTS and their friends, who were positively everywhere. Epazote and Cayenne took to the dancefloor to make everyone else at prom look bad, Roland and Sepia were giving Alice a hard time with a few rounds of blackjack with Opal laughing at the scene with some guy with white hair, Timbre sat across from Arty and Curie to make sure that they knew that they were cute despite Curie's abomination of a dress and Arty's crudely slicked back hair, and Midas chatted along with Saffron and Pepper about something with Titian rolling her eyes nearby.

"I promise that dress looks _fantastic_ on you, Curie. Like, I wish that I had one of those… and I'm not lying," _because I want to burn every last one of those monsters_ , Timbre smiled kindly at Curie. The very same dress that Titian tried to get for Curie, the neon green one that showed a little too much of her thighs, was the very same dress that Timbre wore.

"Thanks..." Curie smiled sheepishly, "I don't think I've ever been to a real… party, like this before. This one is massive. The biggest I've ever been to was about twenty people… and that wasn't a party in this sense."

"Well, what kind was it?" Timbre asked.

"LAN party."

"What?..."

Arty laughed, "Don't worry about it, T. It's a nerd thing." In an attempt to be… 'datey', Arty put a hand on Curie's arm and jostled her a little bit, poking fun at her.

"Oh! Hold on… a LAN party. I know what that is!" Timbre tapped the side of her head. Her attempt at making Curie feel welcome seemed to be going headlong into the ground, "That's a Landing and Networking party, right? I think I had to have meetings like that with my producers, or was that advertising…? That might have been advertising…"

Curie pushed her glasses up, "Um… not even close, Timbre. LAN means-"

" _BLOODY 'ELL!_ "

The three of them were snapped away from their discussion of the varying definitions of the word 'party' to look at the blackjack table where the screaming had come from.

Alice slammed her fist on the table. "You were countin' cards, Sepia! You can't _do that!_ "

Sepia burst out in silent laughter. Her hair was pinned up in a small beehive and her bangs were curled neatly over her forehead. The khaki dress shimmered gold when the light glanced off the fabric. Gold sent rays of light dazzling out from the centerpiece of her choker, and her emblem was etched into the center charm inside. Having put her skills with makeup and hair to work, she hardly looked like her normal chaotic self.

Roland dropped the cowboy motif for a black suit with purple detailing around the seams. At Sepia's request, he also had a white rose pinned to the lapel of his suit to add a bit of class to his attire, and his hair was combed back at her own hand. Never had he been one for formal events.

In response to Alice's freakout, Sepia began signing and Roland began translating.

"See," Roland watched his date's hands carefully, "she wouldn't be counting cards unless she had a reason to. She says that you did a few… interesting cuts with the deck when you were shuffling."

"Oi! I… I did no such thing!"

"Right. Sure you didn't."

"Sh-shut up!" She picked up the deck in one hand and squeezed, bending the cards towards the couple. "Or else I'll make the two of you play a game of 52-card pick-up!"

"It's fine as long as they don't explode."

"Well… no, they're normal cards. But 52-card pick-up is still annoyin' as hell."

"What if we evened the odds?" a woman clad in a flowing crimson strapless dress with flowery black patterns embroidered through it took a seat beside Roland. Her curly black hair was let down, but had been brushed back behind her ears and her bangs were pulled back over her head, "I'm not great at card games, but I'm happy to give it a shot, Acacia."

"It's… nevamind…" Alice handed the newcomer the deck. She'd completely given up trying to correct Dante Wells' horrible grasp of names.

"Hey, sis," Roland nudged her with his elbow, "You're all gussied up. Last I heard, you didn't have a date."

"I don't, but it doesn't mean that I don't like looking good," Dante smiled, an odd sight for her, "Looks like you cleaned up a little too, and so has Sepia. I love the beehive. If only my hair could do that…" she ran her fingers through her hair. Her hand jolted to a stop when her fingers got caught, "Anyway…" she yanked them out, "Lisa, deal me a hand. Go fish."

Alice was now thoroughly confused. "Um… we're not…"

"Blackjack. We're playing blackjack," Roland pinched the bridge of his nose.

"Oh," Dante counted her fingers and looked at the cards, "I only have a little money on me."

"We're not actually playing for keeps," he explained further.

"Right, got it," she nodded quickly as she slammed her palm against the surface of the table, "Hit me!"

"You don't say that… yet." Alice didn't feel like explaining the rules of blackjack to someone who was obviously inept at the game.

As Roland tried to explain the difference of blackjack and go fish, she afforded a glance across the room to see Navy talking with their second-year mentor, Gavin, near the punch bowl. She had shown up with Navy, but he had gone off for punch and snacks shortly after arriving, saying something about he'd rather eat than play cards with Roland. Looking away from the snack table, she saw Turf sitting completely alone in the corner. For the past few days, she'd seen how Timbre tried to approach him constantly, but he'd run away and hide like… well… a scared dog. It was sad. Not exactly pathetic sad, but sad sad. As Alice thought about him sitting there less than twenty feet from the girl that he wanted to walk into the room arm-in-arm with, it was seeming more and more pathetic by the minute.

"You know what," she pushed the deck of cards to Roland, "I'm gonna go… talk ta somebody. You guys keep playin'. Be back in a tic."

.

Turf glanced up as Alice approached, but didn't say anything. He tried to adjust his dark green tie. Just as the rest of the guys in the room, he wore a black suit with his signature green around the seams. His dog ears were flattened down against his head. A cup of punch hung loosely in three of his fingers by the rim.

Alice stood in front of her partner and crossed her arms, huffing audibly. "What're you doin' ova here all by yourself?"

"Um…" Turf swirled his punch around. He stared down into the pinkish-orange drink and back up to Alice, "Drinking punch? Strawberry-tangerine. It's pretty good. You should go get some."

Alice sighed, she was going to have to be pushy, "Let me rephrase… why are ya ova _here_ an' not ova _there_." She pointed to the table she had just left. Timbre was laughing as she watched Dante 'shuffle' cards by spreading them out on the table and just moving them around with her hands. Roland didn't look happy when Dante handed him a jumbled mess of playing cards that nowhere near resembled the deck they should've been.

Turf glanced up for the first time during the entirety of prom, "Because she has… a…" he looked to Timbre, then over to Arty and Curie. Oddly, Arty was showing Curie little drawings and bringing them to life. The smile that Curie had wasn't just a friendly one, either, "Hold up, what…?"

"You know how Timba's been trying ta talk to you for tha past few days? Ya, I'm not 100% sure, but I imagine it was to ask you to prom considerin' ya hadn't asked her already." She looked over to the table Timbre was at. Despite the smile plastered across the singer's face, Alice had seen the sadness and confusion Timbre felt every time Turf ran away. Being avoided by a close friend couldn't feel good. Being avoided by the person you helped through a tough time couldn't feel any better. "I tried to tell ya she and Umba would never be a couple."

"Right… well… too late now," Turf took a sip of his punch, "We're already at prom. I can't just ask now…"

Alice was tired of the waiting and moping. If this was going to last the entire night, she didn't want to be around it. Without another word, she turned on her heel and began to storm off.

That's when the image came to her mind. A small brown puppy sitting at the side of a city street whimpering as people walked by it. All it wanted was attention, but nobody would give it the time of day. It's sad eyes being completely ignored.

"Dammit all…" Alice changed her course, swiftly making her way to the card table, where the game of chance had become a challenge to build the largest house of cards possible.

.

 _So close! Just a little higher!_ Sepia stood on Roland's shoulders with Dante standing behind them incase they fell, _Just gotta get… right…_ she put the last couple of cards at the very top to complete the twelve layer tower of cards. In the shadow of the massive tower were four empty boxes of cards. One of them had Alice's emblem printed on the cardboard, and the other three had Sepia's. It seemed that card counting wasn't Sepia's trick after all.

Timbre couldn't help but laugh as she watched. She found the whole scenario a bit ridiculous considering they were building a house of cards in a dark room filled with people dancing to the music. She suddenly found Alice storming towards her and latching onto her wrist.

"Hey! Alice!"

"C'mon pop-star."

She was yanked to her feet and away from the table. Sepia, Roland, and Dante watched in mild concern. "Alice! What're you-"

"Shut up."

"Excuse m-"

"I said, _zip it_. Don't talk ta me. Talk ta _him_."

Timbre didn't know who Alice was talking about, but she had a good idea. Her theory was proven correct upon seeing Turf in the corner with an empty cup by his feet. He looked just as flustered and concerned as she did.

Alice let go of Timbre's arm and went behind her.

Before Timbre could ask, she found herself being shoved towards Turf.

"No more runnin'. No more bein' scared ta talk to each other. Figure out your problems and enjoy yourselves!" Her self-given mission accomplished, Alice made her way back to the card table, where she immediately slapped the completed pyramid, causing the cards to rain down. Within a few moments, the cards were all pinched back in their respective decks, ready for more actual card games, much to Dante's dismay.

Turf scooted back in his chair. A crack was heard when the back of his seat hit the wall, "Um… hey, Timbre."

"What… what was that all about?..." Timbre crossed her arms and looked back towards Alice. She honestly had no clue why she was dragged across the ballroom. She had seen Turf when she first walked in with her team, but she didn't approach in fear of him running away again, "Are you… okay?"

"You know," he gestured over to a woman across the room. The Mistrali counselor, Sofaira Weaver, was dressed up in a black and gold gown with a low cut back. Students weren't flustered by her slightly revealing dress due to the four massive spider limbs coming out of her back, "I saw a spider, and it… she startled me."

"Right… I've gotten to know her better over the semester. She's not as scary as you might think."

"Oh, I know. I've had a few… pleasant talks with her? It's still really freaky… even by Faunus standards," he watched as Sofaira began jamming out to the song that was currently playing directly next to Epazote and Cayenne. Apparently she was very versed in mom-dancing, even with the spider legs throwing her off balance.

Epazote didn't look happy in the slightest.

"Yeah…" Timbre pushed her hair back. For whatever reason, she found making eye contact with Turf awkward. Being avoided for so long and being unable to talk about things with him made her feel as if they were distant. They'd never officially said they were a couple, but their friends and even their teachers referred to them as such considering how much they could be seen talking and hanging out together. Carmen was the worst offender, often saying how much she 'ships it'. Timbre decided it was time to stop avoiding the subject. "Turf? Why have you been avoiding me?"

"I haven't," Turf went to stand, but then sat back down. Running away again wasn't going to do any good, and it might have even made things significantly worse. Over the course of the last semester and a half, he had grown to really like Timbre. She was there for him when he was outed as a Faunus, and she put her life on the line to protect him in the Emerald Forest, "Okay, I have… There might have been a misunderstanding last week…"

"Being?..." She took a seat in the chair next to his. It was obvious he was hesitant in answering. "It's okay, Turf. I'm not mad, I just want to know what's going on."

Turf bit his lip, "Well…" he tapped his foot, "See, I thought that you were going to prom with Arty because I kind of… got Alice to help me follow you guys into Vale after we saw you holding hands with Arty. Roland caught us, so I'm surprised he didn't mention it to you guys… or Sepia, for that matter…"

"Wow… that's…" In her mind, she wanted to tell him that what he did was creepy and kind of reminded her of some of the rampant paparazzi or the… obsessive side of her fanbase, but she knew he wasn't like that. He was worried and didn't want to show pain in front of her if it turned out to be true. He had an odd sense of pride and loyalty, but Timbre had grown to learn that that was necessary for him to function. If he didn't have that, she wasn't sure what he'd do. As she thought, she found it less and less creepy. Instead, it began to become some strange sort of comical. She found herself chuckling, quickly falling into a fit of laughter.

His ears perked up a bit, "Wait," he had thought that she would think that he was a freak, or that she would have thought him completely out of line. The whole time that he had been envisioning a situation like this, he had only pictured the worst possible case scenarios, "You're not… ya know, mad at me?"

Timbre had to focus in order to end her laughing fit. "Normally… maybe, but… I honestly don't blame you. I guess at the time I was focusing a bit too much on playing matchmaker instead of, y'know, paying attention. I should've known that's why you were upset with me."

"Nah, I didn't really give much indication that I was… aside from running away," Turf tried to wave the whole thing off, "Prom isn't over, so… do you want to dance or… something…?"

"Yes! Of course!" Timbre shot up from her seat and grabbed Turf's hand, "Come on, Ace of Spades!" she dragged him out to the dancefloor.

"I- uh- wait- okay! Yeah!" Turf went from being dragged by Timbre to running out in front of her, "I just can't dance, but that's okay!" the ears atop his head stood at attention with a slight droop at the tips. He shook with untapped excitement.

.

"Holographic display?" yellow panels laid over each other like golden scales around GLXY's fortune teller's dress.

"Check," Lurida snapped her fingers. Violet panels formed similar scales around the skirt of her own dress.

"Lab coats?" Xannie tugged at the long sleeved black lab coat that she had buttoned around her middle.

"Check…" Lurida groaned and buttoned a white replica of Xannie's coat. She passed an apologetic glance to Ledning, but he didn't seem too anxious to go inside anyway.

"Jewelry!" Xannie waved her hands in the air, which were covered in golden wires that all connected to bangles that hung from her wrists. She had one of the rings that she used to fight around her neck and two more around each ankle.

"Can we please go inside?" Lurida pointed to the ballroom doors, her fingers wrapped in violet wiring.

"Yeah, please?" Hati went to tap Xannie on the shoulder, but then pulled back. The last time that he and Sköll told her to hurry up, she went on a rant about how the only way that she could go faster was to increase the speed of light by 50% and begin getting within 99.999999% of that. It all went over their heads, so they assumed that she knew what she was talking about.

"I just want to make sure that we're good to go," Xannie snapped her fingers together, sending virtual golden sparks flickering into the air, "And if you ask me, I think we're finally ready and looking _great!_ "

Sköll pushed open the doors, "So what're you waiting for? Ladies first!"

"Finally…" Lurida and Ledning both groaned.

.

Heads turned to watch the GLXY twins walk into the ballroom. While they normally stood out in the dark due to their combat attire, they were stunning as their dresses and coats shimmered in the darkness of the venue.

"Hey, there's the Twinkle Twins!" Gavin came up and hugged his teammates one after the other. Xannie laughed as she returned the embrace. Lurida groaned and clenched her fists to keep herself from suckerpunching her leader. "I was beginning to wonder if you guys were going to show up. What was the hold up?"

"The girls had to get ready," Ledning ran his fingers over a lead bracelet that he had left on his wrist. It wasn't as big as usual, but it was certainly enough material for him to fidget around with, "Well… Xannie did, anyway."

Xannie laughed and tried to ignore the comment. The likelihood of her actually getting ready in a reasonable amount of time was about the same as the likelihood of her passing Professor McGouran's tests: slim to zero.

Hati and Sköll both furrowed their brows at Gavin.

"Why do you smell like Yamuna?" Sköll asked.

Yamuna's face suddenly popped up over Gavin's shoulder, "Because I made him give me a piggy-back ride through the door."

"Isn't Oceana mad…?" Hati tried to reason out exactly what was going on.

Gavin lifted Yamuna and placed her back on the floor, "Well… after Lurida got back after her little… confrontation with Chris Matte and decided to go to proooo-"

Lurida began slicing her hand across her throat to tell Gavin to shut up before he said 'go to prom with Ledning.' Yamuna was quick to tell Xannie about Anubis, and of course, Xannie told Lurida. That combined with the fact she was at prom with a guy she recently met made things awkward between her and Team ASHS. Ledning being only a few feet away from Sköll and Hati made him a target.

"oooom without him, she mentioned some of the things he said and I just decided that if Oceana was going to let that ruin the relations between Teams GLXY and OCEN, then so be it. I honestly don't need that sort of drama in my life, you know?" He began ruffling Yamuna's hair, "So I decided to bring Yamuna with me as my date. Don't worry guys, I'm not gonna try anything with her. We both just needed dates to prom and decided to go with each other."

"What? I'm not pretty enough to try something? Gavin, I brushed my hair for you," Yamuna stepped to Gavin's side. Her kimono was bright silver and free of any tears or patches from battle, "I'm not good enough for a dirty, rotten, disgusting human like you…?"

"Excuse me?" Ledning wasn't sure he heard her right.

"I'm kidding, geez!" Yamuna giggled, "I'm just happy to be here, to be honest. Gavin doesn't get onto me for shoveling the finger foods down my throat instead of talking to people!"

"Yeah, I don't try to stop her because I know she'll probably kick my butt if I tried."

Hati looked to his sister noting the size difference between her and Gavin. It would've been funny had the statement not been true. "You got a point there, Gav…"

"So," Xannie held her hands out, one to Hati and one to Sköll, "Enough dawdling. You guys decide who's going to dance with me first? This _is_ a dance after all."

As the Faunus twins started to bicker, Lurida dragged Ledning away, "We'll see you later, Gavin."

"What was that about? You mad at your team or something?"

"No, it's the crowd I don't like. I want to get away from all these _people_."

"You're not very social. Are you?"

"Not in the slightest."

She pushed open the door to the balcony, letting in the cool night air as they went to join the others who needed a break from dancing and partying.

.

Buzzing cut through the static from a communications device placed just inside Echo's collar. He smiled to his friends and stepped out of the way as if to take a call. Once out of earshot of anyone worth worrying about, he pressed the button just under his collar to open the line between him and his temporary partner for the mission.

"What is it?"

Oro's giggle came from the other end of the line. She sat by the door, not a soul realizing that she was a wolf among a bunch of clueless sheep. She winked at Echo as his eyes trailed over to her.

Echo huffed, "Please, leave the games alone for this. Status report. Now."

She had to cover her mouth to keep from laughing. Her communications device was tucked between strands of her newly styled hair. In a dress, she couldn't be bothered with hiding the thing in one of the straps, "Everything is going wonderfully! I've got to say, I can't wait to see how they _all_ deal under pressure."

"Right," Echo surveyed the room, "I'll let Koloss know that it's about time. If you screw this up and blow your cover or god forbid _our_ cover…"

"Oh hush. I'll be fine. Just listen for Deathstalker's call. She still wants to carry out her little 'experiment' considering everything she's been through to get her little playthings here tonight." She giggled, "If the timing gets messed up, she won't be happy, so you should be more worried about yourself, lover boy," Oro shut off the line and trotted back over to her 'friends'.

.

"C'mon Curie. It's a dance."

"I said _no_ , Umber."

"Please?"  
"I'll punch you. I'm serious."

"C'moooon."

"I'll taze you."

"No you won't," Titian held up the battery that Curie thought was in her pocket. The entire thing dissolved into a heap of rust and silver powder in the palm of her hand, "Dance with him, Curie."

"How did you?... Do you have any idea how long it takes for me to make one of those?"  
"C'mon, you can't taze me now. They're about to start a slow song."

"I hate slow music, and I can still punch you."

Arty grabbed onto her sleeve, "Curie, you're here, I'm here. It's a dance, so let's dance. I hate this just as much as you do, but I'm trying to actually, you know, be a normal person for once?"

"No, I-"

"Midas! Curie's chickening out!" Titian called across the room, "Come on and-"

"No. I don't need Midas giving me his schtick right now." Curie jumped up and grabbed Arty by the sleeve of his suit. "I'd never hear the end of it…"

Midas came running up as Curie and Arty headed towards the dance floor. "Yo, Rusty, what's up?" He looked a bit upset as his shoulders slumped, "Don't tell me you dragged me away from trying to be Roland's ex's rebound for nothing…"

"Please tell me you didn't get dragged away from being my ex's rebound!" Roland shouted from a table over, "We had an agreement!"

"Yeah, and you paid a lot more for it than I would have thought…" Midas glanced back to Saffron, who was batting her eyes and waving. How she got into the dance in such a revealing cocktail dress was anyone's guess, "Which is a bonus, cuz I easily would've done it for free."

Titian smiled as she watched the couple, "You did your job perfectly, dude. Go back to flirting."

"Right, so back to the cutie," Midas turned to run back.

"I will pay for every date, too! If you can make her fall in love with you, then do!" Roland shouted to him.

Sepia pumped her fists in the air.

"Just… just keep her from becoming a real problem..." Roland tapped the table for another card from Alice

"Will do!" Midas ran off.

.

"I'm not good at dancing…" Turf held Timbre's waist awkwardly with both hands. He kept a good foot or two between him and her, "Am I…?"

Timbre chuckled as she pulled one of his hands from her waist and laid it on her shoulder, "No, you're not, but that's okay. This… might be weird, but how about you just let me lead, okay?"

"Yeah, got it," Turf's ears perked up as the sound of a familiar voice echoed through the room as the slow music suddenly returned to the fast-paced music the dance had started off with. He laughed, "So much for slow dancing, T."

Timbre's face turned bright red as the familiar lyrics to her song "Little Dreamer" came on through the speakers. She sighed loudly, "You know… I don't know what I expected. Of course they'd play one of my songs."

"Hey… I mean, no one's complaining," Turf looked around at the students nearby beginning to happily bounce around. This song in particular had a very positive and upbeat feel to it, more so than a majority of Timbre's music, "I'm just happy to finally be here… with you."

 _No one complaining besides me that is…_ She smiled back as they went further into the dance floor. Students, teachers, and staff all bounced to the pulsing music. "Me too." She pushed her hair back away from her face. "I've kinda missed talking to you for the past few days. I was scared you didn't want to be around me anymore."

"No, I did, I just… I psyched myself out a bit…" Turf tried to retain some dignity for his behavior, but it was fading fast, "You know, I just never thought that I'd have any kind of thing with a girl like you, you know? I don't mean a celebrity, but… someone like you in general. Nice and stuff…"

"I never thought I could ever have a normal relationship in general either." She giggled, "You should prepare to see yourself in the tabloids."

"Eh, I'm nothing special. They'll get over it," Turf's gaze shifted away from her, "So I guess… that means we should quit dancing around the topic of us?"

"Literally… or figuratively?"

"Both? Let's go with both…" he bit his lip while trying to smile.

"Okay… both."

In the middle of the sea of people, their feet stopped moving. They didn't feel surrounded at all, as if in a small bubble where they were the only things in the world at that one point in time. Both leaned in closer on instinct, knowing what was to come of the uncertainty that lead up to this.

Right before their lips touched, Turf reeled back. Something was ringing in his ears. It was a shrill ringing, but it faded every time he tried to listen closer. The sound only began again when he relaxed, "Wait… do you hear that?"

Timbre was a bit upset that their little moment cut short. Her face quickly became pale as she put together what he asked, "C-Can you hear it?"

"That… _ringing_ ," Turf let go of her, "Didn't you hear it back in Forever Fall and the Emerald Forest?" he began walking across the dance floor without even acknowledging the other students. What was a shrill ring had become a full-on buzzing inside his brain. Even when he listened for it, it was there as clear as day. Worse yet was the migraine that was forming between his temples, "What the heck is that?"

"Oh…" Timbre calmed down, realizing that Turf was talking about something else. "Turf, I think maybe the music's making your ears ring or something." She grabbed onto his arm and began leading him towards the door to the balcony, "Loud music plus sensitive ears might not be such a good combo. Besides," she drew him close in an embrace, "You need to calm down. We're not on a mission. Tonight's about having fun and forgetting about Grimm… and fighting… and schoolwork for once." She held him out again at arm's length and smiled. "Okay?"

His shoulders slumped. Maybe he was just being paranoid, "Okay, I guess-"

"Ow! Ow! Ooooowwww!" Yamuna yelped over and over from the snack tables, "Turn it off! Please! _Turn it off!_ " she shouted while holding her ears. She crouched next to the table and tried to scramble underneath the tablecloth, "I said turn it off! TURN! IT! OFF!"

Timbre was a bit concerned now. "Turf, is… is your cousin okay?"

"That sound. Her ears are much more sensitive than mine," Turf pulled away from Timbre, "Wait, what about Set and Anubis?"

"We're dealing!" Set shouted from a table just beside the dance floor. He had his hands over his ears. His eyes were shut tight and his jaw was clenched, "Man, the electronica on this track's _really_ bad!"

"Seriously…" Anubis held the ears atop his head down. He kept his face down on the tabletop. If he had been clenching his teeth together any harder, then he might have chipped a tooth. "If someone's playing a cruel joke and blowing a dog whistle, _cut it out!_ "

"That's not the music… or a whistle…" Timbre looked around the room. Nobody but Faunus with ears as their trait really seemed to hear anything, and it seemed only the Canine-based ones seemed to be severely affected. "Carmen!" Timbre called to her instructor near the ballroom entrance, dragging Turf with her as she made her way over.

.

"And that's when I said, 'Oh, hey Timbre!'" Carmen and the instructors from the other schools burst out laughing. Beacon's scatterbrained professor had found it quite easy to make friends with the new employees of the other schools, and to remind the older employees of the dance from just two years before.

She was ripped away from her conversation when she felt a tugging on her sleeve. She turned to see the subject of the story that she was telling, "Oh, hey Timbre!" she smiled, "I was just telling the other instructors about when you were little. Specifically, I was telling them about the time that you pulled me away from a guy that I was flirting with at a class reunion. Remember how your mom brought you along to show you off, and you just _had_ to follow Auntie Carmen around. I never got that guy's number because of you, by the way. Thanks."

Timbre was caught off guard, "Wait… what? Carmen that's not important right now." She gestured around the ballroom, trying to point out the affected Faunus, especially the three youngest Luna children. She knew it'd get Carmen in gear if she saw some of her own students in distress. "There's some sort of noise hurting some of the Faunus students. Do you think you could tell the DJ something's wrong with the speakers or… whatever the issue is?"

"Well… I don't think the DJ's gonna hear me through the music, so…" Carmen waved goodbye to her new friends and jogged over to the power outlets, "Sometimes it's better to ask for forgiveness rather than to ask for permission. Alabaster says that rule is completely ridiculous, but," she yanked the cords out of the wall. The music shut off with a lasting hum through the room, "he hasn't fired me yet, so..."

Turf looked around the room with could be heard his hands over his ears, "That made it worse!" he winced. The other Faunus shouting and whimpering throughout the ballroom, "That made it a _lot_ worse!"

"Well then…" Carmen scratched her head, "Do you know where it's coming from?"

"There." Turf pointed to one of the speakers, before quickly returning his hand to his exposed canine ear.

Carmen trotted over to the speaker to begin her investigation. Wearing her normal teacher/combat attire for prom had worked out well. It allowed her to comfortably get down on all fours and check under the elevated speaker just to the right of the DJ's table, "That's strange…"

"What's up?" Timbre stepped up behind her.

"This," Carmen pulled out a little black box with flashing lights on the corners that cycled through eight specific colors. Red, orange, yellow, green, blue, purple, white, and then, by some strange feat of internal lighting, black, "Is this it?" The tone in her voice had become very serious upon seeing the object.

Turf nodded, unable to speak from the ear piercing pain that the device was causing him.

.

"Dammit. That meddling witch found the attractor." Echo snarled to Oro as he watched Carmen showing the box to the couple in green.

"Well don't just stand there!" She snapped back, " _Your_ boss has the kill switch!"

He rang his superior, "Lieutenant Koloss! We have an issue. The first attractor was found a little sooner than expected, and by our good friend Carmen Maple unsurprisingly. We can't let her get it back to Onyx. Are the Grimm close enough to detonate it without compromising the mission?"

"If we lose a few attractors, then it's no big deal. We've got plenty. Besides, they're still just prototypes after all," Koloss sneered from inside his crowd of new 'friends', "Just act natural and watch them, kid. Enjoy yourself, and try not to die. You've been at least somewhat helpful tonight."

.

"That can't be goo… d…" Carmen's eyes narrowed at the device. Something felt off about it in her hand. Something warm, "Everyone get down!" she shouted.

The students and faculty fell to the ground without so much as a question.

She pitched the device straight at one of the windows, shattering it into a rain of fragmented glass. Light poured into the ballroom through the windows as whatever was in the black box went off. It burned like a star before fading out. Amidst the blue and yellow spots in her vision that she had to blink away, she saw something that sent shivers down her spine. Black trails of smoke filled with burning red dots.

She lifted her scroll to her ear, "Onyx. Did you…?"

"I did," Alabaster tapped his cane on the ground behind her, "I checked the surveillance cameras. The security guards are all incapacitated. I'm afraid that someone has manipulated the feed up until now."

" _Manipulated the feed?!_ How the hell did they manage to do that, Onyx?!" she yelled. "We have Huntsmen and teachers and students from _all four kingdoms_. How did something like this happen?"

"I suspect it's the same people that did the same thing in the Emerald Forest last semester. Now, if you would please, allow me to handle this situation," he hung up his scroll and stepped up to the DJ's table. He cleared his throat before taking the microphone to address everyone in the room, "Those who can fight, get ready to. Those who cannot, hide. It would seem that the Creatures of Grimm are just outside."

A deck of cards scattered on the floor in the back of the room.

"Sir! I am unable to call for my locker!" Dante called out from the table.

"Same here!" Gavin called as well. He sat beside Yamuna with a hand on her back.

Opal shouted a few swears and slammed her scroll on the table, indicating that she couldn't either.

Arty removed his hands from Curie's waist and looked down at his scroll. _Right as we were trying to be normal teenagers for once..._

Curie fixed her glasses and did the same. "Umber, it's locking me out of my locker too. Someone must've installed a jammer somewhere. That, or re-encrypted the wireless connection between the scrolls and the lockers."

"They changed the wifi password?!"

Despite the seriousness of the situation, Curie afforded a quick slap to the back of her date's head.

"Right… sorry… I'm stupid. Don't listen to me…" Arty kept pressing the 'call' button for his locker, but it kept flashing red, showing he didn't have access. "What the heck is going on?" He looked over to Roland and Sepia at their spots next to Alice, Dante, and their fallen architecture project. "Roland! Sepia!"

"Us, too." Roland stood from his seat, "I've got an idea, though," he ran over to the podium at the entrance. He grabbed the remaining handouts on the little shelf inside, read over them, threw them up in the air, and waved his hands. Dozens of newly formed paper daggers with ink edge blades fell to the ground, "We can improvise."

Sepia snatched up as many daggers as she could carry and began passing them to anyone who would take one.

"So… anyone else sneak a weapon in with 'em?" Alice held up two decks of cards with her emblem plastered on them, these curling with smoke and ice crystals. Roland, Sepia, and Dante suddenly found themselves lucky that there wasn't any accidental deck-swapping or else their earlier falling house of cards would've been like a bomb going off.

Shorla rolled her eyes at the weirdly-accented girl's question. Her voice reminded her of Opal's, only somehow more annoying. "Lucky for you, Team STON doesn't _need_ to sneak weapons in." She held out her hands to the side. Portals appeared above Namib, Torbern, Opal, and herself. Their weapons dropped out of whatever lied on the other side of the inky purple tears.

Opal held up her shotgun-boomerang. "Oh… right. Forgot we don't even use our lockas." She saluted and winked to her leader, "Thanks, mate! I'd be dead if you didn't do your thinkin' ahead, Shorla!"

"Fifty-two times now, yes…" Shorla used a knife to cut off much of the poofy violet dress that Opal had insisted looked great on her. Half of the skirt of her dress fell to the ground. She kicked off her high heels, "I recommend that you other girls do the same. It's a little difficult to fight in formal wear."

"Right," Dante used the knife that Sepia had given her to cut off a portion of her own dress. It hurt her to see the red and black lace flowers fall to the ground, but it had to be done, "We need to get communications back up. We need a few parties to go out and accomplish that," she ran through the checklist that the Haven students had been made to memorize after the string of murders in the capital city, "We can deal with Grimm, but if this is the work of the Grimm Brotherhood, then…"

"Huntsmen should deal with this problem," Alabaster spoke up, "It is good to see that you take so much after your mother, Ms. Wells, but please allow me to lead this operation."

Dante nodded quickly, "Y-Yes sir."

He went on, "Unfortunately, I have not heard from Vincentas, nor have I from the other Huntsmen and Huntresses on call. None of the faculty have their weapons either-"

Eight brilliant lights exploded around Carmen. She held four of her swords in each hand, creating the effect of long rainbow-colored claws. "Don't bring your weapons, you said. It'll be fine, you said. No one would be stupid enough to attack us inside Beacon, you said," she began juggling her swords, "And I'm sure I'm not the only one who broke the rules and came packing."

The other instructors all shrunk back against the wall, at which Carmen's eyes widened in realization.

"Okay then… I guess I _am_ the only one that broke the rules and came packing out of the faculty…" she looked to Alabaster, "I can't leave the students here, then."

"Then you will stay here," Alabaster stepped towards the students, "This is my school, and you are all under my care during your stay here. Who is willing to go out there with me? There is no shame in staying here. I wouldn't ask any of you to do this if I didn't have to."

Arty looked to his date, "Curie, your S-"

"I know, Umber." She raised her hand and walked towards Beacon's headmaster, "I could find what's preventing the lockers from being called if I could get access to them and whatever external systems control their network."

Arty couldn't let her go alone. He lunged forward and grabbed her arm, "If you go, I go too."

"I will help to secure the perimeter here. I don't have my weapon with me, but I am more than capable doing that much," Shirley Wells leaned against the speakers by the DJ's table, "Dante, Ahab, my dearest children. Go with Onyx and the others. They could use you."

"Yes, Mother," Dante stepped up to Alabaster with her paper knife clenched tight in her fist, "I was planning on coming either way, but having her approval on the matter is a nice comfort."

Ahab pulled up the sleeves of his naval jacket, which he was wearing even for such a formal event, "Whatever. I was getting sick of this whole dance thing anyways." He looked to Arty and Curie and sneered, "These nerds look like they could use the backup."

"My friends need back up," Roland growled as he stepped up beside his half-brother, "I'll break your neck if you try anything funny with them."

A smirk crossed Ahab's lips, "With _your_ friends? Why I'd never, big brother."

"This is serious. Please," Dante shot him a glare, "I'll improvise some poetry if I have to."

Ahab held up his hands, "Fine, whatever."

' _I'm ready,'_ Sepia signed with both of her paper daggers held backwards in her hands.

Timbre saw the rest of her team preparing to head out. She felt a hand grab hers. She turned to face Turf.

"Go," Turf nodded towards Alabaster, "I'm no good without a weapon or dirt under my feet, but you're not bad at hand-to-hand. They could use you."

Timbre started to argue, but was shut up when Carmen put her hand on her shoulder.

"You'll be better with your team. You should go with them," Carmen kept juggling all eight of her swords with her freehand, "And seeing Alabaster fight is… interesting, to say the least. It's something I wouldn't want you to miss."

Timbre looked between them as if she were making sure they weren't going to finish with ' _Psyche! Nah, you're staying here to help us. They have enough firepower._ ' She gave them another few seconds, but Carmen ended up shooing her with one hand while somehow managing to keep the eight laser swords in the air with the other.

"Go on. Don't keep them waiting. We're kinda dealing with a crisis, kiddo."

"Yeah! Come on!" Flames danced across the red fabric of Cayenne's dress as she ran to join the group, "It'll be awesome! So many Grimm to burn up, and so little time! Glad I put Fire Dust in my dress!"

"Yeah… I'm gonna stay here…" Epazote shrunk back, "Keep an eye on her, Tim."

Timbre glanced back to the giddy flamenco dancer as she bounced up and down in excitement. Small flames danced around the hem of her dress. Timbre realized that she was one of the only girls that hadn't torn her formal wear in order to fight better. She then realized that made sense, since, like Alice and Sepia, Cayenne _always_ fought in a dress. "Right. I don't think that'll be a problem, Epazote." Timbre turned and ran to join the small posse that had formed around her headmaster.

.

Khimera felt the red portion of her aura beginning to flare up. She remembered the defeat they suffered at the hands of the three Grimm Brotherhood members only a month before. She blamed herself for that. She could've been stronger. The chair she was sitting in squeaked loudly against the tile as she jumped up to join the group. What better way to make up for a failure than returning the favor with a victory?

"Nope," Fenix held her back by her shoulder, "Momma says no. You can fight where I can keep an eye on you, as in here. No buts."

Khimera's eyes flared blue as she turned to face her bodyguard, " _Fenix_."

He crossed his arms, "Red, blue, yellow, whatever. The answer stays the same. No. My job's to keep you safe. I've already failed once since we got to Vale. Your mother would have my head if something were to happen. Scott's and Navajo's, too, I bet. Ray's team's been told the double-down on him as well. He may be able to help them but that's not worth letting his bravado put him at risk. You're staying here where we can keep an eye on you and make sure you're safe."

Khimera watched as the group prepared to head out, listening to whatever the old man had to say about teamwork or staying safe or whatever. She couldn't hear from this distance. She felt her aura calm down. Without saying a word, she returned to her seat.

.

"If that's everyone," Professor Alabaster laid his cane down. He stood back up and pulled off his suit jacket and laid it over the willow wood cane, "Then I think that we should be off. I look forward to fighting with all of you," he popped his knuckles loudly as scratches and growls began coming from the front doors, "Stay safe on this night, and don't forget to have fun. This is a very special night for all of us, so I hope that you all can look back on this fondly," he grinned, "Everyone should remember their first prom night."


	47. V2Ch19: Ballroom Blitz

"We should take a role call to make sure that we're all still together," Alabaster stood at the head of his group of students. A severed Beowolf head faded away into nothingness around his clenched fist. He looked back to address his students one by one, "I'll start with our guests. Cayenne Canella?"

"I'm here, 'teach!" she shouted back. She sprung up off the ground using her hands and slammed a flaming foot between the eyes of one of the Rippers that had surrounded her. Cinders burned through the air as she spun away from the fading Ripper and slammed her foot into the side of another, "Really wish I had Caliente!"

"Yes, I understand that," Alabaster stepped back to avoid the Ursa that nearly plowed him over, "but we'll have to get to your lockers to do that. That will be our first objective," he looked over to another one of Beacon's guests, "Ahab Wells?"

"What?" he snapped back.

"How are you doing?" Alabaster latched onto the mask of the Ursa that was intent on killing him. He crushed it in his fist without so much as looking, "Do we need to send you back to the ballroom? I'm sure your mother would be glad to hear about your curt attitude with one of her fellow headmasters."

Ahab sneered, "Whatever, gramps."

Dante reached for her brother, "Ahab! Behi-"

Without even looking, Ahab fell to the ground, landing as if he was going to start doing push-ups.

The black body of another Ripper passed over him, it's claws open for prey as it leapt towards him.

Dante and the few others in the scouting party near her thought the monster was going to land right on top of them. It would have had Ahab not kicked his feet up above him, launching the Grimm back. Ha landed on his feet as he watched the Grimm squirm in an attempt to get up.

"Tsk tsk tsk. Don't you know how to identify your superiors?" He planted a palm against its side, completely ignoring its snapping jaws and kicking legs.

The Ripper was blown to pieces by a fireball erupting from Ahab's palm.

" _Woah!_ Nice Semblance!" Cayenne called from inside the pack of Rippers around her. Fire burned through the air and singed the bone masks of the Grimm, "If I could do that, then Haven Academy would be Ashes Academy."

"I'm surprised that it isn't already in shambles. Had Mother not intervened on a number of occasions, then Ahab would probably be blind in both eyes by now," Dante held her knife out in front of her at a large, ostrich-like Grimm with a bony crest atop its head. Sanguwalkers were not a favorite of hers, nor was their counterpart in the Grimm Brotherhood from what she heard about the fight in the warehouse, "I stand before a wretched beast, for which I will surely bu-"

"I will take that as a 'present' from you, Ms. Wells," Alabaster went on as Dante began dodging vicious pecks from the large bird, "How are you faring, Ms. Geiger?"

"I'm… pretty useless right now to be honest." Curie kicked away a few small Raach that had crawled into the walkway, "I'm fine with melee fighting, but that's usually _with_ _a weapon_ ," she whined as she reached down and pulled off her high-heeled shoes, which had unfortunately had the heels melted off by the Raach's venom. "And not in a dress and heels… It took me _weeks_ to figure out how to walk in these!" She looked to Arty, "I kinda regret threatening to taze you now. If I hadn't, I'd still have a battery to work with."

"Just goes to show that violence isn't always the answer then, huh?" He grinned stupidly, despite it obviously not being the time for jokes.

"Arty Umber," Alabaster looked around to see dozens of approaching Grimm, "Gather your team. We move forward in our advance. We can reach the locker room before we reach the CCT Tower. We need to prioritize getting communications back up, and I suspect that whatever they are using to interfere with our scrolls is there, as it is the most central point of the school. If all of you have your weapons, then this mission should go much easier," he cracked his knuckles and picked up the pace down the walkway. Columns lined the way to the training complex and the locker rooms beyond, "Curie and Sepia need to stay in the center so that they are safe for use throughout the mission. Dante, I would like you to stay in the center as well until you have your weapons, and the same goes for Timbre. That means that Arty, Roland, Ahab, and Cayenne will form a perimeter around us. Do we have an understanding?"

Timbre looked to Arty from her place within the pentagon formed by the four attackers and Professor Alabaster, "I know you've been working on using your Semblance more, but are you sure _now's_ a good time to do that?"

Arty pulled his pocket sketchbook and a pen from inside his suit jacket. He began flipping through the orange leather-bound book his sister gave him the semester before. "Alabaster sure seems to think so. I'm not gonna question the man."

"Think of this as a learning experience, Mr. Umber," Alabaster looked back from the head of the group, "I see potential for you to widen the use of your Semblance. It could be used very effectively in battle, such as by setting traps and impromptu weapon improvisation. I trust that you can be creative with it."

"Or find a way to blow a hole in the side of the cliff. He's good at committing acts of domestic terrorism," Roland chunked his knives out at two Grimm. They cut through the air and into the masks of two Ursa, then returned themselves to his hands, "I mean, you just know that the press in Atlas made it _exceedingly_ clear that you were involved in the bombings in downtown Vale."

"You say 'domestic terrorism' with so much malice, Rol. I like to think that Arty's just a creative arsonist!" Cayenne threw another roundhouse kick into a Beowolf's head, "In the end, he's just an artist, you know? He just paints with Dust! Might I suggest that you start using more Fire and Magma Dust, Art?"

"Yeah… no. I've learned my lesson on _both_ of those." He began scribbling intently in the sketchbook, relying on the sounds of the people walking next to him to keep his pace, "I try to limit myself on causing much more damage with my Dust."

"Why would you do that when you're training to be a Huntsman…?" Dante questioned. She tossed her knife over to Roland so that he could better use them for their line of defense, as did Sepia, "Causing damage is the point of this profession."

Arty couldn't help but think back to Vincentas' explanation of his own Semblance. How he could become a greater threat if other people were taking damage for him. Arty didn't want to be that way. He wasn't going to let others get hurt in any crossfire because of him. "Yeah, well, I'm trying to focus my damage on a particular target. Aim for the tree, not the forest, you know?" He turned to another page.

"You did aim for the tree, at least when we met. Then the fire spread… to the forest," Roland pointed out while his paper knives flew out around him. They took out a few more Grimm, "Leave the analogies to the writers of the group, bud."

"Yeah… no kidding…" Dante nodded in agreement.

"Glad drawing's more my thing anyways." Arty held his hand over the drawings in his book. Several pages began to flutter as small black objects popped out of the pages. He handed them to Curie, "I think you know what to do with these."

Curie nodded and took the handful of objects. A light green light trickled over them as her fingers flew around them. As each piece was affixed to one another, they began to take shape.

Despite the fiery spectacle that was Ahab and Cayenne destroying more Grimm nearby, Timbre was more interested in watching Curie work. "What are you doing?"

"Like I said, I've been working on my Semblance," Arty answered her, "Curie's been helping me out to make sure it works.

With all the pieces in place, Curie held up a solid black pistol and cocked it. "He takes too long to put them together. You have no idea how frustrating it was to get him to name the parts of a gun correctly. He can remember what they look like fine, but I wanted to punch him whenever he called a firing pin a 'springy thingy'." She held the gun to Timbre, "I know it's not your gloves and it's a bit old-fashioned, but think you know how to use a regular old handgun?"

 _You can't even shoot my guns,_ Sepia snatched the gun out of Timbre's hands and pointed it out the back of the group. She fired three times, sending six Grimm down for the count. She took a moment to examine the faux firearm, _Well dang…_

"Don't worry, I'll make more…" Arty said as he began scribbling again, "And yes, Sepia, it works just like a real gun because, while under my Semblance, it's _technically_ a real gun. I know some artists do the whole meta messaging thing, the whole 'this is not a pipe' or 'the word is not the message' deal, but guess what." He smiled to Roland and Dante, "I don't have to worry about the limitations of words."

"We don't either because they don't _have_ limits in the right hands. Words can cut deeper than you could ever imagine," Roland flicked his wrist, sending a knife through a Ripper's skull, "and pictures are low effort observations of what you have already seen before. Pick up a fiction novel for once in your life. H. E. Loverust. For the love of the gods, just read the freaking collection like I've been begging you to!"

"He makes a point, Roland. Can you make a gun?" Dante asked, "I mean, that's a bit of a _literal_ limitation of words."

"Well… I guess, but… shut up," he decided that 'shut up' was the best argument that he had, "Guns are dumb."

"Which is why dancing is the most pure form of art. It doesn't need words _or_ pictures," Cayenne cartwheeled into another Grimm, "It speaks for itself."

"To each their own I guess." Timbre muttered, watching more Grimm explode from Ahab and Cayenne's Semblances.

"How about all of you 'artists' take his advice and pipe down…" Ahab growled.

' _Film's the best, anyway. I do mean objectively, too. It is solidly the best,'_ Sepia signed, ' _By the way, T. Aren't you worried about Professor Maple?'_

"I'm sure she's… fine." Timbre found another rough black pistol being held to her. "I'm a little more worried about _us_ right now…"

.

" _Get away from my babies_!" Carmen shouted at the top of her lungs. She batted her green laser sword through the heart of an Ursa that had a student pinned against the broken glass that littered the ballroom floor. The Grimm had gotten in through the windows and brought chaos in with them, "Alice! Look alive!" she shouted.

Alice swiveled just in time to watch as a couple of Rippers jumped through the window.

"Nuh-uh. You're not gettin' tha jump on me _this_ time!" two cards flew at the Rippers as they began to charge. A couple of sick crunching noises rang from their chests as two razor-sharp clubs sliced through their bodies. They fell limply to the ground, both sliced open halfway.

"Glad you're… holding… your own now… against those things, Alice!" Turf stood next to her with one hand over his ear, the other hand brandishing the mic stand from the stage. Desperate times called for desperate measures. He was just sad that the metal rod couldn't turn into a gun, but as he bashed a Sanguwalker on the head, he was just glad to have something more than his fists.

Green light shone through the fading wisps of the dead Ursa. Carmen snatched her sword up and added it to the other seven that she was juggling with one hand, "We can't get a count on how many Grimm there are without- oh, for the love of the gods…" she batted two more swords, red and blue, towards a pair of five-tailed Kokonatsu, "We have to hold them off until Alabaster and the others get everything back up. Look out for each other while we wait!" she darted off to join the fray once again.

Beowolves, Ursa, Rippers, Kokonatsu, Sanguwalkers, Raachs, and even a Scuttlepod here and there all tried to rip her students apart. Those who couldn't fight were hiding under tables or crunched into the janitor's closet, but those who could were putting themselves in harm's way just to protect their fellow classmates. Carmen knew that this wasn't the kind of thing that they should have had to go through before they became full-fledged Huntsmen and Huntresses.

Waves of color burned around each student. Their auras were vibrant, but some of them seemed to pulse with a certain dull urgency. Some of their auras even seemed to be convulsing around the people that they protected. Those were the focus. The duller the color, the closer the person's aura was to breaking. The more erratic the aura acted, the more panicked its owner was. Her Semblance was certainly strange, but this was exactly the kind of situation that she obtained it from.

Violet cut through the air, sending a Raach's head rolling across the dancefloor with a thud. Venom melted the boards, but that was an expense that Alabaster wouldn't mind writing off. All that mattered was that the student that the Raach was going for was safe and sound.

Orange came down through a Kokonatsu's spine, and green came up through it's neck. Carmen held her blades together after completing the swings, and used the momentum to throw them back behind her into a pair of Ripper's heads. The auras of the students that they were going after were all close to breaking.

"Take cover! Now!" she shouted.

A Beowolf pounced on her, thinking that she wasn't paying attention. It didn't even get to see the yellow light that ripped through its torso and out it's face. The blade was thrown from it and into the heart of a Scuttlepod.

Not even a second passed before Carmen was on her feet and running towards the writhing Scuttlepod as it screeched. She held her white and black blades out to her sides, then brought them together when the Scuttlepod threw it's head down to crush her between its pincers. The head was bisected between the eyes in a flash of white light.

 _Good… Arco Iris is spread out… I can work with that…,_ she huffed, "Gavin! Can you get Lurida and Xannie together?! We could use them!"

Gavin began throwing punches at Grimm. Apparently, he was no stranger to hand-to-hand combat. Xannie stood at his side. Her dress was in tatters, but it allowed her to kick a lot easier. Yamuna, Set, and Anubis sat holding their ears. With the ringing still going on, they were useless in the fight. But the device was destroyed, so why were their sensitive Faunus ears still incapacitating them?

"I don't know where Lurida is!" Gavin looked around frantically. He wasn't used to not knowing where each member of his team was at all times. He wanted to check his scroll to see if she was okay, but the Grimm kept him from doing so.

"She went outside with her date right after we got here!" Xannie called out while holding a smaller Beowolf in a chokehold. She whined as it snapped at her forearms.

"What's the probability that she's out there fighting, and what's the probability that she's been injured?" Carmen asked as her white blade pierced the head of the Beowolf that Xannie was holding.

Xannie took a moment to catch her breath.

"Xannie!" Carmen shouted, concern outweighing her desire to keep Xannie from panicking.

"I-I don't know!"

"What do you mean you don't know?!" Carmen slashed through another Beowolf, "I know you, Xannie! You've just got to focus! I know you're under a lot of pressure, but you can do this! I need to know if my students are safe!"

"You don't understand!" She took Gavin's hand as he helped her to her feet, "I… I can't tell you what I don't know!"

"What do you mean that you don't know? Did you hit your head?" Carmen looked over at Xannie with concern in her eyes, "Are you okay?"

Gavin put a hand on Xannie's shoulder. She looked borderline distraught. "Things have been a little out of whack, Carmen. We can explain it to you later."

"Right! Got it!" Carmen looked around for the student that might be able to help fix the mess that they were in, "Hold on. I'm going to get those windows blocked off," she took in a deep breath, " _ **RIME!"**_

" _WHAT?!"_ the short girl yelled back, startled by her name being shouted at her. She was back-to-back with her date, fighting off Grimm coming at them from every angle.

"You could try not blowing out my eardrums…" Zero chopped his hand into the side of a Beowolf's face before bringing his foot down on its back, cracking it in half.

Rime gripped her necklace tightly. She felt out of breath from making so many ice constructs. "Sorry, Z…"

"Ice! Windows! Now!" Carmen ran away from Gavin to lend Rime and Zero a hand. She slashed through two Ursa and slid in between Rime and Zero, "Use your Semblance to block off the windows and the doors! We can kill off the remaining Grimm after we get the ballroom locked down! Also, leave some room to breathe between you two… geez."

Rime's vision was becoming slightly blurry, "Carmen… I don't know if I have enough energy to-"

She felt a hand on her shoulder. She turned to see Zero's icy blue eyes staring back at her.

"Will you just go? If you pass out, I'll cover for you."

Rime was a bit surprised by Zero's show of concern. It wasn't often he did so, but over the past few months, she had noticed him doing it more and more. She had also noticed he only did it towards her.

Determination filled her as she dashed towards the windows. Despite her formal dress and pleated hair, she had insisted on wearing her normal hiking shoes. As she jumped over snapping teeth and dodged claws as they swiped at her, she was glad she made such a tacky decision.

"Right! Fantastic!" Carmen ran to find her next helper, "Alice! Ice cards! Help Rime and freeze up those windows!"

Alice grabbed her weaponized deck and ran to help Rime. Picking out the diamonds and throwing them into the icy torrent coming from Rime's necklace. Looking over, she could tell Rime was having trouble staying awake. Team ANTE and Team FREZ were still on shaky terms, but she had to do something to help.

"Oi… so… Rime… you an' tha ninja boy datin' now? I always thought you two liked each otha…" She felt weird talking to Rime about something so normal while being surrounded by absolute chaos, but she needed to keep the other girl awake.

"Oh, you know. We just thought it would be fun," Rime's eyes fluttered as she froze over another window. She could feel her fingers becoming numb as frost crept up from her nails, "Same with you and Navy I'm guessing?"

Alice felt her face flush red. She wasn't expecting her wake-up method to get this awkward. Maybe Rime would forget if she actually passed out from overexerting herself. "Um… uh… about that…" She and Navy hadn't necessarily been _dating_ , but they had been hanging out and talking a lot more. Navy had begun talking to her about how, after seeing her change pace so drastically from her usual anti-Faunus sentiments, he reacted at first with anger, but later with curiosity. He wanted to know _why_ her mentality changed so drastically. Over time, Alice began to feel like discussing her experiences with him was starting to make him open up a bit more. His stone-cold machismo occasionally slipped. Not by much, of course, but enough to see a hint of change in his violent behaviour. Fights between him and other students had dropped off and Team ANTE's reputation of being less than desirable to be around was actually beginning to drop. Yeah, Navy still held prejudices, but he wasn't acting on them as much as he used to. Whether or not it was to appear more attractive to the "new" Alice, she had no idea, but it was still a possibility.

She was still confused how she felt about him. He followed her without question back when she was the "self that she despised" as she called it. He followed her again even after she started being nicer to Turf and to Faunus in general, which confused her, especially after his comments about _them_ getting to her and making her lie about her beliefs. The whole situation was confusing and exactly what feelings were there between them were blurry.

Alice shook the thoughts from her head, "Okay. This was a bad idea. Shut up an' keep freezin' windows."

"Gotcha, Queenie." Rime finished off the windows lining the first half of the ballroom. All that was left was the row of windows on the eastern side of the building, and that was going to be a chore.

Carmen shouted across the room at the blond boy trying to "comfort" the two girls sobbing their eyes out in the corner, but he seemed to be having a hard time talking through the sneezing fits that kept coming over him, "Midas! Make the ice covering the windows gold! The ice isn't going to hold by itself!"

Midas wiped his nose on his sleeve. "Sorry teach, but Ms. Sassafras and Ms. Paprika need to be guarded! I'd never forgive myself if they got hurt!" He flipped a table, using it as a makeshift wall for the girls. With a quick tap of his finger, the wood turned a bright gold. "General Léon would be terribly upset with me if I abandoned these girls for more than a second. Protecting and serving is my duty after all."

"I will drop your grade by ten percent in my class for every ice covered window that is not glimmering gold. I _know_ you don't care about General Léon in the slightest," Carmen stomped over to him and pointed a laser sword at the windows. Her eyes flashed with rage at the fact that Midas was thinking with the wrong head at a time like this, "If anyone here gets hurt, it's on _you_ if you don't put in the effort to protect _everyone._ You don't want to act like a soldier, so be a Huntsman and do the right thing. _Now_."

"But miss-"

Two of her laser swords seemed to manifest from her hands, flying past Midas to the wall on either side of the golden table. "If you're _really_ that worried about them, how about you keep them alive by stopping the flow of Grimm into the ballroom?"

Midas reached up and felt the warmth on his neck left by the plasma blades. He held a thumbs up, sweat pouring down his face as he nodded vigorously. "Y-you got it ma'am."

"Good." She flashed her usual warm smile, "Now move your ass before I move it for you." She ruffled his hair before throwing her elbow back into an advancing Ursa.

Midas broke into a run across the ballroom to the first of the windows Rime and Alice had frozen over. Running his hand along the wall, he activated his Semblance whenever he came to one of the makeshift barriers. He'd never used his Semblance on ice before, but it seemed to be working as the clear blue crystals began to grow a solid gold coating. It was going to take a lot out of him, but if he impressed Saffron, or any girl in the room for that matter, with his ability, then it'd be worth it in the end.

With one side of the ballroom's windows blocked by the strengthened ice, Midas made his way to the other side as the two girls were finishing up. He came up to Alice and Rime as the night breeze and Grimm coming into the large room trickled to a stop, blocked by the artificial icebergs.

Alice sneered as he approached, " _Please_ tell me you're not ova here to hit on me again."

Midas grinned, "Only if you want me to, Red."

" _Don't_ call me that."

"I'm kidding. My date would probably be upset if she saw me talking to you anyways. I heard she can be quite the jealous type."

"Right…" Alice noticed Rime beginning to stumble, her legs buckling beneath her. She barely managed to catch her before she hit the ground. "Woah! Bloody 'ell, Rime! Are ya okay?"

The broken glass crunched behind them as someone approached, "Her Semblance takes quite a bit out of her with prolonged usage. She will probably be out of this fight until these monsters are cleared out."

Alice and Midas turned to find Frost Aurora standing behind them. She was in a long white silk dress that had, by some miracle, not been completely torn apart yet. Silky white ribbons trailed from her bracelets, ending in sharp silver blades adorned with angular white crystals.

Alice narrowed her eyes at her rival. Even through her own inner changes, she still held a fair amount of dislike for the person she saw as a pompous icy snob. "How exactly did ya get _those_ in?"

"The same way you got your cards in and how Rime got her necklace in. We always have our weapons on us. Although…" she glanced down to her passed-out teammate, "Ours can actually pass as accessories while yours are… just cards, but I believe I have heard you say on multiple occasions you try to always have a deck or two on you at all times, and considering that you wore your normal combat attire to prom, it does not surprise me in the slightest."

"Well, at least I-" Alice was cut off by the violent cracking of ice.

Midas fell back as a pair of students dove through the newly shattered ice of the final window that he had to turn to gold, bits of ice floating around them as they soared across the ballroom.

"Fill the hole! Fill the hole _right now!"_ Lurida shouted as the effects of her Semblance wore off. She and her date fell onto the dance floor with a thud. Her dress and labcoat were torn to shreds, so it was a miracle that they were still clinging to her body by a few scraps, "Oh, do _not_ start with that!" she screamed at the Ripper that was cramming its head through the hold that she and Ledning had made.

A magma charged slug rocketed across the room and slammed into the Ripper's head. From across the room, Opal waved with a stupid grin on her face before Shorla clocked her in the head to remind her of the fight going on around her.

Alice swung her arm, throwing a king of diamonds at the gap where the fading Ripper slumped to the ground outside. "Well, that ansas the question about where tha otha Rhea sista went…"

Midas touched the ice to finish setting up the barricades, "Well… That saves my grade… and, more importantly, scores a few points with my date…"

Ledning dusted off his jacket and went to help Lurida up, "I don't think you're scoring any points with anyone anytime soon. Then again, you're faced with near-certain death and you're worried about picking up chicks, so… I'm not too surprised, cuz…"

Midas pat his cousin on the shoulder, "Glad to see you're not hurt too bad, Led."

"Yeah. We're torn up from the Grimm, but the burn marks," he lifted up his sleeve and then pointed to Lurida's coat to show off the black holes in their attire, "are from a little blinking box we found planted outside. Grimm were all over it, so I'm gonna guess this is a Grimm Brotherhood thing…"

Lurida pushed her hair back as she surveyed the fight raging within the ballroom. "Gee… you think so? What makes you say that?"

.

"Black and red… I'm just going to point out that it fits their color scheme…" Cayenne tapped her lips as the group that she had happily joined crowded around a briefcase laid on one of the benches of the locker room.

Ahab stood at the door that they had kicked down to get in. Explosions burst out from his hands in his less than strenuous effort to hold off Grimm, "Someone wanna take care of this so I can blow the thing up?"

Sepia held up her scroll with a message on it, ' _Hasn't he watched like… any movie? The briefcase is always a bomb.'_

"I doubt there's a bomb in there. It has to be the signal jammer," Timbre looked anxiously towards the doors as the Grimm continued to pound against them.

"You're both right. It's a signal jammer and a bomb," Curie kept her hand pressed against the briefcase, green tendrils of light spreading from her palm across the metal surface, "It's too big to just let it go off. It'd easily take out a good-sized portion of this building… and us with it by extension."

"So it's probably not the only jammer. This one's for the lockers, and there might be one for more general communication," Roland tried to send a text via his scroll, but it failed to send, "Probably at the CCT Tower… Alabaster's right again…"

Professor Alabaster stood by the door beside Ahab, watching his students put their critical thinking to the test. If he had to, he would intervene, but this experience was one that his students could seemingly handle… which was strange.

He cleared his throat, "Now, what did Professor McGouran go over in the way of neutralizing explosives?"

"Throw it far away and shoot it from afar if we don't have the know-how to defuse it," Dante spoke up.

"That would still blow up a chunk of Beacon," Curie narrowed her eyes at the girl.

"We throw it _very_ far. A makeshift slingshot, maybe?" Dante shrugged, "If we can't open it, then we don't have much of an option. Do we, Carley?"

"Please. Stop talking and let me work." Curie kept running her hands around the case. "And there's no telling if this thing's sensitive to motion. It could potentially go off if we tried to move it too much."

Arty and the rest of Team ARTS worked around their lockers. While the GPS trackers and rockets were jammed, the locks themselves weren't.

Arty looked over to his date, "So… how's it coming?"

Curie shook her head as she analyzed the inner workings of the briefcase, "That's weird..."

" _Curie! No!"_

The entire group panicked as they watched Curie flip the clasps on the case and flung it open. They braced for the blast, knowing that it'd be their certain doom.

Arty held his eyes shut tight. "I'm dead. I'm dead. I'm dead and this is the afterlife. Oh man, _why is it so dark?!_ "

"Because you're eyes are closed and the bomb didn't go off," Roland shifted his jaw as he looked down at the open briefcase. Sure enough, there was a bundle of wires, an LED timer, and a place for explosives to be packed, but for some reason, there was nothing to actually set off. However, "there's a place for explosives, but they're only using it as a signal jammer?" he pointed to the single blinking light in the briefcase, "Looks like everything is wired up, but it's like they forgot to pack it… and we know that they know a thing or two about explosives. How much do you wanna bet that this is the same kind of mechanism that was in that cube thing, Curie?"

"Well, I can't know for sure since I never touched the frequency emitter back in the ballroom, but just from looking at this…" she examined the framing and wires connecting the triggering mechanism to the case's latches, "had the bomb been armed to go off, manually or on a timer, the explosion would've been _very_ similar, just larger."

Cayenne whined as she looked at the explosive-less briefcase, "Why would they even bother making a _bomb_ that won't _explode_?!" She sounded upset rather than confused and as a result received a few awkward glances.

A scroll was shoved into Curie's face, the hold of which was, of course, Sepia Hughes, ' _Frequency emitter? How do you know that?'_

"Because the Faunus with ears were freaking out? I know Atlas may not be very diverse, but I know enough Faunus and dogs and have dealt with enough Beowolves to know that canine ears are _very_ sensitive to high-pitched noises. I've saved my butt along with many others just from the frequencies emitted by my weapon when it's switched on." She returned to the case, quickly and mechanically flipping the right switches and pressing the right buttons in order to turn off the jammer, "I think it goes without saying that everything tonight's been the fault of the Grimm Brotherhood, but… I hate to say it, but this thing was made by an absolute _genius_ …"

"What do you mean, Ms. Geiger?" Professor Alabaster spoke up. He seemed unnervingly calm for the situation they were in, but it was a teacher's job to act as a pillar of certainty when surrounded by the _un_ certain.

"I mean these guys have some real expertise, or at least convinced somebody with real expertise to make their stuff. The beartrap-like weapon Professor McGouran had me analyze from the attack on Vale was made to look simple yet terrifying, but if you could see the inner workings, you'd be much more frightened. This bomb was _made_ to go off. Only the person who made it would have been able to disarm it if it was armed." She pushed her glasses up as she rose to her feet, "Well… besides me that is. And here I thought those mechanical horses would be the most impressive tech I'd see here in Vale…"

"So in other words…" Arty eyed the case as if it could still go off at any second, "we'd be dead right now had it actually been filled?"

As if answering any normal yes-or-no question, Curie simply nodded. "Luckily for us, it wasn't. It's pretty much useless now, especially now that the jammer part has been turned off."

"So our job here's done then?" Timbre said with a hint of hope in her voice, "Everyone can get their weapons and help clear out the Grimm, right?"

"I wouldn't say that…" Dante held up her scroll. The text that was queued up to send was still showing a 'FAILURE' beside the message, "The CCT is still acting strange. But… what if the students in the ballroom didn't have to call their lockers? What if we sent them out to them?"

The shockwave of an explosion from the outside door shook the room. Ahab groaned and waved his smoking hand in the air, "I hate to make your ego bigger, Sister, but that's not a bad plan. One small problem. We don't have the coordinates."

"Five-hundred twenty-seven feet to the north-east would be the center of the stage in the ballroom. I doubt anyone would use that as a vantage point."

Everyone turned to stare at Arty.

He waited for a few seconds, not knowing what was so weird. "What? I memorized Beacon's floorplan."

The strange looks only intensified.

"Architecture is art, too! I did it because I wanted to know every detail of the campus so I could draw it from any viewpoint!... It's more interesting a subject than Atlas Academy is!" He seemed to be getting flustered, as if he was being judged for the lengths he would go for his hobby.

"And you guys call me crazy for reading every book in the library…" Roland opened his locker to retrieve Writer's Block, Avant, and Garde. After Sepia blew up her locker, he was sharing his with her while a replacement was still in the works.

Sepia grabbed her guns from Roland and nodded in thanks, _It's not that one of you is crazy. It's that both of you are…_ she thought to herself.

Cayenne slipped away and begin putting in the ballroom's coordinates on the keypad of almost every locker, "So we gear up and get to the CCT and hope that the others are able to wipe out the Grimm?"

Curie cracked her knuckles before assembling the parts of Alternator, "Pretty much."

" _Noice_." Cayenne cackled as the lockers launched through the ceiling, each spewing a large blast of flames from its engine after their internal countdowns ended. "That _definitely_ makes up for the lack of an explosion!" She raised her arms as she watched the lockers shooting through the night sky. " _Presents for everybody!"_

.

"Well…" Oro watched as lockers crashed through the ceiling one after another onto the stage, "Looks like the kids are doing well, but I can't say I'm surprised after how quickly they beat the Trex… and considering they have the old man with them…"

Echo ran to his locker, trying to ignore Oro's comment, "Whatever. They may have gotten done quicker than we expected, but, unlike your partner's mission, this one went much smoother." With his weapon in hand, he slammed the locker shut, "Never send someone to do a job in a kingdom they weren't stationed in to begin with. If Commander Maelstrom had sent me along with them, we would have Team ARTS _and_ Khimera Léon. Maybe even her brother if that damn Huntsman never showed up."

Oro glared at him as if she were hoping he would die if she just thought it hard enough. "His mission may have hit a snafu, but we still got the emotions flowing. We may not have gotten our primary targets, but we got _something_ out of it." She giggled, "People are _afraid_ of us, aren't they? You can never have enough fear."

Echo looked over and watched as the other students began to fight at their full potential now that they had their supplies. The affected Faunus were still hiding, clutching their ears. Somewhere in the room, one of the remaining attractors was still active, which would have made things fun had the windows not been blocked. "The Grimm may be getting cleared out, but I still have the pleasure of seeing some of the disgusting Faunus writhe in pain." At least he was getting joy out of everything after being reminded of the failures of the Brotherhood's previous endeavors.

Oro smirked, "You've always hated those Lunas haven't you, Echo?"

Echo cracked his neck, ready to get some pent up energy out, "Let's just say, had my Lieutenant given me free reign of one of his bombs, it would have gone right into Team ASHS's dorm room instead of merely being a distraction, and tonight would have been a _lot_ more tragic. But that would ruin everything we've been setting up for now wouldn't it?"

.

Cheers echoed out across campus as the students that were once in the ballroom burst through the doors. Gunshots rang over the screeches of dying Grimm. It was a marvelous sound for Alabaster's group of students. Their weapons were readied, their worries had been relieved, and determination filled their hearts.

"It sounds like your classmates are making the most of their prom night," Alabaster took a step out into the light of the shattered moon, "Once we get the CCT issue fixed and everyone is appropriately debriefed, then I think that I can work with the other headmasters to… compensate you all for this night. Perhaps we could give you all a few days off of classes to… recuperate. That is if we get this done in a timely manner, of course. Does that sound fair to you all?"

Arty shot an electrified shot at some of the glowing eyes in the darkness surrounding them. "Yeah, I'd say we're getting _plenty_ of training in tonight…"

"You mean fun, right? This night is the best prom that a girl could ask for!" Cayenne raised her flaming hammer into the air and charged towards the CCT Tower. With most of the Grimm heading towards the ballroom to attack the majority of the students, she only had to pirouette and slam her hammer into a few to clear her way, " _ **I GET TO SMASH AND BURN AND KILL ALL THE GRIMM THAT I COULD EVER WANT!"**_

"Wow… Pepper sure is pumped to go on a killing spree…" Dante ran after the pyromaniac in hopes that a Water Dust buff would keep the girl from burning the entire school to the ground.

"I swear you're doing this on purpose now…" Roland finished typing out his weapon. The paper and ink folded and condensed into a lance to keep any remaining Grimm at bay. Taking on a defensive position wasn't his specialty, but he could manage, "Forty times that I've corrected her. Forty t _IMES!"_ he shouted before falling face first onto the sidewalk.

Ahab snickered as he watched his half-brother hit the pavement. "Could you save the melodrama for a better time, brother? Like… never?"

Sepia slammed the butt of her gun into Ahab's lower back while Roland pulled himself back up.

"Thanks, babe…" he groaned.

Ahab reached for one of the harpoons hanging from the container at his waist, "Why you little…"

Timbre poked Ahab on the back.

"What do _you_ want?"

For the entirety of the semester, Timbre had avoided Ahab. At first, she thought Roland was over exaggerating his half-brother's actions, much like he had with his stepmother. Upon meeting him, however, she found out he hadn't at all. She didn't have any siblings, but she knew how to deal with people like him. "Hi, Timbre Forté, you might remember me. I'm on your brother's team?"

"I know who you are, stupid."

Timbre nodded. _Different approach then?_ She hardened her gaze at him, her winning smile fading, "Right… well, can I suggest you, you know, _back off, at least until we're done here?"_

Ahab kept his eyes trained on hers. While his milky left eye was completely blind, he always tried to make up for it with his right. It was common knowledge at Haven Academy that he could end a fight through sheer intimidation alone using this method.

Timbre felt frightened by Ahab. Something about him was just… scary. It was as if she could sense the violence he kept welled up. It was as if she could _feel_ that he really was the miserably awful Faunus-mocking half-brother Roland made him out to be. Without letting up, she repeated herself. "I'm sorry, I'll say it again. _Back off, Ahab_. Roland doesn't need this right now and neither do we."

Ahab sneered. Their staring match ended with him the loser.

He turned back to his brother, looking up at him from the pavement. His coat fluttered loudly as he whipped it over his shoulders so that he could point at Roland. "I'll just have to stomp your face in later, Pond Scum." Just as Cayenne and Dante did before, Ahab ran into the fray of the battles that had consumed the campus.

Timbre let out the breath she hadn't even realized she was holding. She looked to her team, her usual calm demeanor returned, "Wow… he sure is a jerk, huh?"

Roland stared at Timbre in disbelief, "You just… actually… you… had my back…?"

Alabaster watched Ahab carefully as he walked off, "Well then… if you all want to report this behavior to Professor Wel-"

"It's a family issue, so I'd prefer to deal with it on that end," Roland cut him off and motioned for Team ARTS plus Alabaster and Curie to head out as well. He made sure to stick next to Timbre on their way, "Thanks for that…"

"Family may be family, but if they're being hard-headed, they're just another person to face off against. No holds barred." Timbre held her wires at the ready, "That's something Dad always tells me when we have our little spats."

"Your _dad_ tells you that?..." Arty asked incredulously.

"Hey, tough love works better than you think when it's done right. As a kid, I usually shut up after he brought that line up. As I grew up, I started using it against him. Big mistake on his part."

"Right… well," Professor Alabaster walked with his students towards their destination, "Ms. Geiger, you do still have that briefcase with you, correct? It will be important in the investigation that follows this."

"Of course, sir." She held up the case for him to see.

"Good, so we can be off."

It didn't take long to reach their destination along the path lined with cinder-covered fading Grimm. It appeared that Cayenne wasn't joking about her eagerness to get to killing all the Grimm that she could ever want. The girl's determination was unbridled… which was a good and a bad trait for a Huntress.

Upon reaching the CCT, Team ARTS, Curie, and Alabaster made the same discovery that Dante, Ahab, and Cayenne had already come upon.

"Ms. Geiger…" Alabaster stared at an identical black and red briefcase to that which was found in the locker room. It was simply leaning against the front door of the CCT Tower, completely unguarded. Not a soul was defending the signal jammer/bomb that he had thought would be the cornerstone of this plot, "Please put your Semblance to use once more…"

Curie knelt down and ran her hand across the case, carefully taking in every part of its construction. She turned back to the group as she opened the lid. "Unarmed, just like the first one."

"I'm just glad nobody's seen any of the masked freaks we've seen before." Arty added, sounding relieved.

"What's the point of making bombs if you're not even going to make them go off?" Timbre mused from the back of the group.

"It doesn't make any sense…" Dante clipped her fire poker back onto her belt. Her hazel eyes narrowed on the briefcase, "It seems like the bombs were made with the capability to be armed in the first place, correct? Why go through the effort…?"

"For a scare?" Cayenne crossed her arms with her weapon still hooked onto the rails running along her right forearm, "This is a joke, right? Like some kind of weird Beacon training exercise…?"

"I can assure you that is not, but I am flattered that you think me creative enough to come up with this…" Alabaster tapped his foot to think over what exactly was going on, "Is the jammer deactivated, Ms. Geiger?"

A light hum could be heard as she pressed a button. The noise slowly faded until it completely disappeared. "It is now."

Everyone's scrolls began to ding a dozen times in a matter of a few seconds. Team ARTS' were bombarded with messages from the same person.

 **Sepia Hughes: This sucks.**

 **Sepia Hughes: Wow, Cayenne's looking HOT tonight… eh? Eh?**

 **Sepia Hughes: Carmen's about to open a can of whoop a**...**

 **Sepia Hughes: Why is Beacon censoring me..?**

 **Sepia Hughes: I didn't know we were getting fireworks tonight too!**

 **Sepia Hughes: I swear… if Ahab says another word, then I will kill him.**

 **Sepia Hughes: Ugh.**

 **Sepia Hughes: Please…**

 **Sepia Hughes: No more…**

 **Sepia Hughes: THAT'S IT. I'M GONNA STAB HIM WITH THIS KNIFE.**

 **Sepia Hughes: Dang it… Alabaster saw me raise it and glared at me…**

 **Sepia Hughes: This really does suck.**

 **Sepia Hughes: OH NO. NO. NO. NO. IMMA SNAP THAT JERK'S SPINE. NO ONE HURTS MY OTTER BUTT. DON'T TRY AND STOP ME THIS TIME, T.**

Arty raised a finger, mulling over what he was about to say before he spoke. "Um… I'm pretty sure it's too late to ask but… Sepia? You okay?"

Sepia sent out another message with a forced smile on her face.

 **Sepia Hughes: Don't think I won't do it.**

"Right," Timbre reeled in here wires with a loud zipping noise, "If we're sure there's no more GB stuff hidden around campus, can we hurry up and finish clearing out the Grimm? I just want to get the questioning over with and go to bed… and lock Sepia up in the room so nobody gets stabbed…"

"The situation is taken care of…"

The students turned to see Carmen trudging towards them from the direction of the ballroom, "The Grimm are dead… all of them… even the Tuus that got mixed in…" she huffed. Her face seemed clammy and held a slight green tint, "In case you were all wondering… my Semblance gives me vertigo if I use it too much… and that makes me really motion sic-" she pressed her hand over her mouth to keep from barfing. "It… kinda sucks being able to see the equivalent of a gaming HUD over my basic human vision…"

Curie clapped her hands, "Ha! Finally someone starts speaking my language."

"Well then… it's good to know that the Grimm are taken care of too," Alabaster stepped up beside his employee and began rubbing her back, "Do you need to…"

"I'm goo-" Carmen darted off behind one of the pillars at the entrance of the CCT. The gagging and near screaming that followed sent shudders down the student's spines.

"Is she going to be okay…?" Roland glanced over at Timbre.

"She'll be fine. I've seen her in worse situations. After she saved me from Koruss, she could barely speak for a _week_ after we got back home because of the nausea. There were thousands of people there, and almost every single one gave off what she describes as a 'bright colored light' around their bodies." She looked to Arty, "Imagine having a canvas the size of a house and each square inch was colored differently. Add tiny lights behind each colored dot and aim each one right into your retinas."

"Ouch…"

"Yeah, Carmen's Semblance is useful, but the more people she has to look at, the more it takes out of her."

Alabaster looked around at his students, "Well, despite the… circumstances, I hope that you all were able to enjoy your night… and that you all may take away something from all of his," for once, the man actually seemed to be nervous, "Please head back to the ballroom, and we can all sort out exactly what has happened. Thank you all for your bravery this night."

With that, he turned heel and walked straight towards the ballroom. No one had a chance to even get a word out before he was gone.

.

That evening, each and every student, teacher, and guest were questioned by the Vale authorities. While nobody was sure exactly what happened, most just looked at it as an "organized Grimm attack" caused by the Creatures of Grimm being released on school grounds. While there was an attempt to keep the fact that the Grimm Brotherhood was involved due to the short time-frame between Beacon's prom and the attack on Vale a few weeks prior, the information was leaked to the public almost immediately. Serious talks ensued between the headmasters and the individual faculties of the four Huntsmen Academies. Onyx wasn't sure how to go about dealing with the public image, especially now that Shirley Wells, Khidna Léon, and Vivian Willows were all breathing down his neck, badgering him about how he let things go so wrong. While he was supposed to be a leader to all those following him, he still needed someone to council with.

The morning after prom, after having no sleep whatsoever, Onyx Alabaster paced around his office at the top of the CCT Tower. The sky outside was a bright blue, but he couldn't help but feel darkness seeping in from every crack in his surroundings.

"What are our losses, Alabaster, dear?" Sofaira Weaver sat with her legs crossed in the chair just across from the headmaster's desk. The spider legs reaching out from her back were rigid and cold. A knitting needle twirled in absentminded circles between her fingers, "Surely they couldn't have gotten into _here_ of all places."

Onyx held up a small silver object, seemingly cut straight from a flat sheet of metal. The symbol between his thumb and forefinger looked almost like a wagon-wheel, cut into eight segments with the spokes sticking out around the edges. "They left _this_ on my desk to taunt us, Sofaira."

Sofaira glared down at the token. "The files are encrypted. I doubt they'll be able to get anything unless they figure out the key," the needle twirling between Sofaira's fingers froze, "How much time do we have before they pull that off?"

"A couple of months at best. A few weeks at the worst," Carmen leaned against the window behind Onyx. Her normally cheery demeanor had been replaced with a somber, anxious one, "They're obviously capable of producing complex technology, so I don't think that figuring out a code will be too hard for them. She isn't pulling the strings anymore, so there's no telling what they're actually capable of now."

"And another issue. We still have yet to find out who the infiltrator is here at Beacon, and after last night, I sincerely doubt there can be only one."

The three adults turned to the fourth person in the room, one dressed in whites, light blues, and silvers. Her curly grey hair hung down around her face.

"If that's the case…" Sofaira's spider legs relaxed, "then perhaps I should take a closer look at the students tonight. Perhaps an infiltrator might offer some valuable information when put under a certain amount of…" the end of one of her legs pressed against her own temple, "pressure."

"We cannot just go about interrogating students until we find out who is not exactly who they say they are." Frost commented. "Something like that would rouse the suspicion from the other schools and authorities. If we do anything it needs to be covert. If the infiltrators see that we are asking questions to every student, they will see through us immediately and formulate a plan to get through undetected using their facades. They will leave without us learning a thing."

"I think I'm with Frost on this one," Carmen followed Alabaster's pacing with her eyes, "We're pretty much stuck. Without knowing who is who, we have to just stay on the defensive."

"I didn't mean we just leave them be. We need to find out who they are." Frost retorted.

Sofaira smiled softly, "So, if we don't want to _wait_ for them to make a mistake, we force them to. Sleep deprivation can facilitate that," she passed a glance to Frost and then to Alabaster, "It wouldn't come off as strange with finals coming up. If they're more exhausted than usual, then they'll all blame it on long hours studying. Then any of their agents within our walls will be sluggish if they decide to make a move."

"But then what do we do if there were to be another attack?" Frost shot back, "Drowsy warriors do not exactly make _effective_ warriors. We have no clue what the Brotherhood has planned if anything, but we can not act on a whim and put everyone at risk again and hope there is not another big attack in store for us and their targets."

"Then I won't target the important ones or us. Just everyone else," Sofaira shrugged, "Leave the trustworthy ones alone. It's as simple as that."

"No you will _not_ take that chance, Sofaira." Carmen cut in, anger tinging her words, "If you put _any_ of my students in danger, I will make you regret it. If there's a third attack this semester in the works, _everybody_ is going to be ready for it, not just the ones you deem 'important'."

"Carmen, I know that we've had a very special relationship over the years, so I am going to say this as kindly as I possibly can. The students, not even my own son mind you, are _nothing_ compared to them. If we have to grab them and go at the sacrifice of everyone else in an attack, then we don't have a choice," Sofaira's spider legs became rigid once more. It pained her to think that Epazote might be caught in the crossfire, but she had to look at the bigger picture, "I love them all. I truly do, but they aren't the most important people to look out for right now."

Carmen jumped from her spot, ready to storm over and possibly attack the Faunus woman before her.

Frost held out an arm and stopped her. Despite the subject, she was just as cool and composed as ever. "We cannot fight like this! Both of you need to stop looking at the extremes!"

"Carmen. Sofaira. Frost." Onyx called them out individually to catch their attention. He strode to the center of the room and tapped his cane on the ground. "Why don't we take a moment to reevaluate our situation?" Radiating from around him, the whole office seemed to lose its color, turning into an odd grayscale version of itself. Alabaster and the three women all faded as well as every surface in the room began to change. A black and white checkerboard pattern began to shimmer out from where he stood until it coated every inch of the floor, walls, and even the ceiling.

Carmen looked down at her arms. Her coat had turned a dark black. Turning her gaze upwards, she found a small black symbol floating above her head. It resembled a bishop chess piece. Looking over to Sofaira, she could see that her clothing had grown a blinding white and a glittering white rook symbol floated lazily over the Faunus' head.

Frost's attire had grown a dull gray, a gray pawn piece overhead.

Onyx, instead of being a solid color like the other three, was still his regular black and white checkerboard self. The king piece above his head was half white, and half black. "Well, it appears we are all very split on this issue."

Carmen sneered, "Do you _always_ have to use your board game to see what everyone's thinking?" She glared down at Sofaira, "I thought it was pretty clear how we stand in this."

"It is, but you never know." Onyx took a sip from his glass, "Zugzwang also keeps people from pummeling each other, as you know. It helps to clear your head before you end up resorting to violence."

"He has a point, you know." The gray Frost commented as she lowered her arms, no longer needing to to keep the two older women from fighting thanks to Onyx's Semblance. "But I've never seen anyone with a split symbol like that, Onyx. Why isn't it gray like mine?"

Onyx began pacing, moving one square at a time with each step. "Because unlike you, I don't want a watered-down halfway solution that takes pieces from the extremes Sofaira and Carmen want. I see merit and consequence in both, but am split as to which I prefer."

"So if none of us can agree, what do we do?" Carmen threw up her arms, "Sit here and argue until one of us changes color? That just sounds pointless to me."

He tapped his cane again. The color in the room slowly returned to normal, the checkerboard pattern coating everything disappearing. "That's where I believe I may have another option that puts part of the problem _out_ of our hands and into someone else's."

Carmen, Frost, and Sofaira looked shocked.

"But Onyx!" Carmen shouted.

He held up his hand, "They're trustworthy ones, I assure you. The Grimm Brotherhood is growing to be a far larger problem than we could have anticipated, which is why I have become more open with General Léon."

"I thought she didn't agree with us too much?" Sofaira said calmly. "The most she's conversed with us is asking for some of our people to be bodyguards for her children."

"I know we've had our... disagreements with Khidna in the past, but in a meeting I had before you three arrived, I talked with her and the other headmasters. Many ideas floated around, including calling off the Vytal Festival entirely." He took a sip of cranberry juice from the glass on his desk, "Mrs. Wells and General Léon were both vehemently opposed to such a notion. They refuse to let these monsters win. They both know generally what's going on, but neither have the full picture. As worried as I am about all of these young individuals going off to Vytal at the end of the semester, I have confidence in their abilities. Whether or not they're enough is entirely up to them." He took another sip, nearly draining the glass, "The four schools are supposed to contribute equally to this event given that it's being hosted on the island of Vytal itself for the 100-year anniversary of the end of the Great War. The only reason the students are staying here at Beacon is because we're the closest school to the island. General Léon suggested that… maybe… she should add a bit more to help combat this threat."

"Being what?" Frost asked.

Onyx poured another glass of juice. "She brings in more troops from Atlas… for security."

Carmen shook her head, "To think this is to celebrate peace between the kingdoms… and these lunatics come in to ruin that. A military presence is just going to make people worried of an attack. The whole _world_ knows about what the Grimm Brotherhood's been doing!"

Sofaira smirked, "But the military's presence would possibly aid in flushing out our infiltrators as well as allowing the students the energy to fight. I thought you weren't willing to settle for a middle-ground, Onyx?"

"It's not a middle-ground, Ms. Weaver. It's just a solution I didn't want this to come to."


	48. V2Ch20: Something Stirring

"If one of those Atlas guys wave one of those wands in my face _one more time_ , there is gonna be a _serious_ interkingdom incident!" Rime snapped. Her fists clenched around the crystal on her necklace. Silver links of chain glistened as they shook from the angry strain being put on them, "I hate this. I hate this. I. Hate," she held a hand out to the line of students leading down the dock that her team, Team ANTE, and Team ARTS were standing on, " _THIS!"_

Atlesian soldiers walked up and down the dock on either side of the line of students, making sure they kept their assigned order. Arranged alphabetically, the Atlas students were first in the line, and already boarding the private ferry for students who were participating in the Vytal Festival Tournament. Next in line were the Beacon students, followed by the Haven students, and then with the Shade students at the tail end. After the incident at prom, General Léon had taken the reigns on security over the entire event. Even finals were overseen by Atlesian soldiers, which made the ordeal even more stressful than it needed to be.

"Will ya quit ya blubberin'? Please?..." Alice mused from Team ANTE's place in line.

"No, I will not!" Rime snapped back, "Also, who says 'blubbering'?! In fact, what kind of accent do you even have? No one talks like that, Alice! Not the Mistrali, Vacuans, Valiens, or the Atlesians! None of us sound _that_ stuck up all the time!"

The sound of seagulls and crashing waves filled the silence between them as Alice processed Rime's comeback. She held a hand to her chest with her mouth agape, as if to show offense, " _Excuse_ me? My family 'ave all spoken like this for generations! I won't 'ave someone like _you_ insulting my… _me_ like that!"

"Why I oughtta…" Rime went to step out of line in order to start a brawl. Snappy words often led to violence between the Beacon group, which was to be expected in a school where students were taught to fight.

Frost held her hand out to stop Rime. "And where exactly do you think you are going?"

"To punch Alice in the face."

Looking back to Alice, Frost could see the glare aimed towards them. "Save the fighting for the tournament, Rime. I would hate for Team FREZ to be taken out of the competition before it even has a chance to start."

"But her voice is like a cheese grater in my ears, Frost. It's like shoving a hairbrush into my ear hole and twisting it, or like putting a little Scuttlepod in there to just… _scramble_ my brain around! Alice's voice gives me an _actual_ headache," Rime whined, "Arty lets Roland and Sepia punch people, so why can't I?"

Frost's brow dropped, showing a rare instance of anger. She leaned in close to Rime, "Because Wells and Hughes cannot be convinced to be civil easily, Rime."

Rime pulled her jacket up, readying a fist. Who's face it would connect to was questionable, "Oh, and _I_ can?"

Frost's stone-cold face returned as she stood up straight, "Well," she pointed across the dock, towards the front of the line where Team ARTS had finished checking in and were now going up the ramp to the boat. Standing at the bottom of said ramp were a couple of Atlas soldiers decked in black and white armor. Helmets covered their faces, making them resemble robots more than people. In their arms were large automatic rifles, poised and ready to fire at any moment should something happen or someone cause any trouble.

"Oh," Rime stood at attention without a moment's hesitation, "Right. I don't want to die today. I have plans with Zero and Everest later. I have things to do. Places to be."

"Good to hear that you have incentive… wait…" Frost's chilly demeanor began to soften up when the realization of what Rime was saying hit her, "What about me…?"

"Oh… I… well… you see…"

.

Arty, Roland, and Sepia all waited just inside the entry point of the boat for Timbre to finish up her miniature meet-and-greet with the pair of Atlesian soldiers. Apparently they had enough freedom with their own equipment to have Timbre sign their rifles… and to take a selfie. Neither had taken off their helmets, so how they would be able to tell which soldier was which, none of them knew.

"Sorry!" Timbre jogged back up to her team, "It's been awhile since that's happened. I thought they were just fans, but then I swear they were starting to drool under those visors... How deprived are the men in the Atlesian military, Arty?"

Arty couldn't help but feel wary of all the eyes Atlas had on the charter boats going between Vale and Vytal. He knew it wasn't the case, but he couldn't shake the feeling that behind those dark visors, every soldier was watching him. "Uh… not sure exactly. But if Midas is any point of reference, they're all doing fine."

"Midas is not a point of reference for a soldier, and you know it," Roland chuckled, "But hey, your dad didn't do too bad," he took the following moments of silence as an indication that his leader wasn't exactly happy with his comment, "I mean that your mom isn't ugly. She's pretty. In a mom way. You know what I mean?"

"Please stop talking, Roland."

' _I mean, he's not wrong. Your mom is pretty. Like, really pretty. Blonde. Blue eyes. Smells like flowers. Gorgeous woman overall,'_ Sepia signed in hopes that she might be able to clear up her boyfriend's less than eloquent way of complementing their leader's mother.

"That's… not how this conversation started, Moviemaker," Timbre grabbed Arty and Sepia by the arms before gently nudging Roland by the tail with her foot. "C'mon. Let's grab seats before this thing gets any fuller. I don't think I could stand all the way to Vytal after being on that dock for the past hour."

Roland's tail flicked up for him to hug against his chest, "Two things. Don't touch my tail, and fuller is not a word. It's _more full_ , not _fuller._ That's like telling someone that you're going to be doing _weller_ later," he followed along with his tail clutched close.

Timbre stuck her tongue out at him.

"Whatever…" he nodded ahead, "Let's see if we can get a seat up near the front. We might see some dolphins or something."

 _Well, someone's certainly softened up a bit…_ Sepia raised an eyebrow at him, " _What's going on?"_ she mouthed.

"Nothing. It's just that this boat reminds me of some things with Mom," he let go of his tail, "She had a little boat that we used to take out on Lake Matsu." he chuckled at the memory, "We always liked to look at the floating islands, but we knew we had to stay _far_ away from them."

Arty looked to him, confused. "Um… why?"

Roland shook his head, the smile still tugging at his lips as they made their way around the cabin of the boat. "Trust me, you don't wanna know."

Coming to the bow, the four were lucky enough to find empty spots on the bench running around the outside of the cabin. They had to shield their eyes with their hands to block the sun from blinding them… besides Roland that is. His hat did that job for him.

' _So much water… You know, I've never actually been on a boat, guys,'_ Sepia signed. Her eyes didn't budge from the sight of the sun reflecting off of the ocean. She sat backwards in her seat on her knees so that she could face the water, ' _It's beautiful.'_

Timbre giggled, "Then you're gonna love the little surprise I have waiting for when we get to Vytal!"

"What's that supposed to mean?" Arty asked as he absent-mindedly pulled his sketchbook from his bag and began scribbling the view before them onto one of the pages.

She waved him off, "You'll see. Just go back to doodling."

Roland sat between Sepia and Arty. His fingers raced across the keypad of his scroll, "So," he continued typing as he spoke, "It's a six hour boat ride to Vytal. Did any of you bring anything to do? Maybe one of those pocket chess sets or something?"

Arty paused his scribbling to wave his orange sketchbook.

Timbre tapped her signature green headphones, which were hung around the back of her neck. "Thought I'd listen to some music on the way there. I have a whole playlist made to get myself pumped up for the tournament!" She began tapping through her music app on her scroll, slowly lifting her headphones to her ears, "A little EDM, a little rock, a little alternative metal. You know, stuff to get your heart racing."

Sepia just pointed out at the ocean.

"Right, so we all are just gonna keep to ourselves for six hours… got it…" he stopped typing and put away his scroll. Clearly, something was eating at him already. When he pushed his hat up to get a clear view of the rest of Team ARTS, they all knew very well that he was bothered by _something_ , "I mean, it's not like we can, you know, talk to each other with all this time, or maybe we could do something completely crazy. What if we actually acted like friends, and not just teammates? Although, that might be a little too wild."

Arty's pencil lead snapped.

Timbre's headphones fell from her head, landing with a few popping noises as they snapped shut in her lap.

Sepia almost gave herself whiplash from how quickly she turned to look at Roland.

"Right… way too wild…" Roland rolled his eyes. The reaction that he got was the one that he at least partially expected, albeit more exaggerated than he envisioned, "What? Was it when I said 'we can talk to each other' or when I said 'friends'?"

Arty closed his book and, in order to avoid contact, looked out to the water, "Um… can I say both?"

"Why is that surprising…?" Roland pressed further, "We've all had nearly a year together. We're friends. We hang out. We go to movies. We shop, eat, fight, and work out together. I think it's safe to say that we're all friends…"

"Oh, I never doubted _that_ ," Timbre fixed her headphones and laid them on the bench next to her, "I just never thought I'd ever hear… _you_ say that, Roland…"

"Right… because it's not like you guys actually helped me through the grieving process last semester or anything…" he crossed his arms over his chest, "Seriously, how could I not consider you guys friends after something like that?"

Timbre and Arty both stayed silent. It was odd knowing that, around this time a semester earlier, he had nearly beaten another student to death and finally opened up about his mom's death.

Sepia slid back down into her seat, ' _I think it's more that you aren't super outwardly emotional, babe…'_ she signed, ' _What's on your mind?'_

"I just think that our time on the boat would be better spent talking to each other than it would be doodling, or listening to music, or looking at the ocean. You guys can do whatever, though. It's cool. I can go find Epazote and Cayenne. I get it."

"Well…" Arty, like Timbre did with her headphones, put his sketchbook on the seat next to him and began twiddling his thumbs. "You wanted to talk… You know me, I got nothin'..."

"Yeah, but…" Roland looked around for something to talk about. Striking up a conversation about the life preserver across from them or the color of the boat didn't sound interesting, but then his eyes settled on Arty's sketchbook, "Your Semblance. What happened to give you a power like Animation? That's a big leap from still images."

Arty felt awkward being put on the spot like this. At this point, the last of the Shade students were boarding the boat and the crew was preparing to disembark. Despite everyone appearing like normal students, he knew they were all enemies in the tournament. Every bit of information was a liability. He may not have considered himself a good leader, but his scatterbrain did manage to come up with a good idea every now and then. Right now, he knew it was probably best not to expose the complexities of Semblances to everyone within earshot, especially if one Semblance could become a trump card in the tournament.

"Think we could take this inside if we talk? You know…" Arty pointed around the bow, where students were milling around and talking as Atlas soldiers slowly made their rounds through the crowd in preparation for departure. "In a matter of weeks, everyone on this boat is going to be vying for one of the most coveted titles in all of Remnant."

"I guess," Roland stood up, "I hate to lose our spots, but those nachos in that little food court below deck are tempting. We could split them."

Timbre nearly gasped, "Okay, now you're seriously freaking me out… Are you feeling alright? Do you have a fever?"

.

"Hot, hot, hot, hot!"

"Careful!" Timbre held out a few napkins under the small platter of nachos bouncing back and forth between her team leader's hands. "You'll drop 'em! He told you they'd be pretty warm."

"Okay! Okay!" As the plate hit the table they were planning to claim, Arty began shaking his scalded hands and blowing on his burned fingers, "He was right…"

 _Nice…_ Sepia slid into the booth. She grabbed one of the chips, melted cheese and ground beef dripping a trail across the table. She stuffed it into her mouth, then looked at her soiled gloves, _Oh… dang…_

"Good job," Roland sat beside her. He carefully removed his own violet gloves, then grabbed a chip, "So. Semblances. What's the deal with Animation?"

Various thoughts and memories floated around in Arty's head as he tried to pinpoint the exact reason his Semblance came about. While he didn't have an answer immediately, this wasn't the first time he'd been asked this question.

"Well… I've always loved to draw."

"Wow… I never realized, Painter-Boy." Timbre mocked as she scooped cheese sauce into her mouth with a chip.

Against Roland's previous wishes, Arty pulled out his sketchbook. It was probably the best way to tell the story. "I mean… _always_." With his pencil rendered useless, he pulled out a spare black ink pen and began to draw. After a matter of seconds, he held his hand palm-down over the page. The representation of a small child and an easel popped up out of the page, their edges sharp and dark from the ink of the pen. "I'd pull myself up to an easel and just drag markers or crayons or… anything that could leave a mark over paper, even before I could walk."

He drew another image, one of someone his team recognized. The new figure raised from the paper and moved to the living drawing of a child, seeming to encourage and congratulate him.

"My mom loved to see me draw and, over the years, my love of drawing grew into an obsession rather than just a hobby." The ink faded down, the drawings returning to flat 2-dimensional still images.

Arty turned the page and drew again. With another movement, a scene of a bedroom came to life in the open book. The child now resembled the modern-day Arty a bit more. The spiky hair an evident sign. "I filled my room with art supplies and canvases. Day in and day out I tried to recreate the real world on the flat spaces. My only issue was, I could never get it… quite right. I realized this wasn't exactly a problem, though. I was making a world all my own in my own style."

Another scribble. This time, instead of the spritely woman from before, a broad-shouldered man in the familiar Atlas military attire appeared in the scene.

"Dad… wasn't as enthusiastic. Umbers have been soldiers for generations, and when I told my dad I wasn't that interested, he flipped."

The figure of Arty's father slung one of the figure pieces, an easel, to the paper floor.

"He told me art would never take me anywhere. With the military, I might at least be able to do something with my life. Art can never be _real_." Arty scowled at the drawings before him, "I told him art _was_ my reality."

The smaller scribbles on the squares representing the canvases began to move, seemingly startling the two figures.

"At that moment… it became a little… too literal. From that point on, we tried to cut it down the middle. I get to keep doing art if I go to Atlas Academy. I eventually got the feeling maybe being a Huntsman was more my taste, but even that was never good enough…"

The drawings melted down to the paper.

He looked to his team and gave a nervous chuckle as he closed the book. "Sorry… didn't mean to go that far down that path."

"No, that's exactly the kind of thing that I wanted to talk about with you guys!" Roland's eyes lit up. For once, he was positively beaming, "I just thought that you were doodling one day, and it just sort of came to life or something. I couldn't have guessed that it came out in an argument with your dad of all things."

"Trust me… a _lot_ of things came out of an argument with my dad…" Arty shoved his book back into his bag and sat back. He didn't feel like eating any more nachos. "What about you then? Isn't yours just one of those rare cases of a hereditary Semblance?"

"Not exactly…" Roland tapped his finger against the table, "I told you that because it's much simpler to explain it that way, but my mother's Inkheart is a lot different than my Inkheart. Mine is a variation of hers, but it's not exactly hers."

"So it's hereditary, but not hereditary…?" Timbre asked through a mouth full of tortilla chips and cheese.

"Let me explain. My mother's Semblance allowed her to control ink flat out. It was simple, and a lot more powerful than my variation of it. With me, Inkheart allows me to essentially coat ink with my aura. I manipulate it by manipulating my aura, and that's why you can see my aura meter go down a little even when I block something with the ink I'm fighting with," Roland looked out the porthole right beside their table, "I guess there is kind of a story as to how my Semblance came about, but it's a lot less… impactful than Arty's. For me, it was just a normal day with Mom."

Arty and the girls shifted uncomfortably. They still weren't completely sure how to react to the subject of Roland's mother.

"It's fine. I'm talking about happy memories," he smiled as he began to recount the day that his Semblance came about, "Mom had just picked me up from preschool. I couldn't have been older than four, probably. I might have just turned five, but that's neither here nor there. It was the usual deal when your mom picked you up from school. 'How was your day?' and 'Did anything interesting happen at school today?' and the rest of that typical line of questioning," he tapped the table absentmindedly, "I had no idea that Mom had taken the rest of the day off to spend some time with me, but it came as a pleasant surprise. We went to the fish market like we always did when we actually got to be together."

The salty smell of the sea and the pungent aroma of spices poured through his brain as images of fish vendors and bright signs flashed through his mind. The chaos of the fish market made for quite the learning environment for a child that loved to read.

"Mom was short on money that day, so ten pounds of clams was out of our price range. Under normal circumstances, it wouldn't have been an issue, but this was the end of the month. Money was tight…" he covered his mouth to keep from laughing.

Arty leaned over to Timbre, "Did I miss a joke or something? Am I _that_ socially inept?"

Timbre shook her head, not taking her eyes off of the Faunus boy, "I… don't think so?"

"Not a joke. I… I just discovered my Semblance because I wanted to help Mom by helping her get a good deal on clams…" he grinned wide as the memory played in his mind.

Even Sepia was taken back at that, ' _What exactly do you mean…?'_

"I learned how to read at a really early age, so I knew what the signs that she was looking at said… and I knew what she needed them to say. When the listed price of a pound of clams suddenly went down by about ninety-five percent, Mom knew exactly what was going on. She used the price shown as leverage to get the clams on the cheap, took them back home with us, and then tried to explain to me that I can't use the Semblance we shared so willy-nilly. Still, she was ecstatic that I had Inkheart," he pointed over to where the prices of food were displayed on a dry erase board. The numbers shifted, and suddenly the prices were roughly ten percent higher than just before, "The way I discovered my Semblance is the same way that we got these nachos at the price we did. It had nothing to do with writing, as a matter of fact."

"Wow…" Timbre put down the chip she was lifting. Hearing the almost lackluster story had shocked her out of snacking.

' _Not really helping those stereotypes, are you?'_ Sepia signed before shamelessly eating another chip.

"Hey, I've read plenty of books on price analytics. They're still making reasonable profit on those nachos, even at a discounted price," Roland shrugged, "Sue me."

"We won't, but they might." Arty laughed while pointing at the snack stand, where a sizable line had formed since they had disembarked.

"They'll never know…" Roland chuckled, "So, if we're going in order as we seem to be, what about you, T? Come to think of it… I don't even know what your Semblance is…"

' _Me first!'_ Sepia signed. The sigh of relief from Timbre told her that she had done the right thing, ' _I was filming my first movie when I was eight years old! It wasn't anything big, but I fixed up three old cameras for it and got my friends to help out. We were four hours into the shoot, and I was exhausted from the heat. I still needed to do the work, so I was stressing over that and letting down my actors… and then the world disappeared. I had a bird's eye view of everything, and I could hear everything that my friends were saying. I just… didn't hear it from my perspective. I just thought that my brain broke, but nope! I developed my Semblance out of sheer will of not getting up!'_

"That's it?!" Arty and Roland spouted out in shock at the same time.

"That's it?..." Timbre muttered quietly, disappointed that her partner's story didn't last longer.

' _That's it. I just didn't want to get up. It really backfired when I tried to get my water bottle, and I didn't know how to move my orbs too well yet. If I remember right, Opal came to check on me, and I ended up grabbing her ankle instead. Good times,'_ Sepia signed with a smile on her face. She glanced over at Timbre, hoping that the rest of Team ARTS telling their stories would make it easier on her to tell her story.

Timbre held her hands in her lap. Her palms were getting sweaty and her heart was racing. Despite being friends for over a year, she was still adamant never to tell her story. Sepia knew about her Semblance. Had she told Roland? Had she told _anyone_? The former performer had expressed to her partner that she didn't want her Semblance to be common knowledge. If word spread, it would ruin her. Sepia seemed to show understanding at the time, but whether or not she stuck to it 100% was up to question.

"I… um…" Timbre felt petrified, as if all eyes in the lounge were on her.

It was just like being back on stage.

' _It's okay. We're a team. What is said between us doesn't leave us,'_ Sepia signed to her partner.

Even knowing the truth about her idol, partner, and friend, Sepia still cared.

Timbre shifted nervously, slowly taking another chip and moving it towards her lips. "Well… Dad told me my Semblance activated back when I was little, after my mom died." She crunched the chip, wiping a bit of cheese sauce from the side of her mouth. "There was a time I kind of… shut down. I didn't talk for maybe… about... five years."

"I'm sorry… I didn't realize" Roland was going to say something about how grieving is something that everyone experiences differently, but he was cut off by the rough voice of someone pushing through the line of people waiting to order their food.

"Oi! Sepia! What up, gal?!" Opal pushed past person after person to get to the table that Team ARTS was at. Her hands glowed with shimmering light of every color that the eye could comprehend. Every time that her hand came off of someone's shoulder, five or six different layers of colored afterimages followed her, "Art! Roland! T! What's with ya guys?!"

Arty blinked a few times. It felt like his eyes were burning a bit. He'd seen Opal's Semblance in action in the first-year participant combat class, but that didn't mean he was used to the sight of rainbow afterimages following Opal around. "Oh uh… Hey, Opal." He rubbed at his sore eyes, "Funny, we were just talking about Semblances. And here you are… melting my retinas."

"Yea, I get that sometimes. Shorla hates it," Opal squeezed in beside Roland and Sepia without so much as asking. She snatched a chip from the plate of nachos and crammed it into her mouth, "I saw you guys had grub, and I'm short on dough, ya know? Good to have friends when Shorla just ducks into her little shadow hole thing, an' when tha boys keep their traps shut!"

"So in other words," Arty leaned back, feeling like his vision had returned to normal, "you just want somebody to talk to on the ride to Vytal, right?"

"Pretty much, yea," Opal looked between Arty and Timbre, "You guys seem off. How ya goin'?"

"You know," Timbre glanced over to Sepia, "some stories about getting your Semblance can be pretty… upsetting, you know? Some of us aren't exactly lucky enough to just magically get one that's more personality based or from… happier times, you know?"

"Oh yea, I know. I guess mine's kinda upsetting in that way, yea," Opal crammed another chip into her mouth, "Back in the orphanage, I had to do a lot of things that usually take the force of two or three people. I wasn't fantastic at makin' friends back then. My Semblance came 'round when I was sent out to get water from the well, an' I couldn't pick up the bucket. Then I got Afterimage outta nowhere, and it suddenly felt like I was liftin' that bucket with five other people! It came in handy with the bullies too, ya know? Ooooo boy, then I found out that I could use it on my feet too, and those boys got a _serious_ beat down afta that." She laughed, not caring that her chewed up food was showing, "Then I could get outta there b'fore the adults could come runnin'!"

"So… what exactly _is_ it though?" Arty questioned, pointing to her cheese-coated fingers.

"Isn't it obvious…?" Roland butted in, "It's pretty much aura redirection like mine. Correct me if I'm wrong, but you're basically fragmenting your aura to get a strength boost, right, Opal?"

"Right on tha money!" Opal clapped her hands, "I guess it's easy to tell when you've got a Semblance that works about the same, yeah? Let me guess, you put ya aura around ink, don't cha?"

"Like you said, right on the money," Roland nodded, "That's something I meant to ask Arty, actually. Is that how Animation works, or do you basically just breath life into drawings?"

"It's more of like a… aura bubble actually. It's not as… focused? I guess that's the best word for it." He pulled out his sketchbook and drew the outline of a person in black ink. With an orange colored pencil, he outlined it. "You see, my aura acts normal, but with my Semblance," the colored outline bled outwards until it formed a circle around the person, with a majority of the orange staying around the figure. "Then I can make any drawing within my expanded aura quote-unquote 'come to life' while my aura can still take hits for me. Not exactly the same, but… kinda similar?"

"I guess…" Opal frowned, "Sepia's hasn't got much to do with aura aside from manifestation… what about you, T?"

"Not… exactly." Timbre looked away, avoiding the conversation as much as possible.

Opal began her line of insatiable questioning. Of all the people to show up, it just had to be the charismatic member of Team STON, "Wait, not in the way of manifestation like Sepia's, projection like Roland and I's, or effective field like Art's?"

"N-neither… er… none?"

"Then wha' is it then?!" Opal bounced in her seat, anxious for an answer.

Timbre shrunk back in her seat, "It's just… a _thing_ that happens."

"So it's substance manipulation like Mom's?" Roland asked, "I had no idea. Is that how you use your wires so effectively?"

"No, it's not that either!" The room felt like it was growing cold. It felt like the secret would be out any second now. "Can you guys just… _stop_? Please? Not right now."

Both Opal and Roland both shut their mouths in sync. They looked at each other, then looked back at Timbre and slowly nodded. Not another word passed their lips.

' _You don't have to get this worked up, T. It's okay,'_ Sepia signed to her partner.

"Sorry… it's just… not a fun story."

"You mentioned that," Roland started to recount what Timbre had said earlier about her mother, but couldn't get the words out, "You know. That thing. With her. What you said…"

The awkward silence that followed was uncomfortable for everyone at the table.

"So…" Arty spoke up, "How much longer til we get to Vytal?"

"Five hours… Five hours of misery and Gavin throwing up off the side of the boat…" Lurida leaned against the side of the booth that Team ARTS plus Opal was at. Even on their way to Vytal, she opted for the same purple tee and jeans that she wore during the incident in Vale with the Grimm Brotherhood. The rips in her shirt from Venice had been sewn up, so four stitched lines ran across her middle, "Before you ask, it was either spending time with you guys or Team OCEN… and things are a little awkward between us and Team OCEN at the moment. We couldn't find Ms. Weaver either."

"She won't be in Vytal until the day before the tournament starts." Roland stated bluntly.

Lurida groaned and folded her arms on the tabletop and then gently laying her head in the folds. "And she completely neglected to tell us…"

"Well, I mean… it's not like you're her kids or anything… The only reason that I know that is because of Epazote…" Roland went on.

"Yeah… but…" Xannie came up and put a hand on her sister's back. Standing side by side, it was obvious the two weren't feeling particularly well. "we _kind of_ are her patients."

"Well hi there, Twinkle Twins." Arty laughed, "you sea-sick, too?"  
Lurida lunged across the table, grabbing the black collar of Arty's shirt, "Listen, Umber. I don't even want _my team leader calling us that_ and I'm not in the mood to be nice or for people to be nice to me. Got it?"

Arty wanted to say "Okay, okay, calm down Lurida. I don't want to die today," but instead, he just whimpered and nodded.

"Xannie, did you catch the probability of me doing that this time around?" Lurida looked back at her sister with Arty still in hand.

Xannie winced before holding her hand out, palm down, and jiggled it back and forth. "It's still foggy…"

"Awesome," Lurida let go, "Great… you still can't even see the obvious again… I swear, I'm never going to let Gavin live this down. I guess we know a thing or two more about black holes now, though… definitely something to write Mom and Dad about..." she rolled her eyes, "So what are you guys going on about? We heard you all practically shouting from down the way, and Timbre looks close to tears."

"No I'm not…" Timbre sank back defensively.

"Semblances. Guess you can say we're sort of trying to strategize for the tournament." Arty tried to clarify and try to make it sound like it wasn't just an awkward attempt at socializing.

"What Arty's trying to say is that I'm forcing all of us to sit around and talk as friends. That's what friends do, so we're doing that. We've been telling stories about how we got Semblances. Arty got his in a fight with his dad, I got mine when I fudged the prices at a fish market with my mom, Sepia got hers because she's lazy, and Opal got hers because she needed to pick up a bucket," Roland rattled off, "We're building our relationships as friends… and Opal's here too."

"G'day." Opal smiled from her spot in the booth.

Xannie was unsure about how to respond. Team GLXY was popular enough, but the four of them had always been somewhat socially awkward. Now, it seemed like Team ARTS had taken their place as most awkward team when they arrived the semester before. "Right… that's… definitely normal."

"Yes it is. Being friends is normal… isn't it?" Roland raised an eyebrow.

"Let's just say that your explanation is very telling as to why your best friends are a quiet geek and a pyromaniac…" Lurida understood the kind of position that Team ARTS was in, but she also saw it all in hindsight, "Anyway, so you were all talking about your Semblances, huh? If you guys want… Xannie can explain what happened with us. It happened at the same time, so…"

"Yup. Little kids running around the observatory with minds full of curiosity and wonder." Xannie smiled as she remembered pleasant memories. "Mom and Dad would lift us up onto a chair and a stack of books just so we could see through the high-powered telescope to look at the moon."

"It was always you that looked to the darkness beyond the stars, and it was always me that wanted to understand the stars that we saw on the field of blackness…" a rare smile began to form on Lurida's lips, "That's what Father always said, anyway after our Semblances finally appeared. You were good for analyzing data with yours, and I could perform maintenance on our equipment easily with mine."

"I still remember the day you sheared off your eyebrows when you put together your first Satellite."

"And I remember how we both had the same haircut until you deployed your first ring around your neck. It's been ten years, and you still keep it short like that to prevent getting it caught and tangled," Lurida flicked a lock of her sister's hair with her fingers, "It makes us look a little different, at least."

"Yeah, but then you took it to the next level when you dy-"

Lurida slapped her hand over her sister's mouth and looked to Opal. "Xannie… sis. Ix-nay on the urple-pay air-hay eye-day."

Opal looked up, nacho cheese dribbling from her mouth, her cheeks puffed out with chips. She'd taken the liberty of finishing off Team ARTS' nachos. "Say what now?"

"Sorry," Lurida glared at Opal. "Could you like… buzz off for a little bit. Beacon kids need a chat."

"What's wrong? I can be a Beacon kid! Come on!" Opal whined. Bits of chips and cheese popped out from her mouth and onto the table, "I can fit in!"

Sepia held up her scroll, ' _Don't worry about it. They're basically our mentors. It's nothing against you. They're just weird like that,'_

"Fine…" Opal begrudgingly got up to leave, "See ya guys… I'll just go cause mischief somewhere else, then. Catcha mates lata!" she waved on her way out to the top deck.

With Opal gone, Lurida removed her hand from Xannie's mouth. "What's wrong with you?! You know that I don't want anybody knowing about that!"

"Sorry… sorry…" Xannie crossed her arms, "I forgot from all the… you know…"

"Right…" Lurida slid in beside Arty, "Listen, the real reason we came to talk to you guys is because you four have more… flexible minds than the rest of the school. Since I, and Xannie by extension, have elected to help deal with the Grimm Brotherhood on the down-low with all of you, I feel that you all should know what Xannie and I have been dealing with lately."

' _Did they open up a portal to another universe or something…?'_ Sepia signed whilst giggling.

"I'll translate…" Roland passed a glance at Timbre, who still seemed a bit under the weather, "Sepia wants to know if you guys tore a hole into another world or something crazy like that."

The Rhea twins' reaction wasn't exactly what Team ARTS expected. Instead of scoffing and getting to the actual serious answer, both of their eyes widened.

"That's… actually kind of what happened. To an extent." Xannie stated matter-of-factly.

"Wait, what?" Arty chimed in. They couldn't actually mean that, could they?

"Let me give you a rundown on the physics of a black hole," Lurida propped her elbows on the table. She still had her gloves on, despite being in her street clothes, "Black holes exist as the remnants of really big dead stars. That much is general knowledge," a purple holographic panel appeared in front of her open palm. Models of spinning spheres, numbers, and dozens of other scientific measurements buzzed around the screen, "The model that I'm showing you guys is one that I made of one of Gavin's black holes. I will spare you the actual numbers and just say that Gavin's Semblance does, in fact, allow him to make a very small but very _real_ black hole. It just dissipates really fast because it can't eat enough matter to sustain itself, so they're pretty much harmless to people… for the most part. Here's the physics part."

Lurida snapped, causing the entire panel to vanish, "The laws of physics are nonexistent in a black hole. Spacetime is better described as Timespace in one of those _things,_ " her newly-found disdain for Gavin's Semblance showed itself for a moment, "Since gravity is a mere reflection of space bending, what do you all think happens if my Semblance is activated in the presence of a singularity like Gavin can create?"

The blank stares that she received from Team ARTS made her groan in sheer frustration of their ignorance.

"Basically, my Semblance changes in the presence of a black hole like Gavin's. Instead of bending space, I bend time. Time travel is theoretically impossible without the use of some sort of Semblance that deals with time dilation."

"Which I've read records that those kind of Semblances _do_ exist," Xannie chimed in.

"So… we might have opened a small wormhole into a different universe that's some measure of time off-kilter from ours. Likely a few months. More than likely a few years. It fizzled out within a few seconds, but… well…" Lurida looked to Xannie to explain.

"To Lurida and Gavin, everything was normal and the test of using their Semblances together took all of ten seconds. To Yamuna and I, we were stuck watching them both stand perfectly still for nearly six _hours_. They were like statues frozen in place," Xannie explained, "And Lurida was exaggerating a little bit. The numbers indicate that we probably opened up a hole into another world rather than a reflection of ours in a different point in time, but I sincerely doubt that that's the case. On the other hand, my Semblance has kind of… stopped working. For Gavin and Lurida at least. It has gotten better since then, but things are still hazy. The probability of Lurida latching on to Arty just now, for example, was somewhere between thirty and sixty percent. As for Opal willingly leaving, it was precisely seventy-seven percent."

"In other words, her Probability figures don't exactly match up to what actually occurs in the events she observes like they should. Anything involving me doing something alone is almost always 100% in her eyes. Because of that, I think that the shift that Gavin and I caused in reality might have distorted the way that Xannie's Semblance works on us… which is something we've never actually figured out. Did Gavin and I change? Did Xannie? Or did we throw the whole universe out of whack? My theory is that it has something to do with the information paradox of singularities and-"

"We came to you four to see if any of you had a better explanation," Xannie cut in. "Or even just a way to get through this. We know you're not exactly knowledgeable in the laws of spacetime and physics… but we think with our explanation you may at least have an idea. With the tournament, Gavin's honestly scared I might not be able to do my job to the extent I normally can. With my Semblance only working on half of my team, it's honestly pretty useless. I can still get a read on scenarios involving an opposing team, but that doesn't help Lurida or Gavin if I can't find probabilities that include the opponents _and_ them… does that make sense?"

"I don't know, but I think this all would make a really good sci-fi novel. Maybe even a _series_ ," Roland began putting his gloves back on. None of what Xannie and Lurida were saying made much sense to him, but he had known Sofaira long enough to have a secondary explanation to it all, "You're both plagued by nightmares, I'm guessing. Otherwise, you wouldn't still be seeing Sofaira. Maybe it's that whole Twin Dynamic thing going a little haywire. As for the Gavin half, do you think that maybe you're stressed out over his expectations with the tournament, Xannie?"

Xannie held her thumb to her lips, "I don't… think so… There've been too many outside forces aside from my own anxiety."

"Well," Arty chimed in, "maybe the stress _is_ the biggest factor?"

"Don't be stupid, Umber." Lurida snapped.

"Hear me out. I mean, this is the _50th_ Vytal Festival Tournament. It's been 100 years since the Great War and the first tournament in ten years to be fought _on the island_ since the first tournament after the treaty was signed. The whole world is going to be watching this competition closer than ever before!"

"You sound like you've thought that at least partially through, eh?" Xannie's eyes darted around, as if her mind were moving at a million miles an hour.

"Well, yeah. 'Cause I'm stressed about it, too to be completely honest…"

"This is going to sound stupid, but have you tried just sitting back and relaxing? Clear your head, maybe?" Roland gave Xannie a light tap on the side of her head, "Sofaira would tell you guys that doing so would probably be the best thing for you to do. That and you're overthinking things way too much."

Xannie and Lurida's scrolls dinged.

 **Sepia Hughes: Digging for something you think is the issue isn't as good as actually dealing with the stress that you're really experiencing.**

"Do you guys use that as a solution to _all_ of your problems?" Lurida grumbled as she glared at the screen of her scroll. "That sounds really lazy."

"Yes," Arty folded his arms behind his head and leaned against the back of the plush cushioning of their booth."Or at least, as often as it can be a solution."

"I… guess that maybe getting so caught up in the numbers might be enough to say that maybe we are obsessing over this a bit, sis. I mean, that training session was to prepare for the tournament, and Gavin was pushing us harder than usual. What Yamuna and I probably saw was actually time dilation and you two altering the speed of light rather than time itself, which screwed us up for a week or so. To be honest, I am worried about letting Gavin down, but the fear of letting you down trumps that," Xannie looked down at the table. Saying it all out loud made a lot more sense than some kind of story with wormholes, "I'm sorry, sis. Stress has always made my predictions hazy…"

Lurida mulled over the facts for a moment, "Maybe the bending of light and time dilation _would_ explain what you saw…" She humphed and turned towards the stairs leading to the bow of the ship, "Fine. Maybe you do need to destress."

"I know a good spa in Vytal, if you want a recommendation." Timbre spoke up.

"Text us the address," Lurida got up to leave.

"Actually, just text me the address. I think that it might be better for me to go alone this time around, considering I'm worried about letting you down too," Xannie got up beside her sister.

"But we always…"

"I know we do everything together, but this is something that I need to tackle alone. Okay?"

Lurida huffed, "Right…" She looked to Timbre, "I still want the address. I might need to do some destressing of my own."

Xannie stood up next to her sister, "Well, thanks for the help. Never thought we'd actually have to go to one of our protege teams for help with something like this." She giggled nervously, but seemed happy to have at least a little clarity to their situation.

"Considering what we've been through with the Grimm Brotherhood, we didn't really have any other options at this point." Lurida grumbled as she latched onto Xannie's wrist. "Come on. Let's go see how Yamuna and Pukey McSpaceface is doing."

Xannie smiled and waved as she was practically dragged out of the lounge, "See you guys later!"

"Great…" Roland turned his attention back to Timbre, "Back to you. Semblance."

Timbre looked to see if Xannie and Lurida were actually gone. Had Professor Alabaster told them? He had her file and Team GLXY seemed to work pretty closely with the academy staff. The crowd had thinned out a bit as most people went out to enjoy the sun and sea breeze.

There wasn't any way out of this.

She leaned forward over the table, looking between Roland and Arty. "Guys, this really _really_ can't become common knowledge, okay? You're my team so I'm trying to trust you with this, but seriously, even a minor slip of the tongue to some random fan would just cascade and it…" she held her head in her hands, "It'd be a colossal nightmare not only for me, but you guys, too."

' _You told a random fan in the Emerald Forest, T. I mean, the fan isn't random anymore, but…'_ Sepia looked to Arty and Roland, ' _She's not exaggerating on this one.'_

"Got it," Roland nodded.

"It can't be that bad, T…" Arty glanced over to Timbre. After all, a Semblance was just a Semblance. It couldn't be inherently wrong.

"It wouldn't be… if it weren't for the way I've used it."

The chatter below deck seemed to fade away for Team ARTS. They all focused their full attention on Timbre. With the context of Timbre's career, 'the way' that Timbre used her Semblance could only really mean a few things. Sepia knew full well what Timbre was going to say, but Arty and Roland couldn't help but feel a tinge of fear sinking in.

Timbre clenched her fists and took a deep breath. Despite only having an audience of three, she could feel the numbing sensation of stage-fright sinking in. Telling them to stop asking obviously wouldn't work again.

"I guess the best way is to show you." She turned to face Roland, her eyes seeming to bug out of her head from some deep-laid anxiousness. "Roland. _Give me your hat_."

"No," Roland said while his hand instinctively snatched his hat off of his head. He threw it to Timbre.

Arty looked on dumbfounded.

"Wait," he glared at his hand and then to Timbre, "I didn't do that."

She held his hat back to him. "Yes… you did. Because I told you to."

"Not cool…" he plopped his hat back onto his head, "So your Semblance is Manipulation?"

Timbre looked down at the table and began fiddling with the empty nacho plate. "Yeah… to an extent. Dad's called it Siren Song since the day we… decided to use it to start up my music career."

Arty was having trouble processing what Timbre was saying. In the year he'd known her, he never really bothered asking about her Semblance. If it came up, he was fine with her hiding it. Everyone deserved to keep at least one secret. Though he never wanted to pry, it was almost surreal hearing it out loud. "Wait… what?"

"So you're saying that I like your music now because you used your Semblance to make me like it…?" Roland's eyes narrowed. He balled his fists underneath the table, but then relaxed when Sepia put her hand over his.

' _No,'_ she signed. She had been waiting for this moment for a while, and it had finally come, ' _You listened to the versions that I edited. I haven't told Timbre yet, but the versions that I listen to have been edited to remove her Semblance. In fact, I knew about her Semblance before I met her. When I accidentally played her music on my film editing software, I saw the weird fluctuations when Timbre was singing. When I took them out, I noticed that I didn't feel so hazy when I listened to her music, so I assumed that I was under the effects of a Semblance. Her Semblance. You and me like her music legitimately, and probably Arty too,'_ she smiled to her partner, ' _Your music is good without your Semblance, T.'_

Timbre fell back in her seat, "Yeah… thanks Sepia… You guys have also been around me enough to where you're probably more immune to it than most. Roland only gave me his hat just now because I put a lot of force into the command."

"So… is that why you're career shot up so fast?" Arty asked, trying to clarify a few things. "Not to say you wouldn't have become popular regardless…"

Timbre nodded in response. "I'd like to think my music is actually good, but it's kind of hard to tell when your screaming fans are… technically brainwashed to like you. That's why I wanted to stay incognito during my time at Beacon… until I met you guys that is… but then Yamuna tore off my hood during the tour of campus at orientation."

"How much force did you put into your music?" Roland asked flatly.

She winced. "A good bit…" She looked ready to cry, "I didn't want to do it, but after Mom died… we had trouble with money. Dad thought it was one of the best options. A quick solution. That's why I wanted to end my career as it was still in the early stages of taking off." She closed her eyes, trying to keep tears back, "Because I knew it was all a lie."

Roland stood from his seat. Knowing that CiCi liked Timbre's music pained him more than the fact she tricked everyone else into liking it. A bookworm like his mother wouldn't have the chance to pick up on what Sepia did, "I'm going to go find Epazote and Cayenne. I'll… catch up with you guys later."

Arty reached for his partner, "Roland, hold on-"

"No," he pushed through the crowd to get away from his team, and, more specifically, Timbre.

"Great…" Arty sunk back down in his seat, "I… I'm going to take some time and process all of this, but you two can call me whenever. Everything's okay, but this is a lot to wrap my head around."

"Arty, I didn't want to keep this from you guys. I was just scared of what it would mean for-"

"You told me to get up and fight back in the Emerald Forest. I didn't do anything because I was brave or trying to be a leader. Just... let me process all of this, okay," he held up his hands as he went to leave, "We're cool. Don't worry about it right now."

"Arty…" Timbre couldn't hold back the tears as she watched as her leader walked away, "This is why I didn't want to tell you guys… I knew that this would happen…"

She laid her head down on the table and shielded her head with her arms. All she felt were the hot tears running down her face and Sepia's gentle grasp on her shoulder. It was finally her that was tearing a rift in their team with secrets.


	49. V2Ch21: Face the Music

Crimson light exploded across the ocean waves in rippling succession. Hundreds of vessels filled the branching port that sprawled across the south side of the island of Vytal. Sails big and small mingled with the salty sea breeze and the scent of the burning Dust that powered other ships. The wooden docks all led to a single entrance to Vytal with a red sign displayed over it. The crest of Vale highlighted in lime green within the crest of Vytal, which was itself a fusion of the crests of the other four kingdoms, and seemed to glow on the blazing red sign. Beyond the sign was the sprawling gothic architecture of Vale, though blended with the oriental-style rooftops and ornate paper lanterns of Mistral to the southeast, and the arabesque arches, flat roofs, and balconies overflowing with foliage of Vacuo to the southwest. The one absolute safe haven from Grimm in all of Remnant had undergone an evolution since the Great War, one that allowed it to become an anchor for all four kingdoms to attach themselves to and cultivate together as one society. Its status as a combined settlement for all the kingdoms had taken precedent over making it a kingdom in and of itself, and thus the Great Melting Pot of Remnant, as it was commonly referred to, was born.

Looming over the city that lined the entire coastline of the island was a hulking temple of marble and white stone. It laid inland on the highest point of the hill in the center of the island, and it formed a perfect ring around a much larger center spire. The temple itself, known as the Pillars of Vytal, was lined with blindingly white columns in which were weaved veins of color from the four kingdoms. On the south rim, the columns were veined with the lime green of Vale. On the east rim, the columns were veined with the sky blue of Mistral. On the west, Vacuo's burnt orange etched into the columns. Finally, the light grey of Atlas had been weaved into the columns to the north. While the massive colonnade was certainly impressive, the massive spire in the central courtyard of the ring stole the show.

A solid white tower stretched into the sky, and at its peak were two stacked rings of arches. Amity Colosseum, the arena for the Vytal Festival Tournament, rested atop the spire with the giant white crystal that served as the bottom tip of the spinning-top-shaped structure rested snugly inside the stacked rings atop the spire's peak. The Perch of Amity was where the colosseum had been assembled, and where it rested when Amity Colosseum was not in use. With the Vytal Festival being held at Vytal itself for the centennial celebration, Amity Colosseum was very much alive in preparation for the Vytal Festival Tournament atop its perch.

"Wow…" Arty was in a state of absolute awe as he observed the amalgamation of buildings, greenery, and lights that made up the island. His fascination over Vale's architecture was nothing compared to what he felt now. It was like being in an old surrealist or romanticist painting. "This place is _incredible_!" Arty laughed as he, once again, began scribbling in his sketchbook. He'd only read about the island of Vytal and seen a few pictures, but words and images couldn't do justice for the real thing. He didn't feel like focusing on his confusion resulting from the revelation of Timbre's Semblance. There wasn't any anger or even any discontempt, but he still felt like he needed to distract himself.

"Yeah. Imagine how many chicks from the kingdoms live on this island! Those curvy desert chicks from Vacuo, the shy girls from Vale, those _niiiice_ looking girls from Mistral just waiting to cut loose, and the wild girls from back home just looking for a little freedom! Forget the Melting Pot of Remnant. This is the Melting Pot of _Babes_ , dude! If the best genes from around Remnant are gonna mix, it's gonna be _here!_ " Midas was nearly falling off the railing in his effort to get just a little closer to the island.

"I thought you were dating Saffron now, Midas…" Curie cracked her knuckles. Though she would turn a blind eye on Midas' usual scummy attitude usually, cheating was where she drew the line.

"Yeah, but just because I've already ordered doesn't mean that I can't read the menu! What if a plate of Saffron is just a little too bland for me, or too sweet, or too spicy for me? I mean, I'm getting bribed to go to the restaurant in the first place!" Midas pulled himself back to address Curie.

Arty's upper lip curled up in disgust as he looked over to his best friend. " _How_ much is Roland paying you?! I'm a nice guy and try to give everyone the benefit of a doubt, but I can't be around Saffron for more than a few minutes without wanting to just… leave."

"You stared at her for a full four minutes the last time she showed up with Midas trying to make Roland jealous…" Curie remarked, pushing up her glasses. She didn't seem too happy that her maybe-not-quite-possibly boyfriend was checking out other girls.

Arty felt his cheeks get warm and turn beet red. He knew for years that it was impossible to hide his embarrassment. His skin was too pale for that.

 _Stupid cold Atlas weather making me stay inside and not get any sun._

"Hey! It's not my fault! Roland told me it's her Semblance! I can't help it and I don't think… anybody who's into… girls can…"

Curie glared at him.

"I should just stop talking shouldn't I?"

"I got you, man," Midas cut in, "To answer your question about how much your otter-buddy is paying me, it's about the same payment that a Huntsman would get for a mission _weekly_. Basically, it's enough to live comfortably off of." He clapped Arty on the back, "I'm glad you made some rich friends after leaving home. It's been a _great_ arrangement. The deal is that I have to use 75% of it to keep Saffron off his tail, but it's still _plenty_. I think I'll buy an ATV with what's left over soon."

"A snowmobile would make more sense considering where we live, moron." Curie griped, pinching the bridge of her nose. Every moment with Midas was absolute mental torment.

"Yeah, but Atlas sucks. I'm outta that big icebox when we graduate," Midas shrugged.

.

"Mom used to talk about this place all the time. Back when she participated in the Vytal Tournament for the first time, it was only the eighty year celebration. Taken out in the last round…" Roland stared out at the city from the side of the boat. Epazote and Cayenne stood to either side of him, both watching the approach to the island, "She wanted to show me around this island since she spent almost two months here like we're about to…"

"Well," Epazote patted his friend on the back, "Now you're getting the chance. I'm sure you have a bit of a pre-recorded tour in your head with how much she talked about it. So it's like she will be, dude. Who knows," he scoffed, "maybe you'll make it just as far into the tournament as she did with her team."

"Maybe I will," Roland nodded, "I just hope that I can make her proud. If I went far enough, then every person in that stadium would be reminded of her name. I'll make her proud."

Cayenne leaned back against the railing. Her blood red tank top left streaks of ash on the steel, "Everyone from Haven will make her proud," she hoisted her hand into the air, fire engulfing her fingers to catch everyone's attention, " _LISTEN UP!"_

The attention of the entire ship whipped away from the island and latched onto the three Mistrali students.

" _YEAH! ALL OF YOU!"_ Cayenne yelled, " _MISTRAL'S TAKING HOME THE VICTORY THIS YEAR, AND THERE'S NOTHING YOU OTHER LOSERS CAN DO ABOUT IT!"_

"Cayenne, you're causing a scene…" Epazote shrunk down below the railing.

"No, she's right. If it's you guys, or me. Mistral's taking this victory," Roland stood strong beside Cayenne.

" _SAY IT WITH ME, HAVEN! MISTRAL! MISTRAL! MISTRAL!"_

No response.

Cayenne went on, and it didn't take long for Roland to join in. By sheer force of peer pressure, Epazote did as well. All three of them were shouting, " _MISTRAL! MISTRAL! MISTRAL!"_ at the tops of their lungs.

Saffron stood on top of one of the benches and pulled Pepper up with her to join in the chant.

Dante began hopping up and down from inside the crowd with Eden by her side, both chanting, " _MISTRAL! MISTRAL! MISTRAL!"_

Pretty soon, the whole of Haven's contestants were joined in the chant. Even Ahab threw in a sarcastic 'woohoo'.

It didn't take long for chants of " _ATLAS! ATLAS! ATLAS!"_ , " _VACUO! VACUO! VACUO!"_ , and " _VALE! VALE! VALE!"_ to follow along.

.

' _Are you going to make it, T…?'_ Sepia signed to her partner, ignoring the ruckus coming from outside. They had both stayed in the booth that Team ARTS had taken up for their nacho break after Arty and Roland had gone off.

"I… really don't know, Sepia…" Timbre still had her face in her arms, occasionally peeking up to let Sepia sign to her if she had something to say. The tears were still wet on her face, but at least her sobbing had stopped.

Sepia tapped the table to get Timbre's attention once more, ' _They aren't mad at you… well, Arty isn't. I have an idea as to why Roland would be...'_

"But don't you see? That's the exact reason I didn't want to tell anybody about my Semblance. I didn't want anybody to see me differently." She sat up, wiping her face with her sleeve. "Carmen's been helping me keep it a secret. She'd always butt in if anyone started asking about my Semblance or anything. It was like she had a second sense for it. She understood how I felt about it so… she just looked out for me. But… I guess it had to come out sooner or later… I just hoped it could wait until after the tournament."

' _But is it fair to hide that from half of the team?'_ Sepia shifted her gaze to the window, ' _Arty has a right to be mad, but he's not. He's our leader, so you should have told him. Roland…'_ she stopped signing as Timbre held her hand out to stop her.

"I didn't want them to know because I didn't want them thinking that I was just cheating to get what I wanted. Roland said stuff like that when we were first teamed up…" Her lip quivered as more tears formed in her eyes, "I just didn't want to prove him right…" She fell back into sobs as she hid her face in her sleeves.

Sepia nudged her partner to get her attention again. ' _We've all gotten past that, Timbre. He was going to be mad either way, but now he probably thinks that you've used it on him to manipulate him. Arty_ knows _that you have on him, even if it was with the best of intentions. I know that's not fair, but it wouldn't be unreasonable for them to feel manipulated,'_ Sepia stopped as she tried to find the right words, ' _I think you're going to have to bite the bullet, talk to Arty about your feelings, and talk to Roland about your Semblance. He's probably mad about feeling manipulated, so try to convince him that he hasn't.'_

"You really think that'll work?..."

' _It's the only thing that I really think can.'_

The boat shook as it bumped up against the dock. Students around them began to shift towards the stairs, eagerly getting in line to get back on solid ground. Timbre and Sepia stood up as well.

Before leaving the booth and their limited privacy, Timbre grabbed her partner's arm.

"Sepia… you know I'd never use my Semblance to hurt you guys or make you do anything bad… right?"

' _Of course, T. You haven't yet, and I have complete confidence you never will,'_ Sepia forced a smile. It wasn't the first road bump that Team ARTS had, and it wouldn't be the last, ' _You've got it, T. You can do this.'_

"Right..."

.

"Gods, I can't believe that I haven't had ikayaki since I left home," Roland bit a chunk off of his snack. Though a good portion of the people living in Mistral didn't carry the style or the mannerisms that were once standard in the eastern kingdom, the food and architecture hadn't changed much since the Great War. Thus, seeing a cowboy or a flamenco dancer, for example, in a pagoda wasn't exactly a strange sight.

"You know," Epazote ripped an appendage off of his snack with his teeth, "you could just call it what it is, 'grilled octopus on a stick'."

"First of all, it's squid, not octopus. I know you prefer plants, but that's no excuse to be so ignorant of animals. You're half Faunus, for Dust's sake. Second, 'grilled squid on a stick' takes longer to say and it sounds gross. Connotation, when it comes to food, is usually a bit more important," Roland took another bite before changing the subject, "Do you know how greasy the street food is in Vale? It swallows itself for you."

"No kidding…" Cayenne held her hand around the severed squid tentacles. They steamed and seared until they were charred. Satisfied with their crispiness, she then crunched off a chunk of meat, "I ate a corndog when we were in downtown Vale after I picked Epazote up from the GB incident, and I felt nauseous for the next day and a half. I swear grease was starting to leak from my pores."

"The city was in a panic, buildings were bombed, and after saving your boyfriend after his sidecar was ripped from a moving motorcycle by a masked maniac… you went to get a corndog…?" Epazote grabbed them a bench in a nearby alley, away from the bustling crowds of the small marketplace they were in. It was honestly surprising how much like home this one quadrant of the island felt. "Nice to know where your mind was at, Cai." He laughed as she sat down next to him.

"You were passed out, and I was hungry. I checked your vitals, and you were fine. I'll tell you one thing, though. The guy at the snack stand was just as surprised as you when I showed up in the middle of all that asking for a corndog," Cayenne scooted closer to Epazote so that their legs were pressed together, "Besides, I had to melt part of the sidecar to get you out, and that burned a lot of calories. I needed it!"

"Was it worth the cost, Cai? I mean, really?" Roland sat down with his back angled just so that his tail would slip out the back of the bench comfortably, "So how have you two been since I left? You've been together for what, three years now? Four?"

"Four and a half." Cayenne giggled as she kicked her legs back and forth.

"Yeah… what she said. You know we're as happy as we can be with your step-mom in charge and being on a team with… you know. It's pretty much the same. Only I've been way too bored without a guy friend to talk to."

"'Specially since you're the only boy on a team full of girls eh, Epa?" Cayenne nudged his arm, "You certainly aren't bored, though! Remember how we went out to the cliffs, and-"

Epazote scrambled, almost choking on his food, "So, uh, Rol. Moving on. How've you and Seps been doing? She mad you ditched to come hang with us on the boat?!" He was excitable, his energy blatantly showing his desire to change the direction of their conversation.

"Nah, she's fine. It was clear that she wanted to stay with Timbre for a little while..." Roland leaned back to look up at Amity Colosseum looming above them, "but… me and Sepia…" his tail swung back and forth behind the bench, "She's happy, I think. It's pretty clear. I guess that's all that matters at the moment."

Cayenne watched him carefully for a few moments, then nudged Epazote to tell him ' _something's up'_.

Epazote tried to find the best words. "Well… what about you?"

Roland cocked an eyebrow.

"Are you happy?" he winced, "I'm not saying that you don't seem happy with Sepia." he added quickly. "It's just… are you _happy_?"

He wanted to say no. Following Timbre revealing her Semblance to him, following her _manipulating_ him. He wanted so badly to say no. He wanted to vent, but that's not what this conversation was about. This was about him and Sepia. "I think so. I mean, I like being with her, and I plan on being with her for a long time. She's good. _We're_ good," Roland lowered his head, "I just… I don't really think that I know _how_ to be happy right now. I'm not so angry at everything right now. I just feel… numb. I can act happy. I know when I'm supposed to be happy. I smile involuntarily around you guys and my team, and especially Sepia, but I don't know if I'm… happy."

Epazote and Cayenne looked to each other. Their squid suddenly seemed less appetizing.

"It's been like this since Mom… passed," he still couldn't bring himself to say 'died', even after his first year at Beacon, "It's become my default to just… remember it. If there's nothing else to distract me, I'm back in her apartment. I'm killing that Nevermore. I'm… I'm just not okay."

"Have you tried talking to Mom?" Epazote asked quietly.

"Yeah, but… that hasn't done much… I can only go find her at lunch so many times without it looking suspicious," he looked back down at the pavement, "I'm just scared that I can't be happy anymore. I know that sounds crazy, but… happiness just seems impossible by and large."

"Well…" Epazote racked his brain a bit, looking for the right words. At first, he thought about what his mom would say. What would her professional opinion be? He realized that wouldn't work. Roland didn't need a professional right now. He needed a friend. "I'd say you just need to surround yourself with the people and things that _should_ make you feel happy. Friends. Classmates. Books."

At that moment, Sepia and Timbre came around the corner. Sepia was dragging Timbre along by the wrist. It appeared that, at some point, Timbre had purchased a large sun hat and sunglasses to hide her face. It seemed that her popularity hadn't exactly died down in Vytal like it mostly had in Vale. After the conversation they'd had earlier about her Semblance, it wasn't a surprise that she didn't want to deal with any paparazzi or fans at the moment.

"Perfect timing." Epazote said with a smile, which quickly vanished as Cayenne elbowed him in the side.

"Great…" Roland mumbled, "Hey, what's going on? Are you gonna put Timbre up for auction, babe?" he called over to the two.

Sepia let go of Timbre to sign to him, ' _You and Timbre need to talk.'_

"Right… we need to talk just as much as Timbre needs that hat and those glasses. She should just tell her fans to screw off. I'm _sure_ that they would listen," he stood up to go, but his tail got caught in the bench. He stumbled a few feet before standing upright. Having his best friends as an audience wasn't making matters less nerve wracking, "Epa, Cai, you two should probably go. I'll catch up with you guys later."

"On it," Cayenne jumped up and began dragging Epazote away.

Timbre stepped away from Sepia, hardly looking to Roland as she spoke to him. "Yeah… you're right. I'll just leave then." Her voice wavered as she turned away, pulling the hat down lower over her face.

"You did it to Mom," he said without so much as thinking. For a moment, the sense of numbness was replaced with something else. The shouting and the insults that would usually pop out in boiling rage stuck in his throat. What he was feeling wasn't letting him react how he would normally. It wasn't quite anger, nor frustration, nor sadness. It was a horrible mixture of all three. He felt slighted. He felt hurt.

Timbre stopped in her tracks. Her boots scraped against the rough cobblestone as she turned to Roland. Despite acknowledging him, she didn't want to take off her new sunglasses. She didn't want him to see her red tear-filled eyes. "W-what?"

"You tricked her. You took advantage of her. She gave up chunks of her food budget to take Saffron and I to one of your concerts with her. She sacrificed bits of her well-being to be your fan, and you were okay with that. You had to know that people would do things like that," he stayed planted in his place. Going near Timbre was the last thing that he wanted to do, "She wasn't obsessed, and she was still fine either way… but you took advantage of my mother, Timbre."

There wasn't any way to hold back the emotions now. Tears flowed freely from her eyes as she tried her hardest to keep her voice steady. "I told you that's why I wanted to quit it all! I was tired of manipulating people… I never wanted to. I didn't go out of the way to take advantage of Chiara-"

"Her name was _CiCi!_ " Roland finally stepped towards Timbre. He didn't get close enough to be in her face, but he did narrow the distance between them to a few feet. Each stuck word that he spoke felt like it finally being set free, "I know you didn't go out of your way. You did it carelessly, and you did it for you. You were selfish. Now she's gone, and she'll never know how you wronged her and everyone else."

Timbre couldn't stop the tears. In a fit of annoyance, she tore off the sunglasses and hat and threw them to the side. No matter how many times she rubbed at her eyes with her sleeves, her face stayed damp, "You really think I wanted to use my Semblance like that? You really think I even wanted that kind of power in the first place?!"

"You wanted it enough to do it!" Roland shouted back, his own eyes tinged pink.

"No I didn't, Roland!" she stomped her foot against the cobblestones and shook her fists.

"Yes you did! You sang! You wrote those songs! You brainwashed people into liking you! It's your damn Semblance, so take some responsibility for once!"

"I only got my Semblance because I tried to cope with my mother dying!"

Something cold closed around his heart, but he couldn't let her know that. He couldn't back down against someone like her, "What, so you could brainwash your dad into spoiling you?!"

Her breath caught in her throat for a moment. She shook her head violently, despising the thought of using her own father like that, "More like my dad wanted me to brainwash people so we could live after we didn't have any money!"

"Yeah, right, sure. You couldn't live the high life, sure."

"My mom was the breadwinner of our family, Roland… after she died, my dad struggled to find work. He fought to make a living and I was still trying to cope." She hugged her arms around herself, "I didn't even _talk_ for _years_ after she died, Roland. I couldn't. I just… shut down. I thought I couldn't live without her. _That's_ why my Semblance came about… I was screaming inside for years, trying to tell myself to speak up and try to help him, but after staying silent for so long… it was like my mouth forgot how to form words. All I had was my internal voice telling me 'Speak! Speak!' until it finally manifested into… this… My Semblance wasn't brought about because I wanted to influence others… but to influence myself. I was weak without my mother..."

Roland wanted so bad to scream back at her about what it was really like to be weak without a mother. Arty had taken a right hook to the jaw because he was weak without CiCi. Rime took a typewriter to the head. Alice took a beating that shattered her aura. Timbre didn't know how it was to be so pained by the death of a mother. She was far too young, "Well at least it happened when you were young… It's been over a decade for you, right…? You've had time to cope. You've had time for it to get easier."

"You honestly think it was easier on me just because I was younger?..."

His clenched fists trembled. Tears began welling up in his eyes, "It better get better after fourteen years..."

Timbre shook her head, "It doesn't, Roland. It really doesn't… There isn't a day that goes by that I don't think about my mom. She's the whole reason I wanted to be a Huntress."

"So was she killed by Grimm and you want to kill Grimm, or a criminal, or… what? What are you going after?" the trembling in his fists slowed.

"To be _me_ , Roland. I'm doing this to make up for the mistakes _I_ made. It's not about revenge… or killing things. It's about wanting to fix the grief and deception. I want to help people in a _real_ way, not with some illusionary drug that makes them feel better and forget about the world around them. Every concert, I _hated_ myself. Every album, I _hated_ myself. Every signing, every interview, every time I went into a store and bought something… everything I did and everywhere I went… It was all at the expense of me tricking people."

"Then why keep living a life like that…?"

"Because of a simple misunderstanding and to make my dad feel like he wasn't going to lose me like he lost my mom."

His hands went slack, "What…?"

"He always told me when I was little that Mom didn't want me to be a Huntress. The exact words he quoted her saying were 'I don't want her to be a Huntress.' Blunt and impossible to misinterpret, right? Well… about two years ago, before I decided my last tour would be my last, I talked to Carmen about it. I always put a smile on for my dad, but Carmen knew how I really felt. She knew I was unhappy with my career. I'd already done some prep school, telling my dad it was just a 'passing interest' at the time, but Carmen saw my potential as a fighter. I told her what Dad had said and she just looked… confused."

He tried his best to actually look at her, "Because he was lying?"

"Because he took my mom's words a different way than she intended. I was too young to remember what my mom had said, much less what she meant. But, Carmen, with Mom being her team leader and all, said that 'Aria Forté would never tell anyone to not be something. If someone had the drive, she'd tell them to go for it, but she'd never _ever_ tell them they couldn't be something.' My mom didn't mean she didn't want me to be a Huntress. She was saying she wanted me to be what I wanted to be. If I ended up a Huntress, fine. If not, also fine. She was saying she wanted me to do what made me _happy_. It was at that moment I realized that I didn't have to be miserable with the direction my life was going anymore. We had enough money to live off of for years and if we needed any more income, I'd be done at Beacon long before it all ran out. I told my dad, he wasn't happy, but… I guess he realized enough time had passed that I could make my own decisions, even if he thought it was against Mom's wishes. It wasn't until last semester I realized that it was more… him that didn't want me to be a Huntress. He doesn't want to lose me like he lost her… Now here I am trying to convince him that he doesn't have to worry about that."

"You want to live up to the expectation that she had of you doing what made you happy…?" Roland bit his lip. That idea struck close to home with him. The last conversation that he had with CiCi had the same reasoning to it. CiCi wanted him to be happy, but it was more that CiCi _knew_ that he would be happiest as a Huntsman. She knew that it was going to be killing Grimm and helping the people around him that could give him purpose, but she also knew how miserable he would be if he did it all with hate eating away at his heart.

"The last thing that Mom said to me was 'Believe in yourself and love yourself, and you'll find the way.'" he pulled back from Timbre a few inches, "She… she wanted this life for me… she knew that I would be happy on a team… helping people..."

"I don't even remember what the last thing my mom said to me was…"

"I don't know if that means that you're lucky or unlucky…"

Timbre tried her best to look Roland in the eyes, "I don't know either, but I think that it's okay either way."

"Nothing's okay about losing someone, Timbre. How can you still be happy, though…?" he couldn't find his breath. He couldn't understand how she could act like everything was just fine, "How can you feel that now that she's gone, huh?! How can you be okay enough to willingly get out of bed?! How can you do anything without being reminded of her?!"

She reached up and wiped away the slowing stream of tears. "Because I know that, even though she's not with me anymore, she still loves me."

"I…" he clutched the brim of his hat and pulled it close to his chest, "Acting like that love is still here doesn't fill the hole that she left, Timbre…"

Her hair fluttered back and forth as she shook her head, "It's not acting, Roland, it's believing."

The crushing numbness that had been swallowing him whole began to let up. The hole left by CiCi didn't feel like a void. She was gone, but it felt like he could finally see that part of her that was still there.

Roland reached out and grabbed Timbre by the shoulders and pulled her in close. He wrapped his arms around her, resting his chin on her shoulder. Tears rolled down his cheeks, "It hurts. It hurts that she isn't here to cheer us on, or to show us Vytal, or to just… love me the way that she did. She was the only one who I knew loved me for so long, Timbre. I didn't question it. I didn't have to. She was the one thing that I couldn't lose and now she's gone!" he let out a sob and clutched Timbre harder, "I didn't do anything for me. I did everything to make her happy, and now I… I just can't…"

Timbre tightened her grip on the back of his vest, holding him closer. The tears were back full force now. "And you can still do that… she's still there. You can make her happy, just like I try to do for my mom… Make her smile down at you, Roland..."

No words came out. Roland couldn't bring himself to say anything. All he could do was cry. Every ounce of the pain that he was pushing away came flooding back, and here Timbre was. She knew how it all felt, and never once did he consider that.

"I'm…" he struggled to get the air to say another word out, "I'm sorry… I'm so sorry…"

Timbre could only sob along with him, barely able to respond. "Me too, Roland… me too…"

"Um… are you guys okay?..."

Normally, Roland would have frozen at Arty's voice, but he just held tight to Timbre and let the tears flow, "W-We're f-f-fine…" he sputtered out between sobs.

The sight was definitely one to behold, and it made Arty very uncomfortable. He looked to Sepia, who had ran all the way back to the dock just to find him and bring him to this odd little alley in the Mistral-inspired quadrant of the island. He thought she was just being… her, but now he knew something was definitely going on. "Sepia… what's…"

' _They both lost their mothers, Arty. They're finally helping each other cope,'_ Sepia gave the two a warm smile. Through all the devious plots that she came up with to mess with people, she still had a skill set for getting people into position to shoot a good shot. Being mute was a plus when it came to keeping plans to herself, ' _We're finally all on the same page.'_

After thoroughly getting out their feelings, Timbre and Roland pushed away from each other, both wiping away tears as they tried to calm themselves down.

"Let's make them proud," Roland held up his hand to Timbre.

She nodded in response before reaching up and locking hands with him. If they were going to do anything, they were going to do it right. "You got it, Writer."

Arty walked up to the two. He knew he needed to say something to Timbre, but wasn't exactly sure how to say it. "Hey, Timbre?"

She turned to her leader, the only sign that she'd been crying being the redness in her cheeks and eyes. Her smile to Roland seemed to slowly fade. She had completely forgotten about Arty running off on the boat, "Hey..."

"Look, I don't care if you can influence people to do things just by telling them. Looking back… I can kinda guess when and how you used it… and you always used it to save our butts." He held out his sketchbook, open to a page of a heavily stylized drawing, almost resembling a panel from a comic book. The scene showed the night they fought the Trex together. Arty and Timbre seemed to be skirting around the monster as they fought it. Sepia was off to the side, standing firm as she defended Roland.

He turned the page.

The next drawing showed Timbre standing up to Navy. Despite his hulking frame and vertical superiority, Timbre stood strong against him.

He turned the page again.

The third illustration was similar to the one preceding it. It depicted the night of prom. Timbre, in her formal dress, stood between Roland and his half-brother Ahab. Behind them, Arty, Sepia, Cayenne, Dante, Curie, and Alabaster made a very active background as they fought off the Grimm that had been set loose on the campus. But the focal point was on the still figures in the foreground, Timbre standing strong against Ahab and telling him to back off and focus on the task at hand.

"Every single time I could think of, you only used your Semblance to help _us_ , not yourself." He closed the book, "And I'm one-hundred-percent okay with that. I know I may not have been particularly brave against the Trex, but I still _felt_ brave, you know? Had you not told me to get off my ass and fight, the four of us might not be standing here right now."

"I think that you would find the courage for us anyway, but… thanks. I'm glad that I actually managed to do something good with this power," a few more tears flowed from the corners of Timbre's eyes. For the first time, she was proud of her Siren's Song.

' _So we've got the Animator, the Inkheart, the Siren, and the Director. That sounds a lot cooler than Arty, Roland, Timbre, and Sepia!'_ Sepia slid in between the three of them with four sticks of grilled tentacles in her hands. Though it was difficult to sign between the sticks, she managed to get out the words that she needed to.

"Sounds like a team that's not gonna lose," Roland gingerly took one of the squid sticks from her, "At least we can all actually be completely straight with each other now. Arty about Atlas, me about Mom, Timbre about her Semblance and career, and Sepia…" he thought for a moment, "Never hid anything… and is typically the one to… engineer things like this…"

Sepia passed off the other squid sticks to Arty and Timbre, keeping one for herself, ' _Hey, I may be mute, but I'm still the loudest. Being a director makes you good at… you know… directing.'_

Arty looked at his new 'snack'. "Gee… thanks, Sepia." He quickly got back to the matter at hand. "You sound surprised, Roland." He gazed down to the cobblestones, a slight grin tugging at the edges of his mouth, "Do you guys think we could actually win this?"

Timbre tore at her squid, "I mean, it's wishful thinking, but it's a wish worth making in my opinion."

"It's a wish that we're fulfilling," Roland bit off a tentacle. He grinned at the thought, knowing that CiCi would be doing the same, "And it's feasible. Think about it, Arty. You're close and long range, I'm close and mid, T's mid and very mobile, and Sepia's all around. We've got two Semblances that can make weapons and traps on the fly and cover each other's shortcomings, one Semblance that can literally control the other team, and another that can tell us where anything and anyone is. I've never been so confident in our abilities. If we can take down a Trex, then we can take down just about anything."

"You forgot that we also held off a Grimm infestation and held our own against Grimm Brotherhood members… somewhat." Arty gripped his shoulder, remembering the burning slash he'd received from Agent Venice's Dust-infused claws. He didn't seem to feel any guilt in those words. It seemed that his anxiety and self-loathing from earlier in the semester had disappeared, most likely due to the fact that they were all still alive and ready to take on the world with their new-found confidence. They were a team, and nothing was going to change that.

The others sat by in silent agreement.

Timbre gazed up at the orange dusk sky, "So… if we're done opening up and being all emotional… can I show you the surprise I mentioned earlier?"

.

"It's another boat…?" Roland stared up the mint green hull of a vessel that rivaled the ferry the participants of the tournament came in earlier that day. Every bit and bob was decked out in silver accents. A massive double barrel artillery gun sat at the end of the bow, its barrels aimed down at the pale boards of the deck. Perhaps he might not have been able to fit down one of the barrels, but someone of Sepia's stature might have been able to.

"It's… more of a yacht… to be more specific. It's equipped with anything you could ever want to fend off aquatic Grimm." Timbre was hoping the reveal to be a bit more 'wow', but after everything they'd discussed earlier that day, seeing the extravagant vessel felt almost lackluster. It did come from her career after all.

"And it's _yours_?!" Arty looked over the shiny hull. He'd seen some impressive Atlas military boats. While airships were the norm, naval operations were carried out if flying wasn't an option. They were made to cut through the icy waters in the surrounding oceans and could range from small stealth vessels to large assault carriers, but all of them were nothing compared to the magnificence of the boat before them.

"Well… technically it's my dad's, but he's given us the freedom to use it while we were here in Vytal- _**SEPIA!**_ "

Out of the end of one of the artillery gun's barrels waved a pair of brown high heeled boots. Three orbs of light zipped around the gun as if looking for a way to get their owner out. After seeing the size of the gun, Sepia just _had_ to know if the thing was just for show or if it could actually go off. Based on the loaded shell inside, she came to the conclusion that it was not, in fact, for show.

Her team watched in disbelief from the dock.

"Please tell me there's no way she could set it off from inside the gun itself…" Arty was scared that their day might suddenly end on a low note. Knowing Sepia, she could probably surprise them and survive being blasted face-first at close range with a high-grade artillery gun, but he didn't want to take the chance of her being splattered across the dock.

"I don't… think so."

"You don't know?!"

"Dad never let me near the controls for the guns…"

"But he gave you the boat for the next two months?!"

"My dad doesn't make the most sense all the time, okay?"

"I feel you on that. My dad has tons of boats, but he doesn't give me one because I 'can't swim' and 'have no need for a barge'. I can think of at least three situations where having a barge on call would have helped," Roland said halfway seriously on his way up the gangplank. Once he was close enough to Sepia, he grabbed her by the ankles and slipped her out, "You'd never do this with one of Shorla's portals… would you?"

' _Hell no,'_ Sepia signed quickly. Soot covered her from head to toe, but she was still smiling just as maniacally as always. ' _Well… maybe.'_

"Do you think there even _is_ anything on the other side? When she doesn't have another portal set up as an exit I mean." Timbre chimed in.

"She did disappear in her first fight with my sister…" Roland added.

" _This boat has friggin everything!_ " Arty shouted over them. He began running around the dock and the inside cabin, looking over every last detail and amenity. A giant holo-screen, fully functional kitchen, plush seating, and large glass windows to catch nearly the entire horizon from _inside_. They even had enough beds and sleeping spaces to accommodate at least twenty people. "Roland, Sepia, are you _seeing_ this?!"

' _I saw the gun,'_ Sepia signed back.

"I mean, yeah, but does it carry a maximum of seventy shipping containers across the oceans and Lake Matsu? I don't think so," Roland strolled along the railing of the yacht with Sepia at his side, then stepped inside the main cabin. The living area was about as large as three dorms put together at Beacon, and that was without the kitchen attached by the bar. He tapped the long metal rectangle on the cabinet situated in front of the couch. A 50" holographic screen appeared in the air above it, "But it's pretty cool. Maybe we could stay here instead of the hotel. I bet it would be a lot less chaotic, and we could be as loud as we want. We can have our friends by, play some cards, and throw Arty and Curie into a closet to sort out their relationship issues."

Arty turned red and tried to ignore his partner's comment. "This boat is _amazing_! How are you not more… I don't know, excited?!"

"My dad is friends with a lot of rich business people. I've been on plenty of yachts before," he shrugged, "but it's still pretty cool. Just not a barge. Maybe I can use this as leverage to get one from Dad… Something like 'Timbre gets a yacht, so why can't I get a barge?', you know?"

' _Nothing much surprises me anymore, but I'll act surprised with you if you want!'_ Sepia ran up to Arty and began dragging him out to look around the ship, satisfied in thinking that he had no real clue what she had just signed to him.

As Arty and Sepia gallivanted around the Forté yacht, Timbre expressed her worry to Roland.

"Roland… do you really mean that about staying here? You want to actually take my dad up on his offer?'

He glanced over to her, "Why? Should we not?"

"I mean… this is one of those things I mentioned I hate myself over. This came from Siren Song… remember?"

"Timbre. Timbre…" he pointed down to the deck, "It's bought. It's paid for. That's over and done with, and you have a boat too. What's worse? Having it by using Siren's Song and not using it, or having it by using Siren's Song and using it? At least it serves a purpose on the second option," he nodded over at Arty and Sepia, "They're happy to experience this, so it's giving joy to others. That kind of negates the selfish aspect to an extent, doesn't it? If you use it to help others, then it wasn't a selfish object."

"I guess…" she stepped into the cabin and opened the fridge. Just as she expected, her father had called ahead and had it stocked with all of her favorite foods and drinks. There was even some of the stuff she had off-handedly mentioned her team liking. She cringed when she found a mesh bag full of clams in one of the bottom drawers. She grabbed a can of soda and returned to the living area, where Roland had sat down on the couch. "Well… should I go ahead and call to have our luggage brought here instead of the hotel they originally had us at?"

"That's a question for the leader, but I'm voting yes if it comes to that," his eyes didn't leave the bag of clams. Sure, he was mostly serious when he suggested that they stay on the boat, but the clams sealed the deal, "By the way… you wouldn't know which region those came from… would you…? They look almost like Mantle zebra-striped clams… but those are hard to track down…"

"Roland… I honestly don't know a thing about clams… My dad had them stocked here because I talked to him about your addiction at one point or another." She pulled out her scroll, "I guess I'll go ahead and make the call then. I think Arty's already sold on staying here."

"Gonna guess that Sepia is too. Just don't let her sleep near the big gun. I don't want that thing to end up being my alarm clock," he slowly took the bag of clams, his smile widening as he opened the bag, "Okay, yeah. I really want to stay here now. Your dad got the good stuff." He reached into one of his pockets and pulled out a wide flat rock.

"Right… have fun with them, then." She pressed on one of her contacts and waited for the person on the other end to pick up. "Hey, Carmen. I know this might be a little short notice, but do you think you could… bend the rules a bit and have Team ARTS' luggage sent to Dad's yacht at the marina?"

"Oh, trust me, hun, your dad's already told me about how he gave his floating hotel to you four while you're there. I already took the liberty of changing your residence information in General Léon's system. It'll all be there within the hour," Carmen laughed, "I bet she won't be happy, but she's just gonna have to deal. She never said you couldn't change lodgings if you had somewhere other than one of the hotels to stay at on the island."

Timbre smiled slightly, "Thanks Carmen. Sorry for calling so late."

"Timbre… you know I barely sleep… and you can call me any time. I'm here to watch out for you, and don't you forget that, or I might have to roughen you up a bit, got it?"

Timbre rolled her eyes, "Yes, _Auntie_ Maple."

Carmen whined, "I told you not to call me that."

"I know. That's why I do it."

"I taught you too well."

"Bye, Carmen. See you soon." She closed her scroll, ending the call.

"Sow coot…" Roland mumbled through a mouth full of gelatinous meat.

"Shut up, otter boy."

* * *

The shattered moon hung over the Amity Coliseum. Just past midnight, not a soul worked inside the megastructure. All was still in the warm island night, only a faint breeze to break up the silence. Standing on the top rim of Amity Coliseum was a figure cloaked in white and two more cloaked in black behind them.

"Thank you two for meeting me here. I really do love the view," smokey white cloth fluttered in the wind, the red fractures across the cloak burning like veins of molten magma. The figure's face was covered by a bone mask, one comprised of the bulging eyes and head of an octopus and a mass of porcelain tentacles over where the mouth would be. Cracks cut through the mask to give the appearance of age.

"As do I." The masked person to her right, dressed in a black and red leather jacket and similarly-colored pants, mused as he looked out at the endless ocean spread before them. The six orbs of glowing light deep in his monstrous mask's sockets scanned over the city below them until they reached the marina where a minty-green vessel dwarfed every other one around it. "Everyone is geared up for tomorrow, Commander."

"So militaristic. Perhaps I should have stationed you in Atlas instead of Vale, Lieutenant Koloss. You would make a fine soldier, but, alas, it would seem that I did not put in the foresight…" Commander Maelstrom paced along the rim of Amity Coliseum, "You have done well. Thank you for handling what I could not."

Koloss smiled behind his mask, "It was my pleasure, truly. Anything for the Brotherhood."

"No need to be so formal on it. Just know that I value your work," Commander Maelstrom turned to look at the person to her left, "Lieutenant Hulud, I also have a particular assignment for you, if you feel that you are confident enough to take it on."

"Of course, ma'am. Just give the word," said a woman clad in a black trench coat buttoned up from her knees up to her neck. A hood was fashioned from a black and red scarf to cover what her mask could not. Four flaps were open like a flower with rows of serrated teeth inside. Inside the center was the swirling molten light of a Grimm's eye.

"Position this under the boardwalk, Lieutenant Hulud," Commander Maelstrom passed off a white cube with blinking colored lights on each corner, "If I am correct, and I have great confidence that I am, our dear children will be nearby for you to… observe. Be sure that they are left intact, and do not miss the opportunity to capture them if possible. Though, it is not essential that you capture them. Only do so if you can retrieve all four of them at once."

"I understand. I will do my best to follow through with your orders, but I do have one concern," Lieutenant Hulud gingerly took the cube from her commander, "Are we certain that Team ARTS is what we're looking for?"

"Oh, I do believe so. Dear Koloss has been invaluable in confirming this," Commander Maelstorm turned to the man beside her, "Would you be so kind as to explain your progress?"

Lieutenant Koloss nodded, "Of course." From his pocket, he pulled out a larger-sized jet black scroll and opened it. He began scrolling through files on its holographic screen. "I've nearly finished decrypting the files that we retrieved from Onyx Alabaster's office. While some of the more… interesting documents are still locked, one that I've managed to break into has his watchlist." He handed the scroll to Lieutenant Hulud, "Two on Team ARTS they've confirmed to be awoken. The other two have the most potential. We've already put too much work into the Umber boy for us to back away now, and it seems Onyx and his people agree."

"I see… so our theory is still proving to be correct. That is wonderful," Lieutenant Hulud smiled behind her mask, "Then I will get straight to my preparations. Agent Oro and Captain Trex will be briefed in case they are needed to immobilize them, or to nudge them in the right direction."

"Perfect," Commander Maelstrom turned back to face the sea. In the reflection of the moon on the water, something shifted. Just under the surface glowed the reddish yellow hue of a Grimm's gaze, "Then so it begins. Please do your best, and be sure to enjoy yourselves. We have quite the day ahead of us."


	50. V2Ch22: From the Depths

Sunlight blinked up over the horizon, casting orange rays across the water and onto students on the top deck of the Forté yacht. Scattered about the vessel were a half of the students that had come by the night before to hang out and cause a ruckus in celebration of arriving in Vytal. In the shadow of the artillery gun slept Midas and Saffron, though Saffron seemed to have scooted closer to the railing in an unconscious attempt to get away from Atlas' golden boy. Cayenne and Epazote had cuddled up on the stairs leading below deck with a bag of chips crammed between them. Sepia and Opal were laid across a bench that overlooked the back end of the boat, but Roland and his sister were awake and leaning against the railing to look at the sunrise. Opal's boyfriend, Damascus, was sprawled out on the deck behind them.

Below deck were the remaining members of Team ARTS, MTLC, SPCE, and STON. While the Forté yacht had enough beds to accommodate, Arty, Timbre, Titian, Ledning, Curie, Pepper, Shorla, Torbern, and Namib were sprawled across the below-deck living area in front of massive base for a holo-screen instead.

For once, Arty wasn't the last to wake up. He didn't even feel like complaining about being up so early. After stretching and getting the last of his yawns out, he decided to head up to the main deck of the boat. As he tiptoed out of the room, he felt his heart almost leap out of his throat when he lost his balance for a split second. He would've landed right on top of Shorla. Despite her being invited onto the ship, he still didn't consider her a part of his small friend circle. To be fair, she probably didn't either.

Regaining his balance, he realized he had another problem. Pepper's Semblance seemed to still be active even when she slept. How it wasn't affecting everybody else, he didn't know, but the watering eyes and runny nose made it obvious that it wasn't just a small case of the sniffles from the few dust mites that happened to survive in the spotless yacht. Clear of the people sleeping on the floor, he made a quiet dash for outside.

"Ah-ah-... A _chooo!_ " He wiped his nose on his sleeve as he tried to catch his breath, but it was hard through his stuffy nose, "Why… did we invite _her_ of all people?..."

"We didn't. Saffron did, and Saffron invited herself…" Dante kept her eyes on the horizon. Even though her and Roland weren't even talking, it felt nice to actually just have some quiet time with him. It reminded her of rainy days when they would read in the library on the estate. Thus, Arty coming up felt more like an interruption than anything.

Roland grunted in confirmation.

"Right… should've guessed that much…" he took a seat on a bench not too far away. "What are you guys already doing up?"

"We've both always been early risers. We actually got a chance to talk to Dad if we got up early enough," Roland half grumbled, "We got in the habit."

Dante winced at the mention of their morning talks with their father. What Roland failed to mention was that those talks really only happened on the weekends, the only time when Henry Wells _wasn't_ working. Those early weekend mornings before he had time to pick up the bottle were when they got to see their father as he was supposed to be, "You haven't told them… have you?"

"Don't need to," Roland's gaze on the horizon narrowed. A family matter like his father being tipsy before noon wasn't something that he cared to talk to his team about. After all, it wasn't like it caused any real problems for the most part, "Don't want to."

"I won't even ask then… it's too early…" Arty rested his head against the railing and looked out to the ocean. He was always impressed by other artists' ability to recreate water reflecting the dawn sky and the light of the morning sun. It was one of the few sights in the world that Arty believed looked like a living oil painting.

"I'm surprised that you didn't bring your sketchbook up with you, Arty," Dante glanced over to her brother's leader, "It's a rare sight to see you without it."

Arty was about to respond with 'it's too early' again, but he stopped upon realizing something extremely shocking, "Wait… you know my name?..."

"I've known it for a while. I just get it wrong because people seem to think that I'm more likable that way. If you portray yourself as more awkward than you really are, then you tend to come off as more likable out of sheer pity. That's a good baseline to work with," she smiled just a bit, "That's a lesson from Father. It's how he gained people's trust to get them to sell their companies to the MTC."

"See now how we're related, bud?" Roland started to grin, "She is bad with names, though."

"Very bad, but not nearly as bad as I lead people to believe," she added.

Arty looked on in half-terror, "That's honestly pretty scary. You see, I'm what you'd call _actually_ socially awkward."

"Got that right." the Wells kids said in unison.

Arty nodded, not taking his eyes off of the ocean as the sun began to rise above the horizon.

For a second, he swore he saw something moving beneath the waves, cresting ever so slightly above the surface of the water.

"Woah!" Arty jumped up, feeling wide awake now. "Did you guys see that?!" He tried to sound urgent, but not loud enough to wake those that decided to sleep outside under the stars.

"I… guess…?" Roland pointed to a small fishing boat on its way out from the marina, "Is that what you mean?"

"No… I swear that… It was definitely something alive…"

"Dolphin? We saw some about an hour ago." Dante offered.

Arty shook his head, "No, I swear I saw something glowing red. An aquatic Grimm maybe?"

"Arty… you're an idiot…" Roland pinched the bridge of his nose, "Vytal is literally the one place on the planet without a single Grimm. If one gets too close, they instantly vaporize. They straight up do not exist here."

"But…"

"It was probably just the sunlight reflecting off of the wake make by a boat heading out for the day. You're overthinking it, Arty," Dante waved off the concern.

"Maybe you need more sleep, Painter." Roland added as they stood up, presumably to get started with breakfast.

Arty was left as the only one awake outside. "But I…" he looked back out at the water in hopes of seeing it again to make a positive identification on what he saw. After what felt like an hour, nothing came. He tried to shrug it off and forget about it, but something just kept nagging at him.

He turned and went inside, where the smell of bacon, toast, pancakes, and coffee were starting to waft throughout the yacht.

* * *

Opal stood from her barstool with her fork raised in the air, "So then I kicked 'im in the cakehole and said-"

"You mean that you asked the waiter very politely when our food was coming out," the white haired, pale, red-eyed man beside Opal cut in. Even in the warm climate of southern Vytal, he was donning a coffee-colored jacket, khakis, and a pink ascot around his neck for a little extra color. How an albino like Damascus was able to survive in the deserts of Vacuo? Sunscreen. Lots and lots of sunscreen.

"Well… um…" she sat back down, "Ya makin' me look lame with my mates, dude…"

"It isn't just him…" Shorla mumbled.

Opal started to get up again, "Say again, Short-edgy-and-pissy?"

"I should have said that you're acting more showy than Dante…" Shorla snatched a crystalline knife from one of her tears in space and began to twirl it absent-mindedly between her fingers.

"Rude…" Dante murmured from across the bar. She swallowed the scrambled eggs that she was chewing, then held up her book, "Please don't make me use a Gravity Dust poem to keep you two from hurting each other. Although, I wouldn't mind reading you guys some of my work."

"Now now you guys…" Timbre chimed in as she was pouring a liberal helping of syrup onto a short stack of pancakes. "No fighting on my dad's boat. If you wanna fight, go to the training facilities near the Perch." She chomped down on a bite of her food, "I don't want thish thing sinking because I had shome people over and a fight broke out."

Arty laughed as he held a mug of steaming coffee, "Do you always have to talk with your mouth full, Timbre?"

"Yesh. Yesh I do." She gulped, "Life's too short to stop eating just to hold a conversation."

Arty raised his mug and looked back out at the ocean through the glass doors, "Point taken…"

' _I never talk with my mouth full,'_ Sepia signed with her fork wedged between her fingers.

"Oh ha ha…" Roland rolled his eyes. He set his coffee mug down in front of him. The smell of food was making his already mildly seasick stomach even more uneasy, so he decided that just some coffee would do him well.

Saffron waved a piece of toast through the air as if physically conducting her thoughts, "Not much of a communicator, huh sweethea-"

"I will push you off the side of the boat if you do not attempt to be civil. That, and you're dating Midas, in case you forgot." Roland snatched his mug back up. Caffeine was the only thing that was about to curb his frustration.

"Ya dang right, my friend," Midas shot finger guns at his employer.

"Unethical business practices aside… How did everyone sleep?" Epazote picked at his plate using his fork, "Sorry if Cayenne and I woke any of you up. She decided that a late night dance would be romantic or something."

Cayenne didn't offer the same apology to the other occupants as her head was resting on the counter. A puddle of drool gathered around the corner of her mouth.

"Must've tucka'd herself out, huh?" Opal poked the past out dancer. "How she gonna enjoy goin' ta town today if she's passed out here?"

"Give her a second… Cayenne gets her second wind around eleven in the morning…" Pepper sat on the other side of the living space to keep the others out of her Semblance's range. She sat with her breakfast plate in her lap, "This is a really nice boat. Thank you, Timbre…" She gingerly cut a fried egg before taking a bite.

She washed down another mouthful of pancake with some orange juice, "Um… no problem, Pepper." Timbre tried her best to be polite, but it was really awkward talking to someone who had previously chased her teammates through downtown Vale simply because her best friend used to date one of them. But there was something about having this boat-full of people that made her feel like she had something she never really had before: a large group of friends. Everyone aboard had either forgotten about her music or just… accepted her for who she was. It was strange considering the diverse and often conflicting personalities, but it was comforting all the same. She smiled, "I'm glad you're enjoying yourself."

"Whelp," Arty stood up, "I'll see you guys later."

"Where are _you_ going?" Roland's brow scrunched up in confusion, "You're actually going to _do_ something?!"

Arty groaned, "Yes… Roland. I'm going to do something."

"Is that 'something' going out to draw some buildings or a trashcan?" Midas jeered.

"Hey, they have some _really_ nice trashcans around here. They're required aspects for populated areas and can be made aesthetically pleasing despite their purpose."

Everyone stared at him with blank expressions.

He cleared his throat, "I mean… I found out that there's a boardwalk over a little down the coast here in the Valian part of the island. Ferris wheel, carnival rides, nice view of the ocean. Fun stuff like that. Heard there was an arcade too, so I invited Curie to go with me."

Midas began spitting out his coffee, creating a fine mist in the air and annoying everyone near him. After his mouth was emptied, he began laughing, barely able to get a word out, "You sure you can get the gremlin out into the sun that long?!"

"I accepted already, _Midas_."

Everyone turned to the stairs leading below deck. They barely recognized the girl standing before them.

For probably the first time ever, Curie was in something other than her sweatpants and hoodie or her school uniform. She was dressed for the weather in a dull green tank top, khaki shorts, and neon green flip-flops.

Arty was stunned, "Holy-"

"Woah… dude… she even shaved her legs for you. They're still whiter than paper, but… dang…" Midas looked Curie up and down, "You even pulled all of your hair back for once. I think your forehead is paler than your arms and legs, though…"

Curie stomped over and delivered a swift punch to Midas's shoulder, knocking him off his barstool. Before he could push himself back to his feet, she was already grabbing Arty by the wrist. "Come on, Umber. I don't want to hear the Gilded Idiot talk out of his ass anymore."

Midas waited until they were out on the deck before calling after her, " _You should keep the look! It fits your feisty attitude a bit better!"_

.

"Will he _ever_ change?" Arty shook his head as they made it out onto the deck and into the sunlight.

"He hasn't in the past ten years we've known him…"

Arty realized she was right, "You may have a point there."

"Give him a few more, he'll eventually shut up." A chipper female voice said from somewhere down below.

The couple looked over the railing to find Titian and Ledning lounging on the bottom deck in the hot tub. They were relishing every minute they were living in the lap of luxury.

"What do you know…?" Ledning growled, "You've only known him for a year. I've known him for almost two _decades_."

"I try to get a good read on people. Besides, children have to learn to grow up eventually if they're gonna be in the real world."

"You obviously don't know my cousin."

"Well I-"

"Okay you guys! Have fun arguing and being lazy," Arty cut in, "We're going to the boardwalk. I'll try to win one of you a teddy bear or something."

"I'm getting one first, Umber." Curie pushed up her glasses as she shot a look at him.

He looked back in shock.

"That's what… normal… couples do… right?" Her pale face suddenly flushed red, "Not that… we're a couple… or… unless"

He laughed. He could feel his cheeks burning too, "Let's just go, okay?"

"Yes, please. Silence would be _greatly_ appreciated."

It took a lot to scare Curie, but the sudden introduction of a new voice made her jump and fall against Arty, grabbing his sleeve in her panic. Her other hand instinctively shot for her pant pocket.

"You guys are training to be Huntsmen too… try and act like it…" a boy in a dirty white shirt and torn cargo vest sat atop the roof of that covered the operations center. The tattered scarf around his neck and over his mouth made him look like a far less pale version of Zero.

"A nicer way to say that is 'please keep it down, if you don't mind' but that works, Namib," a grey haired boy was sprawled out beside his partner. His grey tie-dye and grey jeans made him seem even more bland than his monotone voice already did.

"Don't care…" Namib flopped back down.

"Right…" Curie leaned over, "Who are they again and why are they on the roof?"

Arty held up his index finger, "First, I… think they're on Team STON with Shorla and Opal," he added his middle finger, "Second… no clue. They're kinda weird."

"Huh… I guess I never really paid close enough attention to them in our combat class." Her panic subsided, she grabbed Arty's hand and began leading him down the gangplank. "Come on. Let's go have some fun, Umber."

.

For a first real date, the boardwalk on the southern rim of Vytal was the ideal place. Playing a few rounds of skeeball was all fun and well. Sharing a funnel cake put smiles on both of their faces. The only problem came when Arty tried to convince Curie to go on the ferris wheel despite her fear of heights.

She stared up at the massive steel structure. The little glass bubbles hooked along the wheel's circumference looked like they were only hanging by the bare minimum parts required to keep them attached. Her mechanical sense wasn't confident in their ability to actually take weight and movement. She wasn't going, and she was going to stand her ground, "I am _not_ going on that thing, Umber."

"C'mon, Curie. Think of the view!"

"I. Don't. Care."

"Okay then…" He walked over and grabbed her hand between his, holding it palm-up, "Why don't you touch it and see for yourself that it's safe?"

Curie looked Arty dead in the eye as he held her hand in his.

"I'll be there with you. You just gotta look out and not straight down." He smiled. She both hated and loved that stupid gap in his teeth. "I won't let you fall. Promise."

 _Okay. Play it cool, Curie…_ she pressed her hand against the side of the ferris wheel, but was careful to use the one that Arty was not holding. She sighed in relief when her mind surged with a full status report of the ride down to the last bolt, and everything seemed clear, "I… if you tell… I… okay. Just… nothing too funny…"

"Great!" He practically dragged her up the ramp. Luckily for them, the wheel was constantly in motion, making loading and unloading quick. Double luckily, there wasn't a line, so they were able to get right into one of the ride's capsules.

The doors slid shut, locking them in.

Curie knew there was no turning back when she felt them move off and away from the concrete platform and into open air with the water below.

Arty felt Curie's grip on his hands tighten the higher they got away from the water. "Hey, it's okay. Just remember what I said. Out, not down."

"Well, there's a floor in the way of looking down…" Curie shakily sat down on the bench inside the capsule. Her eyes darted around, but then finally stared out the window, "Would you… sit with me, maybe…?"

"Yeah… of course." They took a seat on the bench, cutting off their view to the water directly below them. Arty hoped that'd cure a little of Curie's anxiety. He looked out at the panoramic view with her.

The island's entire central mound raised up in front of them. The buildings immediately in front were like those of Vale's. People walked around, going on with their daily lives on the bustling island. As the capsule lifted higher still, the Perch of Amity became visible. Looking up further, the looming shadow of Amity Coliseum blotted a part of the sky, but the sunlight bouncing through the massive crystal on its underside scattered enough light to make up for the shadow the structure cast.

"It's beautiful. Isn't it?" Arty asked. For once, he didn't feel like he needed to copy a scene onto paper or a canvas. He just wanted to enjoy himself.

"Yeah…" Curie turned to Arty, "It is." She gave one of her rare smiles. For once, she didn't feel like evading a conversation to escape to her virtual haven. Even though she was more than a few stories above solid ground, she wasn't scared. She was enjoying herself.

Arty was surprised by her grip loosening, but what shocked him even more was her smile. It wasn't often he saw it in a non-cocky way. It usually appeared if she was on a win streak in a game or she was able to be a know-it-all and correct somebody. This wasn't one of those smiles. This smile was one of happiness and affection.

 _Oh god…_ he thought to himself as his heart raced.

The beams from Amity Coliseum's crystal began dancing through the glass of their capsule as they neared the top of the wheel. They began to lean in towards each other, their eyes closed.

In that moment, a million thoughts flooded Arty's mind. Despite the anxiety and struggle that he had been a part of against the Grimm Brotherhood the past year. Despite the attacks from maniacal criminals and the Creatures of Grimm, he was happy. His team was finally working as a coherent unit and were actually what he'd call 'friends'. He loved living in Vale. He loved being away from the cold drab overbearing climate of Atlas. Away from the rules and the iron fist of General Khidna Léon.

Away from the iron fist of his father.

In Vale. He was able to be himself. Not only that, but he was pushed to be something he never thought possible: a leader. He was a leader, but he looked at his teammates as equals, not subordinates like his father would have. He belonged at Beacon with his friends, and he never would have known that had he not made that horrible mistake almost a full year before.

He probably wouldn't be on the ferris-wheel with Curie had he stayed behind and been one of an endless assembly line of soldiers. She would have probably gone off with someone else. He would have probably gone off with someone else, but because he stood up and made an act of defiance towards his father and Atlas, his life had made it up to this moment.

Realizing that all at once made him the happiest he'd ever been in his entire life.

That's when their lips touched.

A bright green flash illuminated the entire capsule.

Curie yanked herself away, pinning herself against the wall of the capsule. Her eyes were wide behind her glasses. She looked down, then back to Arty, then out the window, and back to Arty. Her hands trembled, "W-What the _hell_ was that?!" her voice shook as the green afterimage that hung in her vision blotted out Arty's features.

Arty jumped back as well, leaning against the opposite side. "I… I don't know…" He felt across his chest. Nothing felt broken or injured. "Are you okay?"

"I-I don't know… I don't know what just happened… did… did my aura just flash or something…?" Curie looked at her hands. At close inspection, she could see a slight green haze around her fingers that phased in and out of existence, "Did I just… _accidentally_ manifest my aura?"

"I'm sure it's fine." He walked over and grabbed her hands, leading her back over to the bench to sit down.

"I…" her smile started to return, her hands loosening on Arty's, "Maybe I got a little too excited…"

"Yeah! I mean, we, just, um…" he tried to find the words, "Professor Carmen always said that emotions are connected to the soul, and the soul is connected to aura, and so aura's connected to emotions… yeah?" he laughed, "I'm surprised we didn't just see a lot of orange too…"

.

Pain jolted through his head. For a split second, the world seemed to disappear, only to reappear when he slammed against the hardwood floor. Roland shivered and held his head. It was a migraine like no other. He swore under his breath as his classmates turned to look at him.

"Oh my gods, are you okay?!" Dante knelt next to him and lifted his head up to get a look at him, "What happened?"

"I… I don't know… I think I just… I'm a little seasick or something…" he tried to push himself up, but his shaky hands slipped out from under him. Stars clouded his vision.

Sepia knelt down beside him. She noticed exactly what Dante probably had: Roland's pupils were almost completely dilated, and his nose was bleeding. Something about his sudden 'illness' wasn't sitting quite well for her. Despite having never seen it before… it felt familiar.

Timbre ran over to Roland, holding out a wad of paper towels for him to hold against his nose, "Has anything like this ever happened before?"

"No… it hasn't…" Roland slowly sat up with the paper towels pressed against his nose, "I think I'm gonna throw up…" he held back a gag, "Yeah… definitely gonna throw up. Think Shorla would open up a portal for that…?"

"No way in hell." Shorla said bitterly.

Opal started to get up, "Come on! Help the guy out, Shorla! How much space do you have in th-"

The boat rocked as a wave crashed against its hull. Students screamed as the world turned upside down. Wooden planks on the docks snapped when the hull of the Forté yacht slammed against it. The boat tilted, causing the occupants to slide to one side before sliding back to the middle as it corrected itself.

"Get off the boat… We need to get off the boat now," Roland struggled to stand. Pressure built inside his chest. The instinct to flee had been switched on in his brain. His vision was slowly returning to normal, though the sudden shifting wasn't helping matters in the least.

"Yeah! Agreed! Everyone get out and get to dry land!" Dante shouted, but the other students were too dazed and confused to do anything.

"You heard her! _Go!_ " Timbre shouted forcefully as she helped Roland to his feet. As everyone else ran off the ship, she stayed behind to help Roland out in case he needed help keeping his balance. "You think you can make it off?"

"Yeah…" he took Timbre's hand and finally managed to stand.

Sepia held onto his arm to lead him out with them. Dante ran behind them to the top deck. The four of them finally got to the top to find the rest of their friends grouped up on the edge of the yacht.

Boards laid splintered and cracked in the water where a section of the dock was busted up, so getting off was going to be an issue. However, this was not the most pressing issue that they all had found.

"Good morning. About time you came out. How are all of you faring on this beautiful day?" said the cloaked figure perched on one of the remaining posts that held the dock up. Her mask seemed to be the skull of a crested bird, its glowing eyes set back deep into the sockets. Captain Sanguwalker sat with her tendrils whipping around behind her while one of them painted an eight spoked wagon wheel on the side of the yacht, "It has been a good while! It's great to see you again, Roland, Timbre, Sepia, and Dante! Where is Arty, pray tell?"

A tingle of fear shot down Timbre's spine. She had been knocked out shortly after her encounter with the Grimm Brotherhood operative in the Venice mask, so she had no recollection of the fight in the warehouse. After she had come too, she was immediately filled in on everything, and Sanguwalker terrified her the most of the three agents sent after them that night. It wasn't that she was more skilled than Venice, but the fact that there was someone who rendered a member of their team utterly useless.

"You…" Roland removed himself from Timbre and Sepia. He took a step forwards to the railing without so much as flinching. The rage filling his mind felt freeing in a strange way, and the pain started to fade as he grew ever angry at the sight of Sanguwalker, "You're supposed to be in prison…"

"Well, I'm not, so that throws that idea off a little. Besides, I don't much care for tight spaces," Sanguwalker finished her painting. She stood atop the wooden pole that she had been sitting on, "Well, I must be off. Got a bit more… preparing to do." she hopped onto the solid remains of dock about six feet from the nose of the yacht.

"Hey!" Ledning, still in nothing but his swim trunks, hopped over the railing and began chasing the cloaked woman down the dock. "Get back here!"

"Right behind you!" Titian, also still in her swim wear, charged too.

"Guys! Wait!" Timbre wanted to keep everyone together. If the Grimm Brotherhood was around, their only hope to fend them off was to stay in a group. She didn't have time to dwell over the moral issue of using her Semblance. " _Come ba-_ "

Her command was cut off by another tremor shaking through the boat.

"What the hell!?" Damascus shouted, looking back at the yacht.

Opal, following her boyfriend's gaze and screamed.

Windows shattered and plexiglass began to buckle and bend as a massive white mass began wrapping its way around the boat. Bone plates seemed to move along the surface.

They had no idea what it truly was, but the bony plating was unmistakable. This was the tentacle of some massive white Grimm, and it was slowly lifting the boat out of the water.

"That's not good! That's _seriously_ not good!" Opal took Damascus' hand and ran toward the nose of the yacht. They lept over the side onto the dock and raised their arms to catch the others jumping off.

Shorla spread her arms out to create a man-sized tear in space in front of her. Another tear opened up beside Opal and Damascus, "This will be faster! Go!"

Namib and Torbern darted into the portal, followed by Saffron, Midas, and Pepper.

Cayenne grabbed Epazote's hand and ducked into the portal. She looked back to Roland, Timbre, Sepia, and Dante, "What are you guys waiting for?! Come on!"

Roland, Timbre, and Sepia all seemed to be in a daze as the giant Grimm began lifting the boat.

Dante pushed Roland into the portal and grabbed Timbre and Sepia by the arms. She pulled them into the portal with her, and Shorla followed close behind. The portal closed behind them, and all of the students were spat out next to Opal and Damascus in a neat row on the dock.

Sepia shook her head to try and get rid of the hazy feeling filling her head. She watched as the yacht was lifted clear out of the water. The massive Grimm's tentacle lobbed it across the dock and beyond their line of sight. All that she and everyone else could hear was the twisting of metal and the screams of terror that followed.

"It can't be…" Roland struggled to get to his feet, "That's… that thing isn't real…"

The tentacle slithered back into the water and disappeared. Whatever it belonged to had to have dwarfed the Minotaurus that the Beacon students fought in the Emerald Forest. It was an incomprehensibly humongous Grimm, one that seemed to match a description in one of Dante's favorite epics.

"The Maelstrom… There's nothing else that thing could be…" Dante held her hands close to her chest out of fear, "The story said that those warriors killed it. They destroyed that thing… but…"

"We thought it was an allegory, yeah…" Roland helped Timbre and Sepia up, "That's not important right now. We really need to find Arty, girls."

"Then we all need to group up with our teams… if that's the case…" Shorla held the sides of her head, "The Grimm Brotherhood are here. We need to leave this to the few Huntsman on Vytal and the Atlesian soldiers… we can help evacuate and look for wounded civilians…" one of her hands went to cover her mouth to keep from vomiting, "Are the present team leads in agreement with me…?"

"Yeah," Damascus kept his eyes trained towards the boardwalk. Screams and explosions were radiating from the area. He ran down the dock, "I'll go find the rest of DINO! You guys stay safe!"

"Team SPCE will stay t'gether and make darn sure civilians are safe!" Saffron waved her team along, "Our Semblances are good for that much, and we don't need our weapons to do that."

Epazote pointed to one of the hotels across from the marina, "We need to get our weapons first anyway. If those Grimm Brotherhood cultists are around, then we might have to fight."

"Yup, so we'll make a stop there first," Saffron lead her team down the dock, "We should all meet back up at the Perch of Amity when all's done."

"Guys…" Timbre looked towards the boardwalk. She couldn't see everything that was going on through the other boats and their sails, but she knew that was where the yacht was thrown.

' _What?'_ Sepia signed. She was frantically looking around. While the sounds of fighting rang out across the shore, it was eerily calm where they were.

"Our weapons are on the boat…"

"Great…" Roland bit his lip, "Well, it's good that the Maelstrom threw it towards where Arty is… I guess…" he looked to his sister, "Sis, do you want to-"

"I need to find Mother. She and the instructors from Haven could help tremendously. Midas, can you give me back up on the way to the eastern rim?" Dante looked to the only other person left completely alone, "We can also help evacuate the civilians to higher ground before that thing is able to head that way."

"Uh… yeah, sure. Considering my entire team kinda… ditched me." He turned to Saffron. He flashed his winning smile and winked, "You going to be okay without me, babe?"

Saffron didn't even stop walking, "Yeah, and you can tell Row-land to quit with the payments. We're done, _babe._ "

"Wait wha-"

"Saw them transfer to ya account on ya scroll. Ya left it unlocked, sweetheart," she and her team turned the corner and left without another word.

"Yeah… I warned you that she was crazy, Midas," Roland put a hand on Midas' shoulder, "If you try and use my sister as your rebound, I'll kill you. Just a heads up."

"Trust me… I think I'm done with Mistrali girls…" Midas groaned as he trudged on to catch up with Dante.

"So… weapons, Shorla?" Opal made a grabbing motion with her hands.

Portals appeared above each member of Team STON, from which each of their respective weapons fell into their hands. Shorla let her knives clatter to the planks at her feet.

"Shorla!" Timbre took a few steps towards the goth, "Are you okay?"

"I… am seriously about to vomit." Shorla leaned against one of the dock's posts, barely able to keep her balance, "Getting everyone off the boat took a lot out of me."

"Then we can find somewhere safe to rest up. Ya ARTS kids go find Art!" Opal rubbed Shorla's back in a vain attempt to help her condition, "No use in two teams bein' down an' out. Get goin'!"

"Right," Roland nodded.

.

"What's going on down there?..." Curie asked as she watched as the crowds previously enjoying the boardwalk began flooding out onto dry land, back into the city. "Everyone's running."

"Dammit!" Arty slapped the glass of their bubble. "Why is it that everytime life seems to be getting back to normal those Grimm Brotherhood freaks decide to jump back in?" He pointed to the large open plaza area in the center of the boardwalk. Someone in a familiar dark cloak was moving around the dock. Large tendrils spread from their back as they painted a symbol into the planks. It was one Arty knew all too well.

Curie wasn't scared of them. She was furious. "We have to get down there and do something. At least warn somebody."

The whole pod lurched, swinging slightly as the ride screamed to a halt.

"Oh that's not good…" Arty watched as the Grimm Brotherhood grunts were the last ones left on the entire structure, "I guess the ride operator was in the crowd, too…"

Curie's serious methodical nature melted away as her breaths became short and fast. "Umber, I can't climb down this thing."

"Okay… well, we can call everyone back on the boat. They'll get somebody to help!" He began dialing a group chat with his team, "Until then… I guess we just sit here and wait for res-"

" _UMBER!_ "

Arty looked up just in time to see the sun get blotted out by a mint green yacht flying in their direction.

The yacht slammed into the ferris wheel. The structure lurched to the side, creaking as it shook and bent. It groaned to a halt, but the top half of ferris wheel itself was sitting at a forty-five degree angle.

Curie pushed herself off the window that had become the floor of their pod. She shook from head to toe. Fear had completely overcome her. Opening her eyes, she could see twisted metal and water far below her. "We're going to die. That's it. We're going to die, Arty. We're going to die!"

Arty moved over to her as quickly as possible without compromising the integrity of the capsule. He put a hand on her, grabbing her tightly. "No we're not. We're going to get out of this. I promise."

For some reason, Arty wasn't scared. He knew he should've been, but for some odd reason, all he felt was determination and a will to fight back. Fight back against the Grimm Brotherhood. Fight back against the fear that once hindered him against them. Even now, fight back against the force of gravity itself. He had to protect the ones he cared about as well as everyone else caught in this mindless plot put in motion by some psychos trying to take over all of Remnant.

A thud came from the roof of the pod. A masked head popped up from the window facing up to the sky. She quickly went to spraying the eight spoked wheel symbol on the side of the capsule. Of all the Grimm Brotherhood operatives, it just had to be her.

"Hey! Why if it isn't little Burnie Umber! Long time, no see! What's up, man?!" yelled Oro as she finished. She raised her hydraulic battering ram and slammed it into the window, careful not to shatter her graffitti. Glass exploded into the pod, allowing Oro to slip inside, "See, I've been looking to get some points with the Commander since the last time we met, and I think that getting you and this girl into position might do the trick! Let's be civil about it this time around. 'Kay?"

Arty stood, careful to not put too much weight anywhere on the glass beneath him. He stood between Oro and Curie. "What are you maniacs doing this time? Wasn't the attack on Vale enough?" Away from Oro's sight, Arty patted his scroll against the side of his leg. _Please Curie… get the hint…_

He felt his scroll slip from his hands. He had already dialed his team, he just needed Curie to get a message to them. Time was short, so all he needed to do was stretch it.

"Vale?! Enough?!" Oro burst out laughing at the thought, "That's a good one! We play in the big leagues, bub," she held up a blinking black box, "Oh, and does this look familiar? It sure is great, especially when there's only _one_ Grimm to attract!"

She pressed her weapon against what was once the floor of the pod, "Now, let's get the real fun started. I know you've gotta be _so_ excited to see our big surprise!" the weapon hissed. The hammer slammed against the floor.

Metal exploded out of the pod. The cool sea air drifted in through both holes, and Arty and Curie caught the first glimpse of white tentacles that stretched across the boardwalk. The end of one tentacle curled up and slammed into the boardwalk like a fist. Ripples of force made the entire ferris wheel shake.

"A real legend come to life! Just how cool is that?! And it's all because of us!" Oro leapt out of the hole and onto the cross beams holding up the whole ride. The screams were like music to her ears, "Ah… I love days like these! I'll see you kids later, 'kay? I've got plenty more to do!"

"Get back here!" Arty began to run after her, but the whole ride lurched again.

"Umber…" Curie held his scroll back to him, "I messaged them. Everyone's splitting up to try to help people, but your team's coming to help us."

"That's… awesome… but… we have bigger problems." He pointed to the monster attacking the boardwalk. White tentacles were breaking the surface of the pier, occasionally destroying a stall or a smaller ride.

"Oh _dammit_!" Curie cried out. "Okay… calm down, Curie… calm down… pretend like you're on the ground." She shut her eyes tight and imagined herself sitting in her desk chair. Solid ground, not multiple stories in the air. "If we're going to do anything… we need our weapons. But we don't have access to them right now… Mine's all the way back at the hotel across the island."

A lightbulb went off in Arty's head. " _Yours_ is… but…" he looked down. Halfway up the ride, right where the wheel had bent in half, the Forté yacht had managed to stick its landing into the center of the ferris wheel. "Curie, you're not going to like this. But we need to start climbing down."

"Nuh-uh. I'm not doing that, Umber."

"Will you listen?! My team's weapons came in with our luggage. Our luggage is _on Timbre's yacht_. Timbre's yacht, is literally 100 feet away from us. If we can just get to it, we can actually fight back."

Curie processed what he was saying, looking between him, the boat, and the ocean far below them. "Okay… Let's go with that then. I just… I just need you to keep me from freaking out, okay? I have to be the worst person to be stuck with in this situation…"

"No, you're not. And besides, you're the _only_ person stuck in this situation with me. Stop thinking about what-ifs and use that gift of yours to figure out the best way to the boat."

She nodded. "Okay…" A light green pulse shot out from her hand, coursing through the metal around her. "The structure's heavily compromised. We'll have to be careful but… I think I can feel a path through the relatively undamaged brackets and spokes. You'll just have to pay close attention to what I say. One wrong step and we could…"

"Hey, stop thinking about that. We're getting through this!" He grabbed her hand, "C'mon. It's _us_ of course. Granted… we've never been in anything like this before, but I think we've both learned a lot right?"

She nodded.

"Pretend like we're back in Roland's training course," He laughed, "Just try not to shock me, okay?"

.

 _Think, Sepia. Think, Sepia. Think, Sepia…_

Sepia looked around at the six grunts that had surrounded them. Only ten more feet, and her, Roland, and Timbre would be on the boardwalk. None of them had their weapons, and the grunts seemed a lot more competent this time around.

"Any ideas, T?" Roland kept his back pressed against his other two teammate's.

"Not… really…" She had read the message just as the grunts had shown up. "But Arty and Curie need our help… And Oro's here and involved with this attack so-"

"Oro's here?!" he snarled, "First Sanguwalker, now _her_?" Roland clenched his jaw and returned his gaze to the grunts surrounding them. They all shouldered their guns, but didn't move forwards. If he was right… "Sepia, you thinkin' what I'm thinkin'?"

 _There it is…_ Sepia clapped in response.

"Good," he nodded, "T, what about Siren's Song? Think you could make them easier targets for us?"

She shook her head, "Don't think so. My Semblance didn't work on the guys back at Koruss or back home. I don't know how, but they seem to be immune or block it out somehow." She took a fighting stance, her fists up and ready, "My Semblance may be useless here, but I'm still up for a beatdown."

"When Sepia does her thing, we fight," Roland looked between the grunts. None of them spoke. None of them flinched. These guys certainly weren't the same as the ones back in Vale. They obviously knew what they were doing.

Orbs of light exploded into existence right in front of each grunt's face.

"Go!"

All three of them darted forward.

Before one grunt could even react, Sepia slammed her fist into their helmet hard enough to send a crack ripping through the front plate. She followed through with a kick to the stomach. The gun that they were holding fell, but she snatched it out of the air.

Pain ripped through her lower back, sending her crashing to the ground. She looked back to see another grunt pulling the their rifle back for another shot. Her finger squeezed the trigger of her newly obtained rifle. Three bullets was enough to take the grunt down.

Roland's fist crashed into one grunt's chest, and he caught another's ankle with his tail. He took a step back to turn his attention to the fallen grunt, but was tackled to the ground by the one that he had punched in the chest.

The grunt scrambled to get up, but Roland grabbed him by the chestpiece and threw a right hook into the guy's neck. He threw him off to face the second grunt, but he too was already sprawled out on the ground.

Sepia held up her newly-obtained rifle and waved at him before turned the gun towards Timbre's pair of grunts.

Timbre was no stranger to being shot at. It didn't matter if the bullets were aimed towards her or scattering from her own teammates. She sprinted towards the mirror-masked maniacs in front of her, occasionally ducking or skirting to the side in order to keep the spray from hitting her. She felt a few projectiles bounce off her aura, but they didn't do much to slow her down.

When she got within range, Timbre leapt, swinging her leg sideways into one of the grunts heads. They fell quickly as the heel of her boot slammed into their skull.

"Nighty-night, shorty."

She turned to find the carbine of the other grunt aimed at her. This was the first time that the new found synchronicity in Team ARTS saved her from injury. She ducked down, laying flat on the ground.

A spray of bullets bounced off of the last grunt's aura, launching him backwards and forcing him to drop his gun.

Timbre laughed and looked back, "Thanks, Sepia." Even though they hadn't said it, she was confident that Sepia would've been prepared to have her back. All she had to do was give her a clear shot.

"Great…" Roland dusted himself off, "Back to the whole 'saving Arty and Curie' thing. Looks like they've got their own set of problems," he grabbed one of the carbines and pointed at the bent ferris wheel. Shimmying across the struts towards the middle were his leader and Curie. The yacht stuck out of the middle of the ride, "How are we going to get up there?"

"I think the better question is, what are we going to do about the Grimm attacking the pier..." Timbre picked up a carbine as well. She watched the tentacles writhing across the boardwalk, "We can't take that thing on by ourselves."

"Don't need to," In Arty's absence, Roland was taking the lead. It would have been great to have their normal leader around to ease the tension, but all that mattered now was getting the job done, "Right now, we focus on saving them and anyone else stuck there. I don't know what the Grimm Brotherhood's planning, but they're going to have to wait until after we know people are safe."

"Since when were you such a humanitarian?" Timbre asked as she and Sepia ran alongside him.

"Let me ask you this, then. Would you rather take on the Grimm Brotherhood, or what's possibly an ancient monster that took eight of Remnant's greatest warriors to take down?" Roland held the carbine at the ready on their way towards the ferris wheel.

"Fair point…" Timbre looked up and watched Curie and Arty get closer to the boat, "I just hope we can get a plan together when we all meet up."

.

"Get it together, Curie! We're so close!" Arty shouted. He was suddenly being brought back to Roland's battlefield at the beginning of the semester. He had said that to make Curie more comfortable, but now, it made _him_ uncomfortable. He remembered how much he lacked a sense of balance, and now it could end up costing him his life. "Where next?!"

Curie had her eyes shut tight, relying on her hands, feet, Semblance, and Arty's voice to guide her. "Um… uh… the bar jutting out a little underneath you and to the left. Don't step on that one bracket next to it though! It could potentially snap and cause this bar we're currently on to snap off."

"Duly noted…"

After a few more careful steps and jumps, they landed on the deck of the ship.

"Oh my god… thank you…" Curie said as she dropped to the ground to hug the planks.

"Don't get too comfortable, this thing still looks ready to fall at any second." Arty ran inside. What was a comfortable luxury only a few hours before had become a disorienting mess. The whole world seemed tilted, gravity taking him towards the wall instead of down towards the floor. Out the back deck, all he could see was bent metal pipes and splintering wood. "I just need to grab my team's weapons!" He ran downstairs to the sleeping quarters, which looked even more of a mess as the decorations and their luggage were thrown all over the place. Arty found his backpack first, hiding under the sheets and the mattress of the bed he had claimed. Palette laid snugly inside, its grip hanging out of the pocket. Thankfully, the paintballs hadn't gone off when the boat collided with the ferris wheel. If that had happened… _No_. _Stop thinking like that_. _Focus on what's actually happening, not what could have happened. You're lucky to still be here, so use the opportunity_.

Running through the rest of the hall, he found Timbre's gloves in her luggage as well as a couple spare spools of wire. Sepia's and Roland's weapons were kept close together. For that, he was slightly thankful that they had actually been dating. Every minute on the boat was another minute closer to it dislodging and falling to the pier below.

After shoving Timbre's gloves and one of Sepia's guns into his bag along with some of Roland's grenades and spare ammo, Arty returned to the top deck to regroup with Curie. He awkwardly latched Writer's Block to his forearm. It was too big to fit in the bag and he needed to keep it on him to get to Roland when they all reconvened. He held out Sepia's other gun to Curie. "Here."

She looked at him dumbfounded as she took the camera-gun. "What the hell do you want me to do with _this?_ "

"If we get down there and those goons are still there, you need to be able to fight back. I'm sure Sepia wouldn't mind you using one of her guns if it meant keeping you alive and fending off these guys."

"Right…" With another quick pulse of her Semblance, Curie knew every screw and mechanism within the gun, including how to reload, transform it, and even how to use the built-in camera. "Okay then… so… next question. You got a plan to get down there, genius?"

"I do, but I don't think you're gonna like it." He unhooked a vial of paintballs from his belt.

Curie eyed the solid white paintballs. "No way, Umber. You told me about this. I am _not_ going to put this stuff on my shoes and jump hoping for the best."

"You have another idea?"

Curie looked down to the pier and writhing tentacles below. The sides of her vision blurred. "No. I can't."

"Close your eyes and just hold on to me then. It works, you just gotta stay calm and keep your feet aimed at the ground."

Hesitantly, she took two of the paintballs. "You. Are. Insane. Umber."

.

"Well then…" Roland watched as Curie held onto Arty like a scared child to their mother from behind a funnel cake stand. They floated down like little neon butterflies through the chaos and screaming around them. The boardwalk shook with every strike by the Maelstrom, but at least the area was mostly evacuated.

' _He's a real fan of Air Dust, isn't he?'_ Sepia shut her eyes to send an orb up to them, ' _Wait. Curie has Avant… If she gets a single fingerprint on my film, I swear…'_

"Think we have bigger problems than that, Sepia…" Timbre vaulted over the turnstile into the pier, ready to meet up with Arty and Curie to make sure they were safe. They all needed to get clear of the rampaging beast, but she wasn't going to leave them to fend for themselves.

Sepia nodded. She created an orb right in front of Arty and Curie to open a small line of communication between her and them. The orb jerked towards where she, Timbre, and Roland all were in hopes that they would catch what she was telling them to do.

"Gotcha." Arty nodded towards the orb as he followed it down.

Timbre's eyes widened, "Arty! Watch out!"

Arty turned just in time to redirect his and Curie's trajectory to avoid being smacked out of the sky by one of the large tentacles moving through the air towards them. Curie shouted as they jerked around. Her eyes were shut tight, so she didn't see anything.

She could, however, hear the sound of something large slamming directly into the damaged ferris wheel.

The ferris wheel began to tilt even further. The supports at the base snapped. The temperature dropped. Snowflakes exploded outwards in a miniature blizzard.

A pillar of ice held the ferris wheel and its occupants up, saving every innocent civilian trapped on board. Atlesian soldiers rushed in behind Roland, Timbre, and Sepia with their guns at the ready. Leading the charge was a soldier in far less armor than the other Atlesians, but his lack of a weapon indicated that he was there only to give orders.

"Of course you children just _had_ to be involved…" Lieutenant General Tsuga Kauri glowered at the students, "Why did you all run _towards_ the giant Grimm?"

"Um, our leader was in danger and we wanted to group up?" Roland's eyes followed Arty and Curie as they landed just beside them, "And we were trying to do, you know, our job. Civilians are in danger."

"Yes, civilians are in danger, which is why civilians like _you_ should get back into the city so _we_ can handle this." Tsuga turned to his soldiers, "Squad A, search the pier and bring anybody you find to safety. Restrain any members of the Grimm Brotherhood you come across. Squad B, cover Squad A and keep the monster from attacking. Work quickly and swiftly, and if any more meddling students appear," he glared back to Team ARTS and Curie, "tell them that this attack is too much for them to handle and that they should just return to the city and help people there instead of trying to be heroes. This is the _exact_ reason the headmasters agreed to increase military presence on Vytal."

Roland really hoped that Tsuga made the mistake of walking past him with some important documents in hand, but now was not the time to pick a fight, "Right… Arty, buddy, mind taking lead and getting us away from here?"

' _And give me back my guns before Curie gets nacho dust on my film,'_ Sepia glared at the gun in Curie's hands.

"Um… guessing you're wanting this..." She handed the gun to its owner. She was a lot calmer now to be on solid ground, but her knees were still a little wobbly. Curie turned and saluted to Lieutenant General Tsuga Kauri. "Yes sir. We'll be retreating inland immediately as per your orders."

' _You mean you are… we're not under his jurisdiction…'_ Sepia signed, but her words fell on blind eyes, ' _Right… you don't know sign language…'_

"Let's just get out of here…" Roland grumbled, then shot a look to Arty.

"Yeah… let's go back and find everyone. Make sure they're safe." The entire time, he glared at the man that got his dad's position because of him. What would Arty have done had it been Tuscan standing before him, talking to him like a piece of trash?

Talk to him like a piece of trash like he always did.

Arty took Curie's hand and began leading the group back into the city. After nearly dying trying to climb down the ferris wheel and grabbing weapons to prepare for a fight, they were all being told to back off, but it was obvious the Grimm Brotherhood was targeting them yet again.

"Why is it always us?" he muttered as he passed out everyone's weapons. The weight of all of them was really taking its toll on him. Ammo he could carry no problem. A fifty-pound typewriter, grenades, _and_ an extra gun? Not so much.

Timbre looked to her leader, "What do you mean, Arty?"

"The Grimm Brotherhood's clearly interested in us for more than us hurting their egos. It was one thing when they were after us in Vale before prom, but they're here in Vytal. How did they get this… thing to be here? A Grimm hasn't survived on Vytal in the 100 years it's been a settlement, but they somehow did it. They're taking this fairytale too far."

Roland stopped dead in his tracks, "Then let's settle this," he looked around to his team, "If they're about us, then give them us. We can put an end to this if we're the reason they're attacking."

"Lieutenant Kauri told us to back off, Roland." Timbre spoke up. She shrugged her shoulders. "We've done all we can. Can't we leave this to more capable people?"

"Curie can go back to her team. She's the one that will get into the most trouble for disobeying orders," Roland jabbed a thumb back at the Maelstrom and the Atlesian soldiers shooting at it, "Listen, we know that we're somehow connected to this. We're a part of this, so we can throw a monkey wrench into their plan. Atlas can't. At the very least, we can get more information if they don't kill us, and it'll be hard for them to kidnap us in broad daylight."

"You'd think it'd be hard to sick a giant Grimm on humanity's only sanctuary from them, but guess what?..." Arty too looked back to the pier, "I agree… we're connected somehow, but I think Timbre's right. I want answers. I want to know why this is all happening, but we're just kids. We can't be much help if we're in over our heads. I mean… think about it. Last semester… we only beat the Trex once Oro left. Had we had to fight her much longer, we would've lost. Then there was the attack on the city. We would've been taken away had Vincentas and Team RYAL not shown up. And then prom was just a ploy for… god knows what reason. What I'm saying is, we're not ready for this, and I'm ready to accept that. If we fight, it's because we have to. We can't just jump into a fight where we're overpowered and will more than likely just get in the way. The Atlesian military may be a bunch of strict try-hards, but you know what? They get the job done… even if it's not done well. You saw what they did to keep the ferris wheel from falling into the ocean." He sighed, "Let's just leave this to Atlas and the Huntsmen, Roland. Who knows, maybe they'll find the answers we want."

"No." Roland began clacking away at Writer's Block, "I'm not going to stand around."

' _I wanna fight too, but maybe Arty's right… We can figure this out later, Roland. Listen, I can't deal with you getting hurt again like last time…'_ Sepia bit her lip. Every muscle in her body was telling her to fight, but her brain was telling her to follow orders. Following orders would keep them safe. Everything would be handled.

"I said no." Roland finished typing out ten feet of paper in record speed. His fingers were throbbing, but it was worth the outcome. He sliced off the paper and looped one end around his belt. The sheet of paper came to life. It writhed through the air like one of the Maelstrom's tentacles, but it was more than that. It was the way that CiCi Oscura fought, "I'm not willing to let civilians get hurt because we didn't take a chance to stop this. I'm gonna fight, and I _know_ that's what would make Mom proud."

Timbre felt her heart sink as he parroted the advice she had given him the day before. She had to do something. Say something. "Roland… what if you get hurt or get yourself killed?"

"Then I put my neck out there for innocent people. I acted like a Huntsman," those last five words burned on their way past his lips, but it made him think of something, "If we're training to be Huntsmen and Huntresses, then we _are_ Huntsmen and Huntresses. We have to help these people if we want to keep that title. Timbre's mom knew that, Sepia's parents knew that, and my mom knew that, so I don't care what happens to me," the end of the trail of paper narrowed into a sharp point, "I'm going to do my job with or without you." he began stomping off towards the marina, hopping down onto the beach below to get by any soldiers that might try and stop him.

Sepia's guns felt heavy in her hands. Indy and Ripley both died when they tried to complete their final mission, but it wasn't something that pained her much anymore. They died with the purpose of protecting people.

 _Okay. I'm not letting you go alone,_ she sprinted towards Roland and leaped over the dividing wall onto the beach. She held her guns at the ready as they walked on to face what they had to.

"Roland! Sepia!" Arty shouted after his teammates. He began running his hands over his head, nearly pulling his hair out. "Oh god… they're going to get themselves killed. Oro's out there."

"So is Sanguwalker, and there's no telling who else." Timbre wanted to yell for them to come back, but she was so shaken and confused, there wasn't any hope of Siren Song being strong enough to work at this distance, and she didn't want to piss Roland off any more. "What do we do?..."

"Dammit!" Arty shouted, "Look!" Down the wall below them, a dark figure in a trench coat and scarf began walking calmly out from under the damaged boardwalk in the direction Roland and Sepia were heading in. He couldn't see the detail, but he did catch the white and red glint of a Grimm mask.

"Son of a…"

"We have to go. They're in trouble." Arty prepared to lunge over the wall to the beach below, "Curie, tell your team where you are and stay close to the soldiers."

Curie's eyes widened, "But Arty, I'm not just going to let you go-"

"I have to," Arty dug his heels into the concrete, "I'm not letting my team get hurt again."

Timbre cut in, "What if it's not one we've already faced and that's somebody completely different?..."

He stopped himself.

"What if it's one of the Lieutenants that Roland mentioned. Named after the other Grimm from that story? If people like Oro and Venice are lower-tier, what do you think their bosses can do?"

Arty felt fear start to sink in, but he pushed through it. "It doesn't matter. They're down there with Roland and Sepia. I'm not going to just sit up here and watch. I told myself we weren't going to fight unless we had to, and they just made it to where we have to."

Before Timbre or Curie could say anything else, Arty jumped.

"Dammit… _Dammit!_ " Timbre cursed. "Curie. Go find your team…" After a few more confused seconds of deciding what to do, Timbre went to join her team.

"Arty! Timbre!" Curie shouted after them as they fell to the sand below. She was stuck, but she knew that Timbre was right. She had to go find Midas, Titian, and Ledning. She turned and ran down the street, up the hill towards the Perch of Amity.

.

The figure in the black coat kept walking as if they were on any normal stroll on the beach, completely ignoring the chaos surrounding them.

Lieutenant Hulud's smile grew underneath her mask.


	51. V2Ch23: Divine Right

For months, she was looking forward to meeting the kids. She knew so much about their struggles, their families, their fears… they felt like her own children, especially Ms. Sepia Hughes. Being from Vacuo herself, Lieutenant Hulud knew quite a bit about her fellow Vacuan.

"Burne, Timbre, it's unwise to think that I can so easily be surprised. In fact, I only know of two people in this world who could _actually_ surprise me," Hulud kept her eyes locked onto Roland and Sepia's backs. At the sound of her hollowed and staticy voice, they turned around to face her and her bony mask. Rows of teeth lined the four bone flaps that made up most of her mask, and the molten core that was usually in a Grimm's eyes resided in the exact center of the flaps, "But it does look like I managed to surprise you two."

Arty wasn't expecting their opponent's senses to be so good. He had to play it cool. He couldn't show fear for his team's sake. "It doesn't matter, you're still surrounded… whoever you are!" The voice was feminine and electronically distorted, but it definitely didn't belong to Oro, Sanguwalker, or Venice.

"Timbre was right to assume that I was one of the four that dear Roland mentioned. You all may call me Hulud, if you so please," she took a step back to avoid the giant paper arrowhead that came down where her feet once were, "Or you can make an attempt on my life. Whatever works."

Rage seared in Roland's eyes as the paper tendril retracted, "There's no point in talking," it cut through the air again like a scorpion's tail, narrowly missing Hulud's face.

Hulud narrowed her gaze behind her mask, "I guess I have to assume that I won't be able to take you four in willingly."

"You better believe it!" Timbre shouted, her fists up and ready. There wasn't any point in avoiding a fight. The only thing left to do was jump right into it.

"Then I have no other choice than to incapacitate all of you," Hulud whipped around. She pulled out something that strapped to her back under her trench coat. What seemed to be a black box unfolded into a six-foot long polearm with a rectangular guillotine blade at the end. The blade shined like polished silver as it cut through the air towards Timbre.

It buckled to a stop midair, having been caught by the trail of paper that wrapped around the handle.

"Get back, T!" Roland shouted as the paper yanked the weapon back to give Timbre some time to get away.

Timbre lunged backwards to regroup with Arty a little further away. "Arty… this is-"

"One of their Lieutenants… I know…"

"So what are we gonna do?"

Arty watched as Roland let go of Hulud's weapon and continued trying to get a hit in, "I'm… honestly not sure, but we're already in this and there's no turning back. I can only imagine what somebody like her can do if people like Oro and Trex are beneath her."

"Well. Don't just stand there. We can't leave Roland to fight her alone!" Timbre drew wires, longer than normal, and began charging towards Hulud. She swung for her exposed side. With Roland's attacks being blocked by the polearm, there was no way she could dodge the attack.

Shadowy haze collected in front of Timbre, and from it came Lieutenant Hulud with her weapon reared back behind her head. The guillotine blade slid down along the polearm to the middle of the weapon. It was positioned just so that it would come down right on Timbre's head.

Timbre stumbled. The blade cut the air right in front of her nose as she fell backwards, landing in the sand. "What the-?!" She pushed herself back with her hands and feet, struggling to find the opportunity to stand up.

Two Huluds stood on the beach now. One stood idly by, and the other raised her weapon again.

"I kept telling my superior that one of us Lieutenants should have been there to visit you in the Emerald Forest, but instead she just had to make me send Oro," Hulud's voice echoed through the other copy of her, "How did you kids like her, by the way? I trained her myself."

One of the Huluds jumped towards Roland and Sepia, bringing her weapon down between them. When Sepia opened fire on her, she didn't even flinch. The bullets just grazed off of her coat and headscarf. The same happened when Roland tried to stab her from the side.

Whatever Hulud had created from the shadows stepped back and lunged with the blade shifted to one end of the polearm's shaft. Her blade missed Arty's arm by mere inches when he jumped to the side.

Arty tried to process the situation. Obviously this was the work of a Semblance, but what exactly the Semblance _did_ , he still wasn't sure. There were so many possibilities, each one more dangerous than the last. "Which one's the real one?!" He aimed his gun at the Hulud walking towards him and Timbre. He could see Sepia and Roland exchanging and blocking attacks from the other.

"I think a better question right now would be, are they both just as real?" Timbre, back on her feet, was ready for an attack. She swung a wire, aiming for their Hulud's neck. _If this is just an illusion, than this should go right through-_

Hulud ducked under the wire and rushed them, blade out and ready to swing.

"Timbre watch out!" Arty ran up. Even running at full speed, he'd just manage to meet Timbre the same time Hulud would. Whether or not he could stop the blade from cutting through her aura was a different story.

As his boots slammed into the sand, he flipped Palette into its blunt form. He grabbed Timbre by the shoulder and shoved her to the side, rearing the bat back. "Get away from her!" He swung just as the blade of the polearm came closer to his head.

Neither hit connected.

Arty was sure the blade had come right at his head, and he was just as sure that his bat connected with Hulud's body, but there was no damage. No recoil. "What the-" He turned back to see Hulud standing behind him. She was motionless.

"So they _are_ illusions…" Timbre griped as she pulled herself to her feet. She now had a dusting of sand over her whole body.

"But that means that the one Sepia and Roland are fighting is the real one. Their attacks actually _hit_ each other."

"So then we just need to keep an eye on the real one then?"

"Exactly. So the idea's to rush the real one. I'd like to think all four of us together can wear her down enough. We've gotten a little better since we fought Oro. Not to mention how there's literally only one of her, so we don't have to worry about being overpowered like in the warehouse." He turned to Timbre, "Ready to rush in and actually start dealing damage?"

She smirked, "You bet I am."

Feeling a rush of confidence from getting one step closer to understanding Hulud and beating her, Timbre and Arty rushed over to the rest of their team with determined grins on their faces.

Hulud's blade rattled as it struck hardened ink and paper. Roland's paper tendril batted the guillotine blade away.

His teeth ground together as the reality of what was happening sank in. Whereas they might have been able to take Oro in a four versus one situation, Hulud did not seem like Oro. Not in the slightest. She didn't seem to be stronger, but she definitely seemed to have more tricks up her sleeve. His tail straightened out so he could keep his head lower.

Sepia darted towards Hulud with her guns raised. She held the triggers down, sending bullet after bullet into her opponent. If she was lucky, she might hit a chink in her armor. Her feet left the ground as soon as Hulud turned to face her, and her heels came down into the small of Hulud's back.

The first show of pain from Hulud came in the form of a quiet 'agh!'. She felt bullets slamming against the back of her mask, making her brain rattle around inside her skull. The blade of her weapon slid to the middle, and she pushed the whole polearm back behind her head to dislodge her attacker.

Sepia fell back into the sand just in time to avoid the weapon, or so she thought. Crimson red wet the sand beside her. A steady stream of blood came from the gash on her upper arm. Tan shimmered around her body, but then recondensed and faded around her. She could feel that her aura was still intact. While Oro's weapon broke aura, it seemed that Hulud's simply cut through it.

Having dealt with Sepia for the moment, Hulud turned her attention to Roland. Her weapon was held against her hip as if she was going in for a stab, but then she slammed it backwards. The end of the polearm slammed into Arty's gut as he tried to rush her from behind, then swept to the side to throw him down into the sand.

"Arty! Sepia!" Timbre shouted as anger flooded through her. She swung a wire, but Hulud caught it in her hand.

"Foolish children." The air rippled around Hulud as a copy appeared to either side of her. She yanked on Timbre's wire, pulling her through the air towards her. There wasn't time to clip the wire. A heavily armored boot connected with Timbre's face, sending her to the ground.

Timbre's vision doubled over itself while she tried to look back up at their opponent.

"Learn when to kneel before your superiors. I'd rather take you all to Commander Maelstrom in one piece." The blades of Hulud and her copy's weapons began to slide up and down repeatedly. "But if I have to take off a couple of your arms or legs… or a tail, then I'll be glad to."

"You sound like you'd get along with Shirley…" Roland's paper tendril shot towards what he believed was the real Hulud. Just when she went to block it, he ran straight under the guillotine blade to drive his fist into her stomach.

Metallic ringing drilled into his ears. His fist felt white hot. Whatever armor Hulud had on underneath her coat was serving to be an issue, but…

His tendril whipped around to go for a strike on her back, but she kicked him away before he could land a strike. He slid against the sand before coming to a stop just short of the edge of the water.

"You _all_ need to learn when to kneel…" Hulud readied her weapon, "As I said, I would rather take you all back in one piece, but I should make it very clear that I would not mind streamlining this whole operation…" she went to throw the weapon down on Roland's leg before he could get up.

 _No!_ Sepia's whips shot out and wrapped around Hulud's ankle. She yanked hard, causing Hulud to stumble back.

"You're all making this far more difficult than it must be…" Hulud growled.

"Well, maybe that's just who we are, lady." Arty pushed himself back to his feet. "We seem to make a habit of making things harder. Not just for us, but everyone else, too." He pulled a vial of paintballs from his belt, glowing red and yellow, and poured some out into the sand. He crunched them underneath his boots.

"Arty! You can't be serious!" Timbre shouted as the corporeal Hulud stepped closer to her.

"Usually not, but right now," He pulled another vial, this one full of swirling white and blue paintballs. "I don't really have a choice, do I?"

"So the little Dust Devil decides to pull out all the stops for me. How flattering." Hulud drew her weapon back, ready for whatever Arty was planning. The two other Hulud's did the same, ignoring the rest of his team.

 _Maybe this will give them a chance to attack. If I can just keep her distracted_.

Roland was catching onto Arty's distraction, "Hey, Sepia," he started to pull himself up, "Hot potato," a live Fire Dust and ink grenade flew over to her.

 _Nice,_ Sepia grinned. She whistled and lobbed the grenade at Hulud.

It exploded against the raised blade of Hulud's weapon, not so much as singing her coat. Flames surrounded her, burning on the sand around the trio of figures. "You insolent little-"

With a loud bang similar to that of a shotgun blast, Arty launched himself through the flames. Seeing the grenade explode against one of the Hulud's blades told him which one was the real one. As he flew through the air, he steered himself towards the real Hulud, ignoring the doubles surrounding her. When his bat connected with her shoulder and released a loud blast of cold icy air.

Timbre watched as the other two Huluds disappeared.

Arty could feel the flames licking his back and his legs were tingling from the propulsion the Nova Dust had given him. It was a rush. "Back with Oro, this stuff was only in the prototype phase. We didn't even know if it would work, but I guess after blowing up your lackies' little lizard," He looked at the glowing eye in the center of Hulud's mask and gave a cocky grin. It was the closest he was going to get to looking her in the eyes. "I bet it's safe to say I know how to use it now."

Hulud snarled and raised her blade.

Arty caught it with his bat.

They were stuck pushing their weapons against each other.

"You little brats may have your tricks, but they can only work for so long before you run out." The blade of the weapon slid down the length of the staff, dragging Arty towards the ground. As his head flew forward, Hulud swung hers forwards forcefully to strike Arty with the teeth of her mask.

Arty stumbled back, but he wasn't ready to give up. "Well, let me know when you think we've run out, so I'll know when I need to make some new ones!" The bat shifted to its normal paintball gun form. Arty stomped on the ground, launching himself up into the air high above the burning circle of beach.

Hulud covered her masked face as a shower of paintballs rained down on her. Despite the heat of the fire and tropical weather, everything was showered in a thick snowy mist as the paintballs exploded.

"Roland! Now!" Arty shouted from up above.

"On it!" Roland's tendril shot through the Rime Dust fog and slammed into the small of Hulud's back, just as Sepia had done. He threw a fist into her spine before she could even turn to face him. Pain ripped through both of them, but Roland drove his fist home in spite of it.

Hulud slid forward with her weapon in one hand. She huffed, "So you all have gotten better, haven't you…?" she collapsed her weapon behind her back and raised her fists, "Fine, then…"

Roland went in for another strike, but the air was forced out of him. Hulud's fist dug into his side. He tried to recover from the blow. It didn't help that she drove her knee up into his gut.

The world around him felt hazy. He could barely make out Hulud's fist sailing towards his skull.

Paper collapsed around Hulud's arm, yanking her to the side. His focus returned just in time to throw Hulud towards the waterline. Roland stomped towards her, "They might fight reasonably fair, but I don't," his tendril shot down against her leg just as she tried to do to him.

"Oh, aren't you just a rebel…?" Hulud brought her arms and legs in close to herself to avoid the strike. Though, she didn't realize that her opponent was already diving on top of her until it was too late. A typewriter slammed against her mask, sending a hairline fracture along one of the toothy flaps. It came down again, knocking teeth off. White triangles fell to the snow-covered sand. The typewriter came down again, but her fingers curled around the reel of paper attached.

His stomach felt like it was going to implode as both of her boots slammed into it. Once again, she sent Roland sliding to a stop between Timbre and Sepia, but this time he was trembling as pain wracked through his system. Yellow arcs pulsed around the soles of her boots.

"That actually kind of hurt…" Hulud stood up and dusted snow from her shoulders, "I'll have to thank Koloss for adding a Lightning Dust battery the soles of my boots…"

After making a somewhat hard landing in the sand, Arty grouped back up with Timbre and Sepia. "So what was that about tricks?"

Hulud humphed. "I took your advice and used a new one." Her feet crunched snow into the sand as she made a casual stroll towards them. "Now, if we're done playing."

As she spoke, it sounded like her voice was being layered on top of itself. Over and over it built up until it reached an almost deafening level. Team ARTS watched as one, two, four... eight... sixteen...

"That's way too many to count…" Timbre muttered as she watched the army of Huluds walking towards them.

Arty gritted his teeth. One or two of the illusionary clones were easy to deal with when it was obvious only one Hulud was attacking, but now… there were too many to tell which was the original.

They couldn't risk getting hit by any of them.

They all drew their polearms out.

"So no one kept their eyes on the real one…?" Roland stumbled up to stand with the rest of his team, "Have a plan, Arty?"

"We need to find the real one, but I don't know how we're going to manage that. I would say I could mark the fake ones, but you can't physically touch the illusionary ones."

"What about the snow?" Timbre spoke up, "Wouldn't the snow from your Rime Dust only appear on the real one?"

Arty shook his head, "No, look at the masks. Roland broke some of the teeth on the real Hulud's mask." He pointed to the army, "See how _all_ of them have broken parts? I think any physical change we make to the _real_ one reflects on _all_ of them."

"Like a mirror…" Roland observed.

"Exactly. You can't change a reflection to look different than the thing it's reflecting… unless it's like, a funhouse mirror or something."

His team glared at him.

"Is now _really_ the time to think about things like that, Arty?..." Timbre asked as she drew her wires. For all the times for her leader's ADHD to kick in, it just had to be when they were facing yet another absolute maniac.

"Sorry… sorry… but my point still stands."

"Then we go for disruption?" Roland's tendril retracted, "Swing at everything and hope something hits?"

Sepia fired a barrage of bullets into the army of Huluds, but all she heard was the striking of sand behind them. She ducked as one swung its blade at her. It still managed to phase through her shoulder, but at least it wasn't the real Hulud.

"You don't think you could convince her to turn it all off, do you, T?" Roland whipped his weapon through the crowd, but nothing hit.

Timbre shook her head. "Like I said before. I doubt it'll work on her. They know how to block my Semblance somehow."

"Great… Wouldn't happen to have a sample of Galactic Dust, would you Arty?" Roland raised his weapon to strike again.

"We can't risk setting it off here. It'll probably kill all of us including Hulud..." the vials of swirling red, yellow, and violet Dust in his backpack felt heavy as he thought about what might happen, "It's worse than Nova Dust."

The army of Huluds began closing in around Team ARTS. They formed an open circle around them to cut off any chance of escape. If they tried to run, then Hulud wouldn't have any trouble nabbing them as they tried to pass through the crowd.

"Give up, kids. You couldn't handle Oro, Sanguwalker, Trex, or Venice. What makes you think that you can defeat me?" she scoffed, "No one knows where you kids are, has the time to even save all of you, or even _wants_ to. Who wants a useless boy who can't even tell the difference between Dust and regular paint? Or the disgusting Faunus who couldn't even save his disgusting Faunus mother. Let's not forget the girl who let all those civilians in Koruss die! Or the director who hanged herself because of her own lack of attentiveness."

The four of them stood there. Once again, the mistakes of their pasts were being brought up and shoved into their faces.

"You really think that's going to work on us?" Timbre spoke up, fierce determination glowing in her eyes. " _You_ were the ones that killed people at Koruss. _You_ killed CiCi Oscura. Arty and Sepia made mistakes, yeah, but you can't keep beating us down with what brought us here in the first place!" Timbre released lengths of wire, only these were much longer than her usual melee-length. She was angry and tired of dealing with this woman. "Guys… duck."

Without question, her teammates dove to the sand.

Timbre began to spin in place. The coarse grain of the sand made it much easier than if she were on solid ground. As she spun, more and more wire came out from her gloves. A whirlwind of silver cords slashed through the crowd of Huluds. Some tried to duck, and that was fine with Timbre. She didn't care about hitting the fakes. She just wanted to find the real one.

The wires extended further and further outwards, continuing to cut through the crowd.

"Where are you!? _Show yourself_!" Timbre shouted with all of her might, hoping that there was a slight chance that Hulud would be the one Grimm Brotherhood operative that wasn't somehow immune to Siren's Song.

Timbre's wire went slack. One of the Huluds stood with her guillotine blade held close to her chest. Frayed wires fell on the ground behind her, "How clever," she ducked back into the crowd to hide again, but her movements made her stand out in the crowd.

 _Nice job, T,_ Sepia opened fire on Hulud and shut her eyes. Three of her orbs appeared well above their target like drones, and they followed her movements precisely.

One of the illusionary Huluds shot out of the crowd, but none of Team ARTS even flinched.

"I'm gonna need some covering fire this time," Roland yanked the length of paper off of his belt. It condensed into a spear with a massive triangular blade on the end, "And I wouldn't mind having Timbre with me."

Timbre smirked, "I'm guessing you have a plan then?"

"I'm all ears." Arty grinned despite the odds against them.

"Hey, I don't want to steal your thunder, but I have a bit of an idea."

"Like I had any thunder to start with?" Arty shot back as he swept his gun around in front of him and keeping his eyes trained on Sepia's orbs.

"I said I was going to fight like Mom," he leveled his spear on the real Hulud, "My spear's not fully formed, and a blade's gonna suit me better. I'm gonna get in close and form it into a blade. You keep shooting, Arty. Get as much Dust paint out there as you can, and Timbre can spread it out. Sepia, you mark out an area with your whips around me, T, and Hulud. Spread this out along the border," he tossed a plastic ball of red ink to Sepia, "Timbre and I are gonna use Libretto, and Arty and Sepia go for Concept Art. Get as much Dust paint on the field, Sepia activates it, and Timbre and I can handle the rest."

Sepia nodded in agreement, her smile wide. _Keeping me and Arty at a range and keeping you two out in front… You're actually thinking with your brain for once!_ she smashed the Fire Dust ink against her reels of film. Ruining them was a small price to pay to actually come out on top.

Arty gave him a thumbs up, "I may be better at thinking on my feet, but you're _much_ better at actual plans, Roland."

"Don't give him _that_ much credit, Painter. That plan kinda came out on the fly." Timbre giggled. "I'm kidding, Roland. Let's just go make sure it actually works so we can be done with this psycho."

Hulud jumped out of the crowd of copies to get some relief from Sepia's bulletstorm, "What are you kids waiting for? Where's that cocky bravado you had a few minutes ago?"

"Ready?" Roland crouched low with his spear at the ready.

Sepia whistled in response.

"Ready," Timbre and Arty agreed in unison.

Roland shot forward with his spear pointed at Hulud. He closed in, ready for her to block his attack. His spear collapsed against her blade, then reformed into a curved blade as he slid underneath her. The edge of the blade slashed at her side while he slid by, "T!"

"Right!" Timbre jumped over Roland, ready to bring down wires on Hulud's head.

Ignoring Roland for a moment, Hulud raised her polearm above her, the blade in position to slice the wires as they were brought down.

Timbre smiled as she saw Hulud prepare for an attack from above. She twitched her thumbs, activating the mechanism in her gloves that clipped her wires. The wires still going for Hulud, she didn't have time to react to Timbre falling to the ground and driving a foot up straight into her gut followed quickly by a few jabs to the sternum and face. While Timbre was more used to fighting with her wires, she wasn't the melee-fighter of ARTS for her weapons alone. She shook her hands. They stung from bashing into the hard plating of Hulud's mask, but that was nothing compared to the satisfaction of seemingly getting the upper hand. With a short twist, she delivered a round-house kick to the woman's face.

Roland raised his blade as Hulud stumbled back. The one weak spot that Sepia had found and his quick brawl with Hulud taught him something about the small of her back. There wasn't any plating there so she could store her weapon when it wasn't in use.

The blade whizzed through the air, bouncing off of Hulud's aura. His foot came in next. A firm kick to her back sent her back towards Timbre, "Keep her disoriented!" he shouted to Timbre while watching Sepia.

Sepia ran in a circle around them. Film and bullets made a trail around them, giving her teammates about a boxing ring's amount of space to fight Hulud. Fire burned along the edges of the circle. She ducked to avoid the paintballs that Arty was firing into the sand at Roland and Timbre's feet.

"Think we can get some Gravity Dust?!" Roland shouted from inside the circle.

Arty was just finishing up reloading his gun with purple paintballs, "I was thinking the same thing!" With a quick twist of the lid, the paintballs were crunched up, releasing their paint and causing Palette to glow a bright violet. He ran counter to Sepia's direction, adding purple paint on top of the fire she left behind. The two of them stopped as the circles were completed and gave each other a quick high-five.

"Alright, Roland! Dust's in place!"

"Perfect!" Roland held up his blade just in time to block Hulud's.

Hulud snarled, "You kids think that-"

Timbre drove her fist into Hulud's back, "Maybe you should rethink your armor next time! It's really not great for dealing with two people at once!" she used the Gravity Dust to launch herself into the air to avoid Hulud's sliding blade.

A black cloud exploded outwards from the circle. Hulud tried to slide her blade back, but it jammed in place. She tried to push it back with her hand, but neither of her hands would budge from the polearm. Ink held her fingers down.

Hulud's eyes widened behind her mask. None of the files Lieutenant Koloss had decrypted indicated that Team ARTS was capable of actually coordinating like this, but here she was being pummeled by a bunch of schoolchildren.

Ink condensed where Timbre was going to land, and formed a makeshift ramp to get her out of the Fire Dust ring. Once she landed safely next to Arty, Roland lunged out of the black haze that still hung in the circle.

"Alright, here goes nothing," Roland clenched his fist. The Fire Dust ink and Sepia's film and bullets coiled up. All of it wrapped around Hulud from her ankles up to her shoulders, pinning her weapon against her chest. Upon falling, her bonds got a healthy coating of Gravity Dust, causing her to float helplessly off the ground.

He wiped sweat from his forehead, grinning at the captured Grimm Brotherhood Lieutenant, "Well… I can't believe that worked…" he huffed.

Hulud's coat burned bright, exposing bits of the black steel armor underneath, "No. This isn't right! Release me!" she shouted and struggled against her bonds, "You're all cowards! Release me this instant!"

Timbre jumped and cheered before high-fiving and bouncing around a little with Sepia. "We did it! We actually did it! We finally beat one of the Grimm masks!"

"And a Lieutenant no less… Funny how _you_ came here to catch _us_." Arty used some Water Dust to put out the flames around them. Now that Hulud was captured, the fire wasn't needed. "I like it when the tides turn like that. What's it called, Roland?... Dramatic irony?"

"Dramatic irony implies that we have an audience that already knew what was going to happen based on what they were already told at another point in a story. You're thinking of situational irony…" Roland took a deep breath to try and quell the headache that using Inkheart so much with just straight ink gave him, "Even though it was the wrong type, you still identified it as irony, so I'll give you half credit…"

Sepia nudged Lieutenant Hulud with her foot to get her spinning in midair, ' _Great. So we can go get patched up and group up with the others?'_ she pointed to the stream of blood running down her arm, ' _We're already going to get interrogated, so can we just report this and take cover from the Maelstrom?'_

"I'm with her on this one," Roland nodded. He lifted his scroll from his pocket, but yelped when he reached into his pocket to do so. He looked down to see blood seeping out from a wound on his side and one on his leg. It seemed that his adrenaline rush was wearing off, "Please…"

"Oooohhh… ow ow ow ow ow…" Arty fell to the ground, landing on his butt in the sand. He shoved his fingers into the rim of his boots and began rubbing at his ankles. "Okay… why'd you guys have to look at your cuts? Now I'm feeling the pain too… thanks a ton... Ow ow ow…"

"Sounds like you sprained your ankles using your Nova jump thing…" Timbre rubbed at her knuckles. Despite taking the smallest beating of the bunch, punching solid metal even _with_ aura still left a bruise. "Our auras should start healing us pretty soon, but for right now, let's try to get the floating hag to Lieutenant General Kauri, or literally _any_ person with authority on this island…"

"But before we do that…" Arty stood with some difficulty and turned his gaze back to the floating woman struggling against her restraints. "I need to see her face."

"That sounds great…" Roland slowly grinned, "We already know what Sanguwalker, Venice, and Trex look like, and they're in jail, so a Lieutenant added to this list isn't a bad idea..."

"But Roland…" Timbre spoke up, "We saw Sanguwalker back at the boat…"

Arty shook his head, "Exactly. If you guys saw Sanguwalker, then that means the ones we saw being taken away in Vale weren't the real ones. I want to see her face _before_ she gets taken in, so they can't pull a bait-and-switch on us again." He reached a hand to the bottom of Hulud's mask. "I'm tired of being tricked and manipulated. If it's going to continue, I want to know at least _one_ among those behind it."

"No you're not!"

A sound similar to a shotgun blast followed by the clanking of chain cut through the sound of gunfire already coming off the boardwalk. Black steel jaws closed around Hulud and retracted, sending her flying towards a man standing on the wall above the beach. The jaws clanked back into place on Trex's weapon, and Hulud's bonds tore away as she was released from the jaws.

"Sorry I'm late, Lieutenant. I got a little held up with some soldiers. Wanna teach these kids a lesson, or…?" Trex clanked his weapon's jaws together a few times. His mask was gleaming white. A brand new Trex skull sat on his head, replacing the one broken and shattered back in Vale.

"No. I'm done here." She began storming away down the street, "I've grown tired of these children. I still fulfilled my objective. This day will still end the way we intended, one way or another."

"Well… alright then." He peered back over the wall to Team ARTS, "And I was looking forward to pummeling you four again… Maybe next time then!" Trex waved Team ARTS off and followed Hulud.

"I knew it…" Arty muttered to himself angrily, "Team RYAL never actually caught Trex, Sanguwalker, or Venice. They caught some grunts posing as them so the real ones could get away!"

"Then we're not letting them get away again!" Roland started to run after them, but fell face first into the sand due to the pain from his injuries. He turned his head to the side and coughed out a mouthful of grit, "Timbre, you're mobile! Sepia! Your orbs!"

Sepia shut her eyes and tried to create more orbs, but her aura was waning and she was utterly exhausted, ' _If I forced one out, it wouldn't get that far. They're gone, Roland…'_

"Timbre!" Roland clawed his way up and held his side, "We've got them! They're _right_ there! Come on!"

"Roland, I can't take on both of them by myself…"

"Art-" he looked back, but Arty wasn't in any condition to go anywhere either.

Arty fell back into the sand and covered his eyes with his hands, "Right there… they were _right_ there! We had a Lieutenant! Why couldn't we just- _**AHHH!**_ " he screamed in frustration, punching a fist into the ground. Every time something went well when dealing with the Grimm Brotherhood, something like this happened. Curses passed his lips in a waterfall of profanity.

"Arty…" Timbre knelt down next to him and placed a hand on his back, "we got closer. Look, this is the best shape we've ever been in after an encounter with those guys!" She looked up to Sepia and shrugged, "Our injuries are… minimal. We may not have caught Hulud, but we're definitely getting better!"

" _ **WE HAD HER! WE FREAKING HAD HER! IT WAS OVER! BUT FREAKING TREX WITH THE BULL-"**_ Roland went on blotting out some of Timbre's words with his profuse screaming. Sepia tried to tell him that it was okay, but he didn't stop.

"Guys…" Timbre began. She didn't want to use Siren's Song to calm them down now that they knew she had that power, but she hated seeing them beat themselves up over what had just happened.

"So…" Arty pulled himself to his feet, "What now? It was dumb luck she showed up when she did. Are we done with this now that they're reporting back to… whoever?"

"I mean… what else _can_ we do, Arty?" Timbre stood up next to him. She tried to look him in the eye, but he kept staring off into the distance. "They're regrouping, so we can't get the jump on them and Atlas is probably almost done with the… Maelstrom. The best thing we can do is regroup with our friends and help get people to safe zones further inland."

Roland clenched his fists against his face. His heart slammed in his chest. His blood boiled, but he had to force down the rage and focus. Lieutenant Hulud wasn't the one putting thousands of lives on the line, "It's not even hurt…"

' _The Maelstrom?'_ Sepia pulled back from him for a moment.

"What else?" he sat up and began dusting the sand off himself, "They haven't put a dent in that thing… I don't think."

"How do you know that? You saw the firepower the military had!" Timbre tried to reason. "Let's just go help people get to safety!"

"No… he's right." Arty looked back to the boardwalk, now devoid of any signs of the military and the giant Grimm. "It's nowhere near dead…"

"And how do _you_ know that?..." Timbre didn't like the way Roland and Arty were agreeing on this. They could barely agree on things they could see with their own eyes, now here they were agreeing on something they'd have no way of knowing. "Either way… what can _we_ do about that thing?"

"I think you gave us the answer just a minute ago." The gears began turning in Arty's head. Roland had his turn at a plan, now it was his. His cocky grin slowly crept back over his face. "We need to regroup with our friends."

"Okay… again. What can _we_ do about that thing?! We're a bunch of first-years! If you don't think the military can take that thing down, then what makes you think _we_ can?!"

"I don't know, but… I know that we can with a little help," Roland looked down at his wounds, "We need to get patched up and get back out there… Keeping this fight with Lieutenant Hulud between us would probably be best. It'll give us the most wiggle room to get out and take on the Maelstrom if we're not cooped up in a room being interrogated. I think Arty's gonna agree with me that we're the only ones that can take this thing down."

"You know… about two hours ago, I would've disagreed, but now… I think you're right. I've never had a lot of confidence in the military being able to do much against a major Grimm attack, but if there's anything that I've learned in the past year..."

Memories began replaying in his head. The eight initiates taking down a full-sized Minotaurus before they even started their official training at Beacon. A ragtag group of Huntsmen in training being led by only one full-blown Huntress taking down a whole den of Kokonatsu with a nine-tailed leading the charge. A moving pod of young warriors mowing their way through a bunch of Grimm as they made their way to the signal jammer in the locker room on prom night. Three desperate and wounded teammates taking down a relatively unstudied and dangerous foreign Grimm. Most recently, the four of them being able to combat what could be assumed was one of the highest-ranking and skilled members of the Grimm Brotherhood.

"...it's that a group of Huntsmen, hell, a group of Huntsmen and Huntresses in training can do some pretty incredible things when combatting Grimm." Arty began to think about how his father had told him his art would never take him anywhere. "In the military, everyone's pretty much cookie-cutter unless you're in the special forces, and that in itself is a rare privilege. But out here… you have to play on your individual prowess in order to get anything done. If everyone's only good at one thing, then that means that they're all bad at another. That's why they're nowhere closer to killing the Maelstrom than when they started. We each have our own skills and, unless there just so happens to be an army of Huntsmen on this island, we're the best hope for taking this thing down."

"Why can't we just wait for backup? I'm sure the news has already reached the mainland and the schools are sending Huntsmen in as we speak." Timbre understood how Arty was feeling, but it all still felt impossible.

"I think what you mean is, 'why can't we just _hold it off_ until backup gets here?" Roland was starting to see the point Arty was making. Strength in numbers was something they'd learned well. "If this thing keeps going on its rampage, this island could be flattened by sundown, but if we can fight it-"

' _We can keep it under wraps and distracted until somebody with full training can come in and finish it off. Like with Sanguwalker and Trex the first time!'_ Sepia was gung-ho with everything now. Though Vincentas scared the daylights out of her, he was still a prime example of a grade-A Huntsman. ' _But,'_ she went on, ' _if we can actually manage to take it out, then that's even better!'_

"Exactly!" Arty smiled and pointed to Sepia. "That's _exactly_ what I'm talking about! Distract it, kill it, whatever, just as long as we can keep it from rampaging."

' _Yeah!'_ Sepia froze. Arty never told her that he knew sign language, but he'd been responding to her without an issue for… almost the entire semester. It was largely on and off, but it seemed that he knew far more than he did before, ' _Why didn't you tell me you learned sign language?!'_

"Wait… what…?" Roland thought for a moment. He knew that Arty was able to carry on a conversation with Sepia, but, having learned sign language himself, he didn't think anything of his responses, "Did you… actually read those books…?"

Arty chuckled, ' _Maybe… I was kind of just waiting for you guys to notice._ '

The three of them just stared at their leader's signage. All of them were dumbfounded.

"I felt a bit left out being the only one that didn't know how to. I used your books a _little_ … but it helped more to draw out each symbol and movement a few dozen times."

' _When did you do all of this?'_ Sepia signed to him.

"Umm… the week after Oro and the Trex beat us up?"

The other three still stared at him in astoundment and confusion.

.

Students and civilians alike laid in makeshift beds made from spare blankets between the pillars of the circular colonnade surrounding the Perch of Amity. Lime green and bright white columns on the south side of the building marked it as the meeting place for Vale's government. The civilians themselves weren't nearly as roughed up as the students.

"Arty!" Curie jumped over and ran around people to get the leader of Team ARTS as he and his team walked out from one of the first aid tents. She wrapped her arms around his neck and held him close, "I should have stuck around and helped… that maniac hurt you all pretty bad." She had watched as he limped coming in, and could see the cuts and wounds on the others, "Are you guys okay?"

Arty gave off a shy laugh. It was still a bit awkward having physical contact with Curie other than being punched or electrocuted. On top of that, they were sort of attacked by a flying boat and had to climb down a busted ferris wheel immediately after they shared their first kiss. "Um… we… haha… funny story actually…"

"Just some Grimm Brotherhood agent thinking they're _so_ great with their special weapon," Timbre stepped forward, "It's _really not a big deal, so don't worry about it._ "

"It's good to see that you all made it here safe," Dante approached from behind one of the columns. Her cloak was torn in the back and her hair was let down, but she looked fine for the most part, "It was dangerous to take on more of those agents on the way here. It would have been better to just run."

Curie let go of Arty and threw a right hook into his shoulder, "Dante's right. You should've known better than to put yourselves in that situation. You don't exactly have the best track record with those Grimm Brotherhood maniacs."

"Like Timbre said, it was just some cocky agent. Nothing we couldn't handle," Roland looked to Arty, "but we're not done quite yet."

Sepia nodded while throwing a few feign punches in the air.

"Got that right..." Timbre couldn't help but laugh slightly. She couldn't tell if it was from the fear of what they were about to do, the lingering effects of adrenaline, or the fact her team had managed to handle their own against a member of the Grimm Brotherhood for once. In reality, it was probably a mixture of all three.

Arty looked to the familiar faces around him. "I have a plan, but I'm going to need a few people to help out."

"No," Dante said flatly.

"Sis, come on. You don't even know what he's gonna-"

"If mother found out that I helped get you all out to fight the Maelstrom, then that might affect Mistral's standing with Atlas," she explained further, "That means that you're not going anywhere, Roland."

Roland looked back and forth between the giant white octopus attacking the coastline, Dante, and the rest of Team ARTS, "So what should we do first?"

"Well… first things first. We need to discuss the fact that you and Sepia are… injured." Arty remembered how bad Roland was in the Emerald Forest after facing Oro. He wasn't going to let him get that way again.

"Thank you!" Dante threw up her arms. "I'm glad you still have some sense of-"

Arty held a hand up to tell Dante to be quiet. "Let me finish." He looked Roland's sister in the eyes, "What I mean is, I don't want him in the _middle_ of the fight with the Maelstrom."

"Well I'm no good with water, so… we're in agreement. The only question is, what do I need to do? The civilians are evacuated," Roland nodded.

"I said that you are staying here, Rol-"

"And I am staying with my team instead. You are welcome to do the same, sis." he shot her a glare.

Dante took a deep breath. She couldn't just let him run off and get himself killed. As much as it pained her to do so, she agreed to go, "Fine. Consider me in this…"

"Good," he looked back to Arty, "What do we need to do?"

Arty smirked, "Timbre, how good is that gun on your boat?"

Timbre was caught off guard by the question, "Um… it's pretty dinky compared to the best military guns, but it's still military-grade and has killed some pretty big Grimm out at sea before, but nothing as big as the Mael-"

"Perfect." Arty began to pace as he rattled off his plan. "This is what I'm thinking. Two groups. One larger group goes out to distract the Maelstrom and lead it back to the boardwalk. If we can get it there and keep it distracted, not only will it prevent more damage to the rest of Vytal, but it will also put it right where we need it in order to kill it."

The group all looked at him like he was crazy, but still expectant of more explanation.

"I understand leading it away from the safer parts of the island," Curie tapped her thumb against her lips as she thought. If Arty was going to do something this stupid but so thought out, she was going to make sure there was as little room for error as possible, "but how is bringing it back to the boardwalk going to help us kill it?"

"That's where the smaller second group comes in. While the other group is leading and distracting the Maelstrom, they'll make their way up the ferris wheel where the Forté yacht made its crash landing. Using the artillery gun on board, they'll work at finding a weak spot and shooting at the Maelstrom while it isn't looking."

"Arty, I _just_ said the gun's military-grade." Timbre paced along with him, "It's the same kind of stuff the Atlas military has. And they have _more_ of them."

"Yeah, but they don't have this." Arty held up a few vials of paintballs.

Roland let out a chuckle, "Are you going to rely on Nova Dust for everything?"

Arty shrugged, "If it works, it works."

"Okay," Curie nodded, starting to see how the full plan could work, "but there's still a lot of factors you haven't taken into account." She began counting on her fingers, "First, you can't just lob Dust paint on an artillery shell full of _more_ Dust and expect it to fire out of the gun's barrel without everybody within twenty feet of the thing getting blown to pieces. Second, if you _do_ get said painted shells to fire, what makes you think it'll be strong enough to kill the Maelstrom? What if you just end up making it angrier? Then it's going to storm its way to the ferris wheel to go after the gunner team where they're sitting ducks on the boat over fifty feet above the water. Thirdly, and probably most importantly… how are you so sure you'll be able to lead it away from its current position?"

"You remember those black boxes that exploded in the ballroom at prom? The ones that made the high-pitched noises?"

Everyone nodded.

"I remember back in the Emerald Forest with Oro, her minions had these wand-like… things, that they used to guide the Trex to us."

"Okay… and?" Dante asked, obviously not enthused by the whole plan.

"Remember what the Grimm Brotherhood's whole agenda involves?"

"They want to find a way to control Grimm to conquer the world and bring the kingdoms to their knees, and apparently they have technology that's able to at least _lead_ Grimm around, so it seems they're making leeway," a dull monotone voice echoed towards them.

Everyone turned to find the Rhea twins walking up to them.

"Lurida? Xannie?" Timbre stammered. Arty's plan was doomed if their upperclassmen had overheard them.

Lurida was reading from a holographic screen projecting from her glove. "That was part of our summary from the night they attacked Vale. It appears that they've actually managed to perfect that tech."

"Why do you say that?" Dante was getting fed up with the ideas being tossed around.

"Because," Xannie piped up, "Did you see how particular the Maelstrom was in its initial attacks? We could see everything from our hotel up the hill here in the Vale quadrant."  
"How did you-" Roland began before being cut off.

"We grew up in an observatory. We always have ways to stargaze." Lurida crossed her arms in front of her chest.

Xannie raised her finger, "What she means is… we always have telescopes with us."

"Right… what she said. We saw them spraying that stupid wheel on the boat before the Maelstrom threw it."

"And they did the same at the pier, where it seemed to be drawn to when the military showed up." Xannie added.

Arty looked to Curie, "And Oro tagged it on our car in the ferris wheel."

"It's a classic military strategy…" Curie began fiddling with some of the wires from her hair. "Mark areas that need to be hit or have supply drops with something that can be seen from a large distance. They're using their symbol to tag areas where they need their attractors activated."

 _That must've been what Hulud was doing at the pier before we fought her…_ Timbre realized. She thought back to how violent the Maelstrom had been on its attack on the boardwalk, _She had just activated the attractor, drawing it there to destroy the whole thing before being led somewhere else..._

Lurida pulled up a few pictures of the symbol, "I'm sure that they're still painting that symbol all over the island hoping to get this thing to destroy as much as possible. They want to bring the kingdoms to their knees? What better way than to destroy the biggest testament to their peace and how far they've come since the Great War?"

' _So killing that thing is the only way to stop this. If they don't have that one Grimm to cause this catastrophe, then it's all over,'_ Sepia held her hands close to her stomach, ' _Imagine the reputation we're all going to have when this is all done! I can't wait to direct the film adaptation, but I will not allow that Scarlet Redhanson witch to play me!'_

"Listen, I don't want to be the one to say that we shouldn't help these people, but we need to think about our safety too," Dante turned on her heels, "but… if you all can promise me that we'll pull out if things get dangerous, I will keep quiet unless anyone asks me what I know."

Arty nodded, "Thanks, Dante. So…" he turned back to the group willing to listen to his plan, "First things first, we need to find who'd be willing to help out. Xannie, Lurida. Who all's around here?"

Xannie shrugged, "Most of the third and fourth-years are out helping people evacuate to safe zones and fight Grimm Brotherhood grunts here and there. If there are any up here, they're either injured or exhausted."

"So why are you guys up here?" Timbre asked meekly.

"We're second-years and are supposed to be good influences on you first-years. We're supposed to keep things calm up here for the most part." Lurida began flipping through menus on her screen. "Gavin and Yamuna went back to the hotel to check on backup coming in from Beacon. But if you guys actually have confidence in this plan… I'm willing to forgo being a good influence."

Xannie giggled, "Hey, look on the bright side. If we go out and help them, we're at least keeping an eye on them and watching their backs!"

"Great." Arty clapped his hands as he began to walk towards the extent of the colonnade. "Everyone. Spread out and find any of our friends willing to help out! We'll meet back up when we have enough to head out."


	52. V2Ch24: By Virtue of Necessity - Part 1

"I dunno about this, man. You're talking about me and Saffron fighting together. I'm down, but she's… pretty pissed…" Midas scratched the back of his head. Both of his forearms were bandaged from escorting and defending civilians, but his injuries were minor and already healing quickly thanks to his aura.

"I know. I know… but I'm not thinking about personal feelings right now." Arty moved around some of his paintballs on the a dark oak table, each supposed to represent a person in their group. After going around the evacuation area and seeing who was both able and willing to fight, their options weren't very broad. "I'm trying to think about who'd be most effective depending on which group they're in."

Three pieces of paper torn from his sketchbook were lined up in a row on the table in front of him. The first had a drawing of the Forté yacht stuck in the ferris wheel. The second had a drawing of three figures fighting on the boardwalk. The third had a drawing of a few of the massive beast's tentacles rising out of the ocean. Each designated a job that had to be done for the plan Arty had in mind.

Saffron sat opposite to Midas in the circle of students. They occupied one of the conference rooms inside the Pillars of Vytal where security had been worn thin in the evacuation efforts, and she had plopped herself down in one of the rolling chairs around the dark oak table in the center.

"Imma have ta agree with little Arty on this one, hun. Lives are at risk 'round here," her eyes darted to Roland, who was hunched over the table beside Arty, "We've got much more _important_ things to deal with."

"Well said," Dante paced along the back wall, "Arty, I should be on the team that faces the Maelstrom head on. I can't fight directly, but I would be helpful in keeping everyone alive. I'm a better support than anything else."

"Okay. If you're sure you're up for it." Arty rolled a red paintball over to the drawing of the tentacles to join orange and green paintballs. Everyone around him seemed a bit weary to have so much live Dust rolling around, but Arty knew that as long as he didn't channel too much aura into his ammunition or accidentally burst them, they'd be harmless. He just wanted a visual to help him explain the plan, and this was the easiest way he could find to do it. "So that puts me, Timbre, and Dante on the Maelstrom team. And as I said earlier," he rolled a purple and a yellow paintball over to the ferris wheel, "Roland and Sepia are going after the gun on the boat."

"Ahab, you're with me. Your weapon would come in handy with getting up to the boat, and securing it if need be. Though, I doubt that the ice holding up the ferris wheel has melted too much," Roland rolled a white paintball over to the purple and yellow ones. As much as he hated having Ahab along, it was necessary.

"No," Ahab crossed his arms, "I'm not going with y-"

"Yes you are. We need you," Roland looked up at his brother without even a hint of anger in his eyes.

Since Roland had already made up his mind, there probably wasn't any changing it, "Fine… whatever." Ahab leaned back in the corner of the room.

Lurida prodded at a holographic violet screen with a map of Vytal's coastline, "My Semblance is suited for getting up to the boat or fighting the Maelstrom, but Xannie's probably going to be better suited for the boat…" she looked to her left to her sister sitting beside her, "What has a better chance of success? Me on boat crew, or Maelstrom crew?"

Xannie drummed her fingers on the table as she struggled to see the outcomes. "Um… I'd say Maelstrom. With things still as fuzzy as they've been, it'd probably be better if we weren't together. That… and a Grimm is much more predictable than the Grimm Brotherhood. I'd be a much bigger help relaying probabilities involving the gun and the ferris wheel."

"That… makes me think of something…" Pepper piped up, "I'm not super great in a fight or anything, but it'll be hard for any attackers to get to the boat crew if… they're sick… or they start staring at Saffron…" she gingerly pointed at an orange paintball and a purple one, "We're good disablers, so… is that… a good idea…? I mean, I'm not the best strategist, but…"

"Atta gal," Saffron nodded, "I like it. Good by you, hun?" she lightly tapped the back of Arty's hand.

"Um… yeah… sure…" Arty felt flustered as he continued arranging his makeshift game pieces. "So… Xannie and Ahab with Roland and Sepia, Pepper with Midas and Saffron, and Lurida with Timbre, Dante, and I. Sounds pretty good so far…"

"I'm going to the boat." Curie suddenly spoke up. During the hour or so they had used to rally students to fight, go back to their hotels, grab weapons, and change clothes if needed, she had been conflicted about the whole situation and where, or even if, she needed to be a part of a mission that went against the direct orders of an Atlas official. As she returned to the Perch of Amity with Titian, however, she realized that she could be a much bigger help.

Arty was shocked. Did she really just say that? "Curie, but the height-"

"I know, Umber. But we've already established that Timbre and Roland don't know how to use that gun. If we're going to be lathering up the artillery shells with your unstable Dust paint, someone needs to know that thing inside and out in order to do it in such a way that it's least likely to backfire." She looked to Xannie, whom she'd been told plenty about, "with me and her Semblances together, it'd greatly reduce the possibility of anything going wrong." She pushed up her glasses, "It may be high up, and I may have… _crippling_ acrophobia… but I'm fairly certain I'm the only one here who knows how to operate a gun just by touching it."

"Curie… are you sure?" Timbre spoke up. If anyone at the table knew what Curie was feeling, it was her.

Curie nodded. "If it helps get this plan to go forward, then yes."

Arty reached over and grabbed her hand, which she had clenched into a tight fist against the grain of the table. "Thank you, Curie." He pulled back and rolled a green paintball to the boat group. "Okay… so the boat group seems pretty fleshed out. It wasn't very stable when we were on it earlier, but five seems like a good limit. If worse comes to worst, there's enough on the group that could team up with those on the boardwalk if needed. We just need to make sure that Curie and Xannie stay on the boat until the gun's fired."

A chill curled through the room. An ice spike formed on the surface of the table just in front of Rime, who had been sitting in silent contemplation for a while. For once, a crisis had her a little unnerved, "I can freeze things, but salt water is going to be hard. I might have to take up a more supportive role like Dante to make some platforms to fight the Maelstrom."

Arty nodded, moving one of his aptly named Rime Dust paintballs to the boat group, "Right. We need as many people to help the Maelstrom group actually get to the thing." He sucked at his teeth for a moment, "If only this thing wasn't in the water… then we wouldn't be at such a disadvantage…"

"I've got ya! I've got the firepower to deal with that thing!" Opal shouted from the other side of the door. She pushed it open and held up her boomerang, "Trust me. Shorla always calls me the berserka of the team, so… ya."

"How is she doing by the way?" Timbre asked as Arty pushed a cyan blue paintball to the corresponding group. After seeing how much using her Semblance so much had taken out of her, she felt worried about the goth, even if she had been rude towards everyone on the boat before it got thrown halfway across the island.

"Migraine. Nothing big, yeah," Opal shrugged, "Had to drag Namib away. Trust me. The guy's gonna be good for the team. He jus' won't be happy bein' away from Shorla for so long."

Without saying a word, the darker-complected boy with the long brown hair and ragged scarf walked in. In each hand was a serrated chakram. Sepia, Roland, and Curie recognized them from the confrontation at the arcade. He sat down in the empty chair between Saffron and Timbre.

Sepia eyed the newcomer, ' _So, is anyone gonna ask him where he stands, or…?'_

"Wanna fix a gun, fight off some Grimm Brotherhood cultists, or fight that big Grimm?" Roland stood up straight. He and Sepia only knew Namib in passing, but he was on a team that seemed to excel overall. That alone was enough to garner a seal of approval.

Namib didn't acknowledge Roland, but instead looked down at the paintballs and paper on the table in front of him. Still, without speaking, he picked up a yellow paintball from in front of Arty and rolled it to the boat defense team's markers.

"Fair enough…" Roland nodded, "Look good to you, Arty?"

"I guess so… Opal?"

"Yeah. He's pretty darn pissed at the moment, so he needs an outlet."

"Fair enough…" Arty mumbled as he thought. He didn't know fully what Team STON could do, but from what he saw in their combat class, they could definitely hold their own. He just hoped that everyone's raw skill would make up for the lack of synergy.

Everyone sat in silence as they looked over the clusters of paintballs in front of them. There'd be occasional long glances at the one corresponding to themselves before darting back and forth to the rest.

For the time being, their named teams of four no longer existed.

"So, to make sure that we've got this straight…" Roland began pointing around the room, "Me, Sepia, Ahab, Curie, and Xannie are gonna load T's yacht's gun up with Dust and get it to fire. Arty, Timbre, Rime, Lurida, Opal, and Dante are going to handle getting the Maelstrom weakened and into position. Namib, Saffron, Pepper, Midas, and Titian are going to lend my team some back up… which means that you guys should probably designate a temporary lead."

"Saffron or Midas are most fit…" Namib's voice was barely above a whisper underneath his scarf.

Midas flashed his winning grin, surprised by the recommendation. He had only met Namib once, and in that time, not a word was exchanged. "Well, thanks! I'd be glad to-"

"I only said that because Shorla isn't here."

Midas immediately shut up. "Oh…"

"B'sides, doll." Saffron stood behind him and wrapped her arms around his neck. "He said _both_ of our names."

"Saffron and I are the best disablers… and I'm not… fit to lead…" Pepper looked nearly on the verge of tears as she spoke to the group of students around her. Every new person that came into the room brought on a little more pressure, "Saffron would be able to… direct us on which target to take first…"

"Ya mean I could _steer_ them in the right direction, hun? Like back in lil ol' Maple's combat class?" Saffron leaned forward and put her cheek right against Midas'. The drool dribbling down her wrist was enough to tell her that he was fully under her spell, "Mah people skills are jus' better than yer's, sugah. Lil ol' Titian… or at least Namib is with me… aren't you, babe?"

"I don't care. Just as long as the one giving orders knows what they're doing."

"Well…" she glared at him for a moment. _Maybe he just don't roll that way…_ she turned her attention to Titian, "Ya fine with followin' my orders, sugah?"

Titian snickered, "Lead the way ma'am." She looked over to her leader. She noted the large puddle of drool forming on the table. "Sorry Goldilocks. But this is a bit more… serious than usual, hm?"

Midas chuckled, unable to get his mind off of doing whatever Saffron said. "Yeah… hah… sure."

Sepia wiped her lip and tapped the table in front of Arty, ' _So, can we stop wasting time and get on with it now that we have our teams?'_

"Yeah… sure." Arty also shook off the effects of Saffron's Semblance. "Right… so. I have… sort of a plan."

A few gasps and sounds of confusion fluttered around.

"You're not even _sure_ what the plan is?..." Timbre spoke up. She looked panicked and confused. The stress of the situation was finally starting to bear down on her.

"No, I know what we need to do. It's the way we're going to… you know, do it that I haven't quite figured out yet."

"Then tell us the parts you _do_ have figured out." Roland said flatly.

"Right… well, first thing's first, we need to lead the Maelstrom back to the boardwalk. I'm thinking my group will be able to do that while the other two take over the boat and defend it from any Grimm Brotherhood grunts still around."

"Reports are coming in saying that the Grimm Brotherhood is painting those symbols all over the island." Lurida stated as she looked at the map on her screen. Small dots appeared slowly across it.

"They're moving counterclockwise along the coast." Xannie began flipping through the same stories and maps as her sister. It was incredible how fast the news was blowing up. "They're about halfway through the Mistrali quadrant of the island."

"The scariest part is that its reach is going further inland. Whatever defenses this island had are weakening. For whatever reason, this thing's able to get close enough to not disintegrate like other Grimm."

"It's like… it's not even real." Xannie commented. She shook her head to collect her thoughts, "Back to the issue at hand. The main question here is how are we going to start leading the Maelstrom back here if they have those devices? If they're _that_ strong, then there's no way it'll follow us just from poking it a few times."

"Well…" Dante halted. She bit her thumb before looking to the group, "What if we got our hands on those devices they have? Since Lurida has the most mobility on our team, she could essentially fly over to the boardwalk with one of those things. If we lure the Maelstrom far enough away from the shore, then maybe it'll only know to follow that one…"

Lurida looked at Dante as if she were insane, "One problem. I can't go that far with my Semblance."

"But if I used a Gravity Dust buff on you, Arty shot you up with a bunch of Air and Gravity Dust paintballs, and Rime gave you some platforms to jump across, then your Semblance would have a lower load to take on, and it would be amplified at the same time…" Dante looked to Arty, "It's dangerous, but it might be our best shot."

Arty nodded, "Right! And then we could use them just like Oro's guys did in the Emerald Forest last semester!"

"Okay… that sounds like at least _part_ of a plan." Lurida continued scrolling, "But the reports say there's _tons_ of these guys. How will we even get enough of their devices to lure something that… huge?"

"Beat the snot outta any Grimm Brotherhood we see!" Opal pumped her fist in the air, "I betcha they each have one. Be too dangerous to have more than one on ya, right? Give a dozen of 'em 'ell, and we've got plenty!"

"So then my group stays behind while y'all go beatin' down baddies?" Saffron crossed her arms, "Doesn't sound very fair leavin' us out of the fray…"

Roland sighed, "They'll focus their efforts on the Maelstrom crew for a little bit, which means that you and Pepper have time to get in the best positions that you can. Titian can-"

"I'm jokin', babe. I knows what to do. Lighten up," Saffron winked over at him, "I'll keep ya safe."

"Right…" he stepped towards the door, "Then we all have our assignments. Let's get this thing over with."

Everyone else began making their way towards the door. They were going to be moving from the still calm of the boardroom to the middle of a fight for not only their lives, but the lives of everyone on Vytal. It felt surreal. Some were itching to go while others were feeling the looming sense of fear inch into their minds.

Arty was one of those with doubts. "There's still… one issue."

"What is it, Umber?" Curie looked to him, her eyes piercing into him.

"What are we going to do about the military?"

.

Chugging assault rifles let out burst after burst of Dust-charged slugs into the tentacles of the giant white octopus Grimm. Its appendages alone were as wide as the airships firing rockets at it, but the bulbous mass of flesh standing in the center of the mass of tentacles stood high above even the highest pagoda on the Mistrali quadrant of Vytal. A rainbow of color burned along each bone plate that gave the monster some semblance of consistent form. Each passing hour seemed to give the monster more and more mass.

"Does that answer your question about the military, Arty?" Lurida stared up at the monster with hate burning in her eyes, "I think there's too busy to deal with us."

The Maelstrom attack group stood in the narrow cobblestone alleyways between the abandoned homes and businesses of the Mistrali quadrant. Being slightly up the slope, they could easily look out towards the sea and watch the fruitless battle.

"You know… I meant what are we going to do about the military in terms of them preventing us from doing anything. We already knew they weren't going to be able to do anything to it."

"I doubt that they think us crazy enough to do such a thing…" Dante flipped through the pages of her book of poems, "I have to say that it scares me that the Atlesian military isn't putting a scratch in that thing… Perhaps they aren't hitting it in the right spot…"

"They ain't going ta 'ave a Nova Dust charged artillery shell blowin' its brains out!" Opal giggled from her place in a nearby doorstep. "You'd think with a buncha Dust-happy army men woulda thought of that by now."

"So, back to the task at hand…" Rime pulled her gaze away from the Maelstrom. For once, she actually seemed to be taking things seriously, "We need to find some GB. They have to be close by if that thing is."

"It may be on its rampage, but it's still moving." Lurida pulled up a map with her glove, "If we go down this street, we may be able to cut them off here between the Atlas and Mistral sections." She pointed at the line between the two fourths of the island on her map. "When we get there, we look for those symbols and keep an eye out for any agents. The only ones crazy enough to still be out here are the other students, the military, and the Grimm Brotherhood freaks." The screen dissipated. "We find them, incapacitate them, take their toys-"

"And make a mad dash back to the boardwalk." Arty held up his gun, ready to fight as they began making their way down the street, "Let's just hope Roland and Saffron's groups are able to lock down the pier by the time we get there."

Timbre drew wires. The silver cords sent sparks as they briefly collided with the rough stone of the street rushing by beneath her feet. "How are we going to hold the thing off if they don't have the gun ready by the time we get it in its range?"

"I think that's pretty obvious," Dante drew her fire poker and flipped through pages in her book of poetry, "We just hit it with everything we've got until it _is_ ready."

.

Chain whipped around Saffron in a flurry of steel and lilac. Thirteen rods of tempered steel connected by short lengths of chain flew around her body to create a sphere of destruction around her, "Midas! Get them supports on the ferris wheel unda control! Titian! Lay me out some weak spots in the wood 'round the board walk! Namib! Ya on support crew, so get ready to tussle when those psychos get here! Pepper! Be a sweetheart and stick to cover, if ya'd be so kind. I want those guys sicker than a dog in heat on a bright summer day!"

Pepper immediately ran off towards the entrance to the ruined boardwalk to do her job. Everyone else just stared at Saffron, partly from surprise that she actually had a plan as a leader, partly from the fact that they could barely understand what she was saying through her accent.

Saffron's chain whip slowed around her, "Midas on fixin' the ferris wheel, Namib on backup, and Titian on sabotage…" she eyed Roland's team as they began preparing to perform their task, "That clear as mud?"

"Don't think that's how the saying goes, babe." Midas jogged over to Roland's group at the base of the unstable ferris-wheel. The ice pillar had begun to melt, leaving the ride bending at a disconcerting angle above the ocean. The boards around it seemed to be sagging and breaking as well. Midas winced as he realized it was just one big death trap waiting to snap shut. He placed his palms against the warped metal of one of the primary supports, "You guys… you guys about ready?"

"Yeah," He looked to his half-brother, "Send them up where Xannie told you," Roland pointed up at the yacht buried in the center of the ferris wheel.

Five harpoons shot out of the box affixed to Ahab's left side. Ropes trailed behind them, whipping around and around as the metal rods spun through the air. They went slack when the points of the harpoons embedded themselves into the starboard side of Timbre's yacht. Five ropes hung from the vessel to Roland's team's feet.

"There," Ahab grunted.

"Xannie, Sepia, if you'd be so kind," Roland went on.

Xannie's rings slipped off her arms, legs, waist, and neck and looped themselves around each rope. Sepia came in behind and began tying the rings directly to the ropes with lengths of film and bullets from her guns.

Sepia gave the thumb's up.

"Wow… those knots reduced the probability of our makeshift climbing rigs failing by… about fifteen percent. Good job, Sepia!" Xannie clapped, her optimism having not been phased by the situation at hand.

Curie looked to her leader, "Okay, Goldilocks. You're up."

Gold spread from Midas's hands, travelling up the white metal of the support frame. For good measure, he allowed it to spread to the boards around their feet and down into the concrete pilings of the entire structure. He stepped back, out of breath. "There, that should hold you… for a bit. We're just gonna have to be quick about all this…" He bent over, hands on his knees and sweat pouring from his brow.

Like Midas, Curie held her hand against the frame and used her Semblance. She nodded to the rest of her group. "Okay. The form of the wheel itself is definitely more stable, but I can't say it'll stay that way once we start moving around on it."

"Like I said… have to be quick about it…" Midas stretched his back out, shaking himself back into shape. "Okay. If you guys are good, I'm gonna go back to join Cowgirl before the boys in black decide to crash our beach party."

Curie latched onto his arm, catching him off guard.

"Yo, Cure? What're you-"

"Just be careful, Midas." She let go of his suit sleeve. "And kick some ass for me. Okay?"

If there was one thing Midas knew, it was that Curie looked at everything like one of her games. Schoolwork, training, combat, even designing her weapon, but the way she had just spoke to him made it blatantly obvious that she wasn't in her normal mindset. She was always there trying to get him to be serious when she thought he should be, which usually went ignored. Standing on the pier ready to fight cultists and one of the largest Grimm ever seen, he realized that for once that he should follow her advice.

"Right. You got it, Curie. But don't worry your pretty neon head too much. I mean," he drew his weapons and gave her a thumbs up, "it is _me_ we're talking about."

"That's why we're all worried, Midas…" Roland planted a boot down on one of Xannie's rings and grabbed another with his hand, "Good luck. Let Saffron know that we're counting on you guys… and that she's a better leader than I thought."

Midas re-aimed his thumbs up to Roland as he began to rise up the rope.

.

"...and combust!" Red flames whipped around Timbre's wires, Opals boomerang, Lurida's orbiters, and Arty's bat. The Fire Dust buffs wouldn't have done so well on Rime's ice axes, so Dante had to focus hard to not throw a buff on them as well. With the clashing of metal and gunshots ringing around them from the brawl that had broken out with a few Grimm Brotherhood grunts, it took every ounce of focus still in her pounding brain to keep the effects of her Semblance up.

"Noice!" Opal kicked one of the grunts in the stomach to send him sliding across the pavement. With the Atlesian military preoccupied, not a soul was interrupting the brawl happening in the middle of the street just a few blocks away from all the action.

"Right…" Dante faltered in her step. Her shoulder slammed against the window of one of the dozens of storefronts lining both sides of the road. Stars flashed in her vision. Buffing four people and debuffing about nine others was putting a load on her system, "I need cover to take a moment to catch my breath if we're going to hold an advantage!"

A hail of bullets slammed into Dante's side, sending her tumbling to the pavement. She struggled to raise her fire-poker-gone-flare-gun in time. The red flames around her teammate's weapons and the hazy blue glow around their enemies' feet began to dim. The black sole of a grunt's boot flickered with that same dull haze as it flew towards her face.

The sudden rise of a solid wall of ice launched the grunt onto his back.

"Sorry, bud." Arty held Palette out. Dark blue Ice Dust paint glowed in its hopper as the gun unfolded into a bat. "Batter up, freak!" he swung as if he were playing a regular game of baseball, only, instead of a ball, his bat connected with the Grimm Brotherhood grunt's black reflective mask. A burst of paint encased the upper half of his torso and his head in ice. He fell to the ground, unable to get up or keep fighting. His legs flailed around as he tried to push himself to his feet.

Arty tossed a couple of Fire Dust paintballs at the ice wall he had made to keep Dante out of the fight, melting it down the middle. "You okay?" He asked her.

"Yeah… Thanks…" Dante pushed herself back up slowly. The pounding in her head eased a bit with the absence of one more grunt. She held up her flare gun at Arty's head and fired. The Fire Dust charge whizzed by his face and struck the grunt that was trying to sneak up on them in the chest.

The load on her Semblance lessened a little more, "Get back in the fight," the red flames on her teammate's weapons flared back to life, "I can manage."

Nearby, Opal zigzagged across the street, her Semblance leaving a rainbow-colored trail of afterimages in her wake. Keeping her weapon in constant motion, she was able to dash up to a grunt and deliver a flurry of punches using her Semblance before running off to another. With her moving so fast, it was impossible to get a good shot on her.

That didn't mean that she couldn't be grabbed.

One grunt, much larger and burlier than the others, grabbed Opal by the collar of her jacket. He gave a sinister chuckle as he held her in front of him. "Little brats like you need to know when to stay out of other people's business."

Opal glared at him before looking to what was behind him. She watched as her teal "Boom-erang" arced in the air back towards her. She snickered. "Sorry, mate," Out of his sight, she pulled the fob to her weapon from her pocket, a simple silver box with a big red button in the center. As the boomerang got within feet of the grunt, she pushed the button. A loud bang rang out as the weapon fired, launching the grunt to the ground. At the last second, Opal flickered out of his grasp, leaving a couple of bright red and green afterimages in her place. She slammed her foot into his back, the afterimages strengthening the kick knocking the air out of the guy. Without even looking, her boomerang landed square in her open hand. "I _neva_ know when to stay out of other's business. I'm a bit too nosy for that."

A fiery red and violet laser shot right by Opal's nose. The heat that radiated off the beam instantly tanned a line below her eyes and right across her nose.

"Woah! Watch it!" she waved her boomerang angrily at Beacon's resident gravity freak.

Lurida didn't so much as look back at Opal as she lined her orbiters up to fire on a pair of grunts. She stood upside down on a nearby streetlamp with four holographic panels up, "Rime! Collect the devices off of these guys and switch them off!" she shouted as her orbiters began firing a barrage of violet light and raging red flames on the pair of grunts.

"On it!" As grunts fell around her, there was the occasional clatter of something metal falling against the cobblestones. Rime ran, ducking and dodging attacks from both sides as she snatched up the devices.

"Great. That's five…" Lurida typed out a few short calculations while her orbiters kept firing on the two grunts until they crumpled to the ground, "I think I have a good read on the frequencies these things emit... so I think I can better pinpoint which ones have them…" she pointed out to the grunts that Arty, Dante, and Opal had taken out, "Three more between them." She kept calculating as they went over to grab the devices. "I'm also starting to get a reading from nearby…" She closed her screens as the sounds of gunfire and fighting were starting to die down. "I'm going to float up and see if there are any more of them nearby waiting to ambush us. The Maelstrom's on the move again, so they must have set up the next stop on their trail. We have to hurry if we're going to make it cut off and follow us instead."

Arty nodded as she flipped herself to the top of the post and kicked off, launching through the air like a missile. He handed one of his confiscated devices to Rime.

Dante tossed her device to Rime as well, and then raised her flare gun to fire on another grunt with his back turned towards her in his scuffle with Opal, "Hold on, I'll have another one in just a…" she fired at the back of his head to send him down, "moment. Grab that one too, Opal."

"So…" Timbre observed the mound of black boxes in front of Rime. After taking out grunts at four different sites marked by, presumably, Captain Sanguwalker, they now had a sizable pile of the things, "Is… is this enough to lure…" she looked off to the ocean. The Maelstrom slammed one of the tall condominiums on the coast, sending the top half crumbling down, " _that_?..."

Lurida landed near the pile, her feet firmly back on the ground, "If we get far enough out, then I think so. It won't have anything else to go after if we lure it out beyond the shallows. I think that our main problem will be with the militar-" she cringed from the incessant sounds of Opal beating the last few Grimm Brotherhood grunts cut through the air, "the military. Our main issue will be with the military. They'll either cease fire when they see us, or…"

"Blow us to smithereens…" Dante holstered her weapon as she approached, "We should give some kind of signal to them to avoid that fate."

With the last of the grunts incapacitated, the group was left with the tools, but they were short on time and lacked a real plan.

"Isn't it obvious what we need ta do?"

The group all turned to Opal, who was nonchalantly smiling and swinging her boomerang around her extended index finger.

"We bring 'em some of these here Grimmies. If we can prove we're capable, maybe that'll distract 'em long enough for us ta get out there and finish this."

"So you're suggesting we take hostages?" Dante snapped, sounding not particularly fond of the idea of them stooping to the Grimm Brotherhood's level.

"Oi, _take hostages_ is a bit strong. That's if it's the bad guys doin' it. I prefer 'turnin' ova a few dirty criminals to the proper authorities'."

"That… could work." Lurida mumbled as she mulled over the idea, "But a bunch of grunts is easy work. We'd need something bigger."

"I don't know..." Timbre looked over one of the Grimm attraction devices. "That might waste a bunch of time that we just don't have."

"Why are we even discussing this?" Arty spoke up, "The Grimm Brotherhood isn't our priority here. They could be dealt with easily if the military wasn't so distracted. We need to get back on track and lead that thing back to the pier. The other groups are sitting ducks and the longer we waste time out here, the more danger they're put in."

"I agree with Arty." Rime stepped forward, "We have plenty of these doohickies. The military's too distracted. If we can lead the Grimm back now, then they'll be able to focus on the GB. They don't have time to shoot at us either way."

"Then what are we waiting for?" Timbre pointed down the street running parallel to the coast. "Let's go cut that thing off and get its attention."

Opal humphed. "Darn. I was looking forward ta beatin' up one of the Grimm-masks."

The group took off, devices in hand.

.

"Titian, hun, how's them weak spots comin' along?" Saffron gathered up her chain whip rod by rod while surveying the already decimated remains of the boardwalk, "Ya lookin' great in that armor, by the way. Ya roots are showin'. Not bad, but I can touch ya up later if ya like."

Titian pulled her hands away from the floorboards of the boardwalk. She reasoned that a few spots off to the sides of the entrance would make for good traps in case opponents tried to sneak up from the sides. Coming in through the front gate was way too obvious and would lead to an easy counter-attack. These guys were smart. They wouldn't fall for that, and Titian knew it. "We got a few. Just keep your eyes peeled for rotting boards so you don't get caught up in our own booby traps. Also… thanks, but now's really not the time to talk about my hair. I get that enough from my own team..."

"You bet you do, Rusty." Midas laughed as he kept his eyes towards the shore.

"Again, not the time to talk about my hair… Try to be serious for _once_ in your life, Midas."

"I don't think he can be!" Saffron laughed, "Even when I made sure to keep my Semblance under control on our dates, he _still_ wouldn't stop oglin' my-"

"Wonderful personality!" Midas finished.

"Def'nitely _not_ what I was about to say, dahlin'..." she began unbuttoning the first few buttons of her blouse to prepare for the coming battle. She held her Semblance back, ready to let it flare to its full effect if the situation required it, "Peppa, where eva might ya be, sugah?"

"Right over here…" Pepper's voice echoed from inside a trashcan beside a funnel cake stand. The smell of fried dough and powdered sugar wasn't going to be leaving her person for weeks to come, "Just… give me the cue as usual…"

"Mah oh mah! Well done, sweetheart!" Saffron grinned, "Namib! How ya doin' with ya bad self?"

Namib only grunted in response from his perch on top of one of the food stalls. He wanted to position himself in such a way where he wouldn't be noticed immediately, but also where he could jump down for a surprise attack in true Team STON fashion if needed. Being close enough to the entrance and, in turn, the beach was beneficial for him as well.

"Thank ya, babe," Saffron tipped her hat to the fourth weirdo of Team STON, "Midas, is our little break up gonna keep ya from doin' yer job?"

Midas snickered, "Please. I've rebounded from relationships faster before. Breakups are pretty low on the list of stuff that bothers me."

"Right…" she snickered, "So ya don't wanna take me out later when this rodeo is over? I'd be happy to not use mah Semblance on ya if ya use ya own money on me. I don't give boys second chances, mind ya. It'd be more of a… celebration than a date, but we can see how that goes."

"W-Wait, what?" Midas' neck nearly snapped when he whipped his head towards her, "Uhhh… I don't kno-"

"I'll take that as a yes for the time bein'," she looked up the ferris wheel. The team up top seemed to be doing their job well enough, but she couldn't shake the feeling that their apparent success was every bit bad as it was good. A voice was screaming in the back of her mind. _Get out! Get out!_ it seemed to say. While Roland and Sofaira had the predator instincts of their animal counterparts ingrained in their minds, she had the instincts of an animal of prey.

Eyes drilled into her from somewhere, but she couldn't pinpoint where. Her fingers trembled around her chain whip. Something wanted her and everyone there dead. Somebody knew what they were up to already, and had to have long before they even got there.

"We're bein' watched, guys…" Saffron threw out her whip. Steel rods clattered across the ground, "Titian, Midas. Fall back and defend that ferris wheel with everythin' ya've got, ya hear? Namib, stay on offense with me, sugah. Peppa, hold ya position unless Namib and I get ova-whelmed. If that happens, attack them from behind and make em' sneeze like there's no tomorrow!"

"What are you going on about?" Titian sneered, "There's nothing here!"

"I'm yer leader for the time bein'. Yer from Atlas, dahlin', so I'd expect ya ta be good at followin' orders," Saffron whipped her weapon against the boardwalk, "Trust a Faunus' senses, dahlin."

"I'd consider it if you told us exactly _what you were sensing_."

"This ain't tha time, gosh durnit!" Saffron snapped. Her eyes fluttered wide with fear. Her heart beat in her ears. Sweat made her weapon slide around in her closed fist. _They're coming for you! They're going to kill you! Run! Run like hell!_ that primal voice screamed in the back of her mind, "I don't have none of them details ya think ya need. _I just know_ , so shut yer trap and do yer job!"

Gunfire and the pounding of heavy boots on ruined boards echoed across the beach as cloaked figures in reflective black masks began to flood onto the boardwalk.

"Whatever you say, Dairy Queen." Titian watched as some of the grunts passed over a few of the traps she had laid earlier. A wicked smile passed over her lips as she reached out her arm. There was an odd _clink_ as she snapped her fingers, the metal tip at the end of her index finger slamming against the palm of her armored glove.

At that very moment, the boards under two grunts crumbled away. Screaming was shortly followed by loud splashes.

"I'm gonna ignore yer last comment for the time bein'. I'm actually more curious as to whether or not that's actually how yer Semblance works, hun."

"It's not. It just looks a bit more badass to add the finger snapping." Titian shrugged. "But enough games," The outer edge of the oval blade in her hand began to glow a fierce red and buzz with energy. "Let's have some _real_ fun, shall we?"

"Nah, sugah, I gave you a job. Get to it. Now." Saffron began turning her whip in circles in front of her, "I can handle these boys. I need the two o' y'all as defense, undastand?"

Titian was about to retort. She wasn't particularly fond of people being _this_ bossy, especially someone like Saffron.

Midas grabbed her shoulder, "Come on, Rusty. Let her enjoy her power. It's only for a little while. Besides, we work better together. We'll protect the _hell_ out of that ferris wheel!"

Titian glared back at Saffron, "Right… whatever. But let me just say I really prefer your more lax way of just… _suggesting_ we do things rather than being like… _that_."

"Demanding?" Midas scoffed, "Try dating her for a couple of months, then get back to me on that. This is a cakewalk compared to what she's usually like."

Saffron wanted to scream back at Titian and Midas about how the time for arguing was not during the middle of an interkingdom crisis, but that wasn't going to do anything useful for them. Instead, she whipped her weapon around in front of her. Bullets rang and rattled against the chain like bells. The six grunts were beginning to close in on her.

 _They're not it! They're not the predator!_ that primal voice screamed once more.

"Namib! Take 'em quick!" she kept using her whip as a shield to give her enough time to analyze the area around her. Six wasn't enough if they were sending just grunts. Six was a distraction. It had to be. Cannon fodder wasn't coming. A storm was.

Namib pulled the goggles hanging around his neck up and over his eyes. He was going to need them.

The grunts began to shout out in confusion as sand from the beach began battering against them, making a thick brown cloud across the entrance. The focused sandstorm disoriented them, removing their vision and beat them from all directions.

The rest of the group watched as quick plumes of fire flashed into existence within the storm. They blinked and flashed as the weapons they came from sliced against the inexperienced grunts as they fired their guns blindly.

As quickly as it began, the sandstorm died down. Piles of sand littered the entrance of the boardwalk along with the unconscious Grimm Brotherhood grunts that had been taken out by an unseen foe. Namib moved silently through the sand as he faced his team.

"A bit overboard for the first fodder, isn't it?..." Pepper whispered meekly from her smelly hiding spot.

"Have to let these monsters know what they're up again-"

Namib felt something slam into the center of his back, forcing his spine to arch forward. The force was strong, and he was sent flying across the boardwalk before he could realize he was in the air. He crashed into a damaged hot-dog cart, caving it in completely and sending condiment bottles and broken glass flying.

Molten eyes set into the sockets of a Kokonatsu's bone mask took a moment to examine the torn nylon on its gloves. Metallic black sheen glinted off of bits of exposed metal. No cloak. Nothing but a glowing red and white mask could be considered flashy or mysterious about the newcomer. This Grimm Brotherhood agent was one of the few that they had seen that looked fully ready for combat being decked out in leather, nylon, and all black.

Saffron tried her best to stand deadly still, but her chain whip rattled in her trembling hands.

"Oh, now who's the fox creep?" Titian muttered as she helped Namib to his feet.

"I think he might be one of those higher-up Captains Burnie told about." Midas gave his best guess.

A gunshot and a whip crack slammed against the eardrums of everyone on the boardwalk. The masked man stumbled back, a divot still smoking right over where his heart would be. The end of Saffron's weapon laid smoking on the boardwalk. The scent of burning gunpowder tinged the air.

She steeled herself for the coming fight, "I knew that someone like ya would come 'round… and I know I'm not gonna be able to beat ya," she cracked her whip again to send another bullet slamming into the agent's chest, "but ya best believe Imma give ya a damn difficult time while I'm still kickin'."

Agent Kokonatsu began striding towards Saffron, his mask bent down to keep the glowing soulless Grimm eyes focused on her. Bullet after bullet bounced against his aura, but he kept advancing. He strode right up to her, getting close enough to stand next to her. He leaned in close, not even bothered by the futile attacks from the rest of the pesky team of meddlers.

The echoing of his calm distorted voice inside his skull mask sent shivers down Saffron's spine.

"Not like it matters. You're not even my targets." A backhanded slam with his forearm sent Saffron skidding across the uneven boards. "You're more of an annoying obstacle, if anything." He gazed up to the boat hanging on the damaged ride. A couple of the others on board had taken notice to the conflict down below. He went to continue his short walk and finish his assignment as quickly and efficiently as possible, but as the others in the group began to attack he realized he would have to go against the plan and waste time with those that stood in his way.

Chain tightened around Agent Kokonatsu's ankle. His foot flew back out from under him. He slammed onto the boardwalk and felt himself being dragged back inch by inch. Saffron was already back up on her feet and back to fighting.

"If I'm an obstacle, then Imma be sure Imma gosh durn hard one ta get past!" she yanked her chain whip to drag Kokonatsu even closer, "Midas, Titian, stay on standby until he takes me out. Peppa, Namib, I need ya both."

The top of the trashcan that Pepper was hiding in flew up into the air. Pepper darted out with a deep red and burnt orange lance at the ready. Her usually worry-filled eyes were brimming with determination, "I… I will be an obstacle too…!" her trembling voice barely made it beyond her lips, "Please don't make this harder than it has to be…!"

Kokonatsu snarled beneath his mask at the new girl and the boy he thought he had already taken out of the fight. "They didn't tell me you'd be this much trouble," he turned, running towards Saffron, throwing her off her guard, "especially with the likes of _you_ being put in charge of this little operation."

Saffron was ill-prepared for the rush of punches and kicks. She tried to block them with her chain whip, but every time an attack was prevented, another one came in from another angle.

As Namib rushed towards the brawl, he considered starting another sandstorm, but they were too far away from the beach now for it to be effective, and he couldn't count on Saffron and Pepper being able to push through the lack of vision to fight. He let out a shout of frustration as he hurled his twin wind-and-fire wheels at Kokonatsu. The serrated blades of the circular weapons glowed white and red with Dust.

The blades cut through a red cloud of pepper spray.

.

"What do you mean that it won't fire?" Ahab grumbled, seeming eerily calm with the fight going on below them.

"Obviously I mean it got damaged when the giant octopus threw the boat halfway across the island." Curie shot back as she moved wires and metal parts around inside of the maintenance panel of the artillery gun. "A gun can't exactly fire if it's broken, and we need this gun to fire. So stop pestering me! I'm stressed out enough as it is."

Sepia peered over the insides of the machine. The basic mechanical parts of the gun were much like her own weapon, which made one thing catch her eye. She pointed to what seemed to be a massive rod that had a crack running through it. To her, it looked just like a firing pin.

"Yes… Sepia. The firing mechanism is busted. I already saw it." Curie snapped. The fact that she was once again fifty feet above the ground on a massive tangle of metal that could fall at any moment was putting her on edge.

 _But you haven't tried fixing it yet…_ Sepia rolled her eyes. She pinched a red paintball out of one of the vials that she had lifted off of Arty while he wasn't looking and smeared the paint across the metal crack. A good slap was all it took for the Fire Dust to ignite and produce a quick weld between the sections of metal. She held up her scroll to Curie, ' _Is it strong enough to fire once before failing now?'_

Green light pulsed through the machine as Curie reexamined it with her Semblance, "It's… possible. The shot probably won't be very straight, and there's no guarantee the shell won't just explode when it fires. But the odds are definitely better than before.

"I can attest to that…" Xannie commented as she watched the fight down below. "Guys… that fight's looking _very_ nasty. He's giving those girls from Mistral and that Vacuan boy a lot of trouble." She shook her head, "The odds aren't looking too good for them and, if my calculations and common sense are right, _we're_ that guy's real targets… the Grimm Brotherhood obviously doesn't want that monster's rampage cut short, and, at this point, we're sort of the only ones capable of ending it… In other words, we're pretty high on their hit list…"

"How much do you know about Saffron?" Roland asked flatly while he joined her at the window.

"Honestly not much…" Xannie winced as she watched Saffron receive a sharp right hook from Kokonatsu. "Not much except for the fact that she's… not doing so good right now…"

"What if I told you that she's far more tenacious than I am?" he turned back to help examine the gun, "And what if I could put a number to that? Because, if I did, I would say that she has least ten times more tenacious than me."

"Oh… then… I guess that improves her odds, but I'm not seeing that tenaciousness being put into play so much right now, Roland…"

"Yeah you are. She set her goal as being an obstacle because she knows that he can't take her out," he tried to suppress his growing smile, "I have no doubt that she'll be the hardest stumbling block that guy has ever come across. She's as stubborn as a bull, you could say."

"No kidding…" Ahab grumbled before returning to the bow, "Hey! We almost ready? They'll be coming around soon."

.

"Think the Atlesian military is gonna be pissed when they find out that we stole one of their boats?" Rime asked while freezing the rope binding a little scouting boat to the Mistral quadrant's main dock. She threw her heel down to bust the ice and the rope inside, "Or will they be more pissed that we're getting in the way of an actual military operation?"

Lurida spliced the two last wires of the boat's dismantled control panel, "I think they'll be more pissed that we stole a boat while their backs were turned and that one of us took apart the security system on the thing to keep them from detecting us," she slammed her fist down on the control panel's cover to knock it back into place, "Can I have that Air and Gravity Dust paint now, Arty?"

"Um… yeah, sure." Arty pulled the requested tubes from his belt and handed them to Lurida.

"Guys! We have company!" Timbre yelled as she watched cloaked figures running down the downhill avenue towards the dock.

Opal began firing on the approaching grunts, "Don't 'ave tha time for this sh-" her voice was cut out by the sound of a Magma Dust charge exploding within the mob of targets, "This ain't good! Can we get on with tha objective?! Please?!"

"Dante, get this thing out to open water!" Lurida shouted while rubbing white and purple paint along her legs and arms like stripes of sunscreen.

Dante followed the order without so much as a peep. She started the engine and hit the acceleration in one fluid motion. Salty ocean water sprayed across the deck, showering the coming Grimm Brotherhood grunts. The boat left the dock in an instant, but one of the figures managed to jump onto the bow at the last moment.

Hydraulic pistons hissed from the newcomer's arm. She stood proudly, her familiar kangaroo skull mask gleaming in the sunlight, "Hey, guys! What's going on?!"

Had it been the semester before, Arty would have been terrified of Oro. As the boat sped away from the dock, all Arty felt was rage. "Why is it _always_ you?!" He swung Palette at her, hoping to launch her from the boat in a spray of sparks, but she ducked out of the way.

"Because I just love you kids _so_ much! Gotta say, I'm kinda bummed that I've only got three of you guys to deal with now. Oh well!" Oro raised her hydraulic battering ram to strike.

The list that Khimera mentioned after the Grimm Brotherhood's attack on Vale flashed in Dante's mind. Half of the boat's occupants were on that list. Her, Arty, and Timbre.

"Rime, take the wheel." Dante demanded.

Rime sat back in fear as Arty and Oro continued their back and forth. "What?! I grew up in the _mountains_ … with _no lakes_! Much less _the open freaking ocean!_ I can't drive a boat!"

"Move over!" Lurida forced Dante out of the driver's seat. "I don't know what you're planning to do, but at this point, I'm open to options!" Normally, she would've thrown Oro out of the boat with her Semblance, but she didn't want to risk catching anyone else or even the boat in her field.

Dante flipped through the pages of her book, "I hate to use the works of other poets, but… Willis Speare will do fine here…" pure white pages burst with light, "Blow, blow, thou winter wind. Thou art not so unkind. As man's ingratitude; thy tooth is not so keen, because thou art not seen, although thy breath be rude!"

White light enveloped Oro. The light turned and curled around her like gusts of visible wind.

Oro dug her heels into the boat to hold her ground, "You think that a little Air Dust is going to-" her feet shot out from under her. She scrambled to grab the side of the boat, but couldn't manage to get a firm enough hold. Gale force winds sent her skipping across the water like a stone, and finally slammed her down into the sand of the passing coastline.

Dante held her head. Her teeth grinded together from the wave of pain passing through her. Her Semblance had gone beyond the point of being overused for one day, "She's gone, right…?"

"What the _hell_ was that!?..." Lurida spat as Dante shakily took the wheel back.

"My Semblance works best with older poetry… but it puts a strain on me. The older the poetry is, the more collective meaning it has behind it," Dante wiped the drops of draining blood from her nose, "I'm going to need some food when this is over…" she groaned.

"We'll buy out an entire bakery when we're done, Dante." Arty promised, "And a candy store, too."

"If you don't add a coffee shop to that list, I'll have no choice but to throw you into the ocean." Lurida growled.

"Okay, I'm glad we're all in a joking mood right now… but," Timbre grabbed one of the devices from the crate they had loaded up upon 'commandeering' the boat, "We need to start switching these things on."

"About that…" Lurida quickly turned on the devices, then shoved each one into the tube that she usually stored her orbiters in. Any that didn't fit were already floating around her like the six orb-shaped weapons. White and purple Dust paint glowed across every inch of her black and purple bodysuit. Even her face had lines of white and purple across it, "I'm ready to go."

Everyone on the boat stared at Lurida.

She held her arms out, "What? Umber covers himself with it all the time."

"Not… this much." Arty responded.

"Yeah, we didn't think you were serious about doing this..." Timbre added, "I mean, it's definitely a look you pull off well it's just… weird."

"What were you saying about being in a joking mood?" Lurida growled.

"Sorry. Sorry, couldn't help myself."

The Maelstrom ceased its attack on the Mistral quadrant and turned towards the boat. Its eyes glowed every color of the rainbow, then stayed red when it settled on its new target.

"Opal, cover me," Lurida readied herself to jump off the boat, "We can't waste anymore time."

Opal saluted back, "On it," Opal ran to the other side of the boat, ready to jump too.

"What the _hell_ are you doing?!" Lurida spat. "I said _cover me!_ "

"I am. I'm doing the same as you, doi." Opal crammed her pockets full of active devices. "You wanted me ta cover ya. I'll go to tha beach while you stay on the wata. That way the big calamari doesn't focus on completely destroying _just_ you, or _just_ me, or _just_ the boat. If we're both out there, it'll have to divide its attention, but it'll still be swimmin' where we want it to." She smiled wide as she perched herself on one of the boat's seats. "See? I am coverin' ya."

" _We're hundreds of feet from the shore!_ " Lurida shot back, despite thinking Opal's plan was actually somewhat decent.

"You honestly have no clue what went on in the first-year tournament sparring class… do you?" Arty laughed nervously. "'Hundreds of feet' isn't exactly a problem for Opal."

"Okay, fine, whatever. Do what you need," Lurida kicked off the side of the boat. The Air and Gravity Dust clinging to her skin helped propel her like a rocket across the water. She'd never piloted a fighter jet or a race car, but she imagined that both of those felt similar to this.

The Maelstrom gave chase to Lurida as she shot across the surface of the water. Its tentacles slammed into the water only a few feet from her, but she managed to dodge each strike with a burst of Air Dust to send her veering off to the left, right, or even over one of the massive tendrils.

A loud whistling echoed from the boat. One of the Maelstrom's eyes swivelled to eye the source.

"Oi! Ugly! Ova heeeea!" Opal taunted before launching herself from the boat. A large arc of rainbow-colored after images appeared, reaching from the boat to the beach. In a matter of seconds, she had reappeared back on shore. "Leave Gravity Gal alone, will ya?! At least for a moment?!"

Sand exploded out behind Opal. Oro stood with her weapon out to the side before bringing it up in a quick right hook, but the piston only bounced off of an after image of Opal.

A trail of sand exploded across the beach running parallel to Lurida's trail in the water. Opal zipped across the sand without even paying Oro any mind.

Somehow, Oro had no problem keeping up with Opal's Semblance-enhanced pace. Pistons and cranks still hissed like Venice's boots had.

Back on the boat, Arty, Timbre, Rime, and Dante watched in wonder as Opal and Lurida kept up their blinding paces towards their destination.

"Great, now we have both the Maelstrom _and_ Oro to worry about…" Timbre grimaced. "This is already much worse than we thought."

Arty shook his head, "We knew that we'd have to deal with her and her people once we started interfering with their scheme to destroy the island and, probably, get ahold of everyone on their list again." He looked to his teammate, "Once we get the Maelstrom back to the Vale quadrant, we're going to have to wail away at it in order to keep it in place. You sure you can handle that?"

Timbre rubbed at her arm as she examined one of the devices left in the boat, "A bit too late to reconsider isn't it?..."

Rime nudged Timbre, "C'mon, T. I've seen you in forests and stuff. If you have something to latch your wires onto, you're virtually unstoppable!" She gave a weak smile, obviously not convinced of her own enthusiasm, "It'll be the same… only you're out in open water… and it'll be Grimm tentacles instead of tree branches… but if worse comes to worst, we'll all be watching out for each other, right?"

"Right…" Timbre gazed up at their target.

The Maelstrom didn't show any signs of exhaustion even after its scuffle with the Atlas military. How could they take something like that down themselves? After all, they were just students… but that didn't matter so much at this point. All that mattered was keeping the innocent people of Vytal safe. Right now, none of them were students or even Huntsmen and Huntresses in training. They _were_ Huntsmen and Huntresses. They _had_ to be Huntsmen and Huntresses if they wanted to have any hope of getting through this day.


	53. V2Ch25: By Virtue of Necessity - Part 2

Knuckles of steel slammed into her cheek for the fifteenth time since the fight began. She stumbled back only to take another kick to the stomach. Saffron's chain whip rattled in her shaking hands. Every strike hurt worse than the last.

"Just give up…" Kokonatsu passed his fist right over the chain and rods that Saffron was trying to use to shield herself, "You. Can't. Win!" he shouted as he threw another forceful punch into her nose.

She slid back, a dribble of blood coming from one nostril and a dark purple bruise forming across the bridge of her nose. Had it not been for her exceptionally strong aura, she would have had broken bones instead of a few bruises.

"I told ya already, shuga…" her knuckles turned white as she blocked an incoming kick with her weapon. She took a step back away and began spinning her whip around her, "I ain't focusin' on winnin'... I know that I can't… don't be so dull, sweetheart."

Lavender light glowed around Saffron. Her aura was wavering from the beating that Kokonatsu was giving her, but she still stayed on her feet. Her eyes darted around to survey her full situation. Namib was already down, and Pepper wasn't looking too great either.

"C'mon…" Saffron kept her chain whip spinning, "Don't pull ya punches… just 'cause I'm a gal…"

Agent Kokonatsu acted as if he were going for another punch, but he countered a surprise attack from Pepper instead. The loud clacking of her school dress shoes made it obvious where she was coming from. He swiveled, grabbing her by the shoulder of her uniform, and threw her into Saffron. Both of the girls went sprawling against the boards.

Saffron hugged Pepper close to her to keep her from further harm as they tumbled across the boardwalk.

"We… we can't… we're going to die, Saf…" Pepper quivered in her leader's arms.

Out of the corner of her eye, Saffron saw Midas and Titian getting ready to break position. That was exactly what Kokonatsu wanted, and she knew that much. She steeled herself for her teammate.

"Nutmeg," Saffron got up with Pepper's hand clasped in hers, "Hay Fever and Attraction…" she smiled at Kokonatsu through the pain aching across her body. Her Semblance went into overdrive. Even Ahab and Sepia were affected from the boat lodged in the ferris wheel, leading to Xannie and Roland being forced to hold them back from jumping. Titian held onto Midas' arms, and Namib was simply too weak to get up.

Then all of them fell into a sneezing fit. Even Saffron, who was mostly immune to Pepper's Semblance, had to wipe her watering eyes. Between both of them, every single person on the boardwalk was falling ill, and every single person who even had an inkling of attraction to women was being pulled under Saffron's spell.

"What the-" Kokonatsu couldn't finish expressing his confusion as he was overcome by a fit of sneezing. He was told that his mask would help dampen the effects of the SPCE girls' Semblances, but apparently that wasn't entirely true. All they had to do was consciously intensify their Semblances' effects to cover _everyone_ around them, including those on their own side. He felt the cold spray of mucus and saliva sprinkle his face inside the confines of his mask. He couldn't do a thing in this condition.

"Go!" Saffron shouted as she and Pepper lunged out of their spot and into the open boardwalk.

Pepper held her lance close to her chest. She angled the point right at Kokonatsu's mask. The lance seemed to unravel, the tip widening and folding downwards to resemble a firearm. Three pellets shot silently out of the end of her weapon and poofed against the bone mask. An orange haze exploded against its surface.

Pepper spray burned in Agent Kokonatsu's eyes, but the feeling was made a lot worse when the point of the girl's lance slammed into his shoulder.

"Thanks, hun!" Saffron darted past Pepper and caught Kokonatsu in her chain whip, "Now, let's pick up where we left off," she pulled him close as he fell and pressed herself against his chest, "Not so keen on hittin' me now, huh?" She playfully booped the end of the fox mask's nose with her index finger as she batted her eyelashes towards the deep glowing orbs in its sockets, "C'mon! I love when a boy gets down 'n dirty!"

Kokonatsu would have made a comeback, but he was too busy shouting from the pain in his eyes. He had to fight his desperate instinctual urge to rip off his mask and wipe away the burning sensation in his eyes. If he let this continue, he'd be completely at her mercy and be exposed. If that happened, the Brotherhood would certainly eliminate him. He struggled against Saffron's chain whip.

"Nothin'?" Saffron scoffed, "Cat got ya tongue?" she didn't even wait for a response. Her horns slammed up into his chin. She let go of one end of her whip to release him, but used the new distance to rear back and ram her horns into his gut. The dull tips caught the leather and nylon straps on his chest piece and sent him flying into a balloon stand.

"Get up," she strided over to him as the bouquet of multicolored balloons were released from the end of the cart, "C'mon! Get up an' hit me back!"

"I don't think he can, Saf." Pepper chuckled nervously, "I think we wo-."

Saffron felt the sudden wave of fear return. For a moment, she was the predator, but it was all taken away in an instant as Pepper's voice was cut off.

"You'd like to think that wouldn't you?" An eerily calm and feminine voice laced in static called from behind Saffron, right where Pepper was earlier.

Saffron turned to find a new Grimm-masked operative standing behind her. Pepper laid crumpled and unconscious at Captain Sanguwalker's feet.

Unless Sanguwalker was into girls, Saffron was in over her head. She straightened her hat and readied her whip, "Midas, with me. Titian, you stay gua-"

A tendril of black paint ripped through the air and slammed Saffron down against the boardwalk. Boards cracked underneath her from the impact and sent splinters jabbing into her back. Saffron's desperate scream formed a smile underneath Sanguwalker's mask.

"Saffron!" Midas yelled as he watched Saffron disappear into the mess of wood. Judging from the lack of a splash, she was still _on_ the boardwalk, or rather, _in_ the boardwalk. He raised his flintlock, the golden sheen a bit brighter than normal, "Isn't that the freak you and Ledning chased earlier?"

"Yeah…" Titian broke her weapon in half, each shifting into handguns burning with the same energy as the blade. "She's not exactly a fun person to deal with. Led tried to take her on… and I already told you how well that went." Titian's light-hearted demeanor was gone. She was hellbent on giving a beating, and she was angry. It wasn't often that a target got to her as much as Sanguwalker apparently had in their earlier scuffle.

"Oh, it's you!" Sanguwalker inched towards Midas and Titian. She waved Kokonatsu along with one of her six black tendrils, "It is great to see you again!" She said to Titian, "Where did your little silver-haired friend go?" she tapped the end of her mask's beak as she cocked her head to the side, "Oh… right… I did a real number on him… didn't I?"

Midas ignored her comments, thinking back to the bruises he'd seen on Ledning earlier that day. He watched as the black tendrils moved around the bird-masked woman. "Yeah, well, I'll be sure to repay the favor for him!"

"Calm down, Goldilocks, she's trying to bait you into attacking first," Titian said flatly as she aimed her guns at Sanguwalker. "And now that the SPCE girls and Mr. Sandstorm are out of the fight, it looks like it's up to the two of us to protect this stupid thing."

"How exactly do you think we can do that?"

"I don't know. You're the leader. _You_ think of something."

"We have to try to split them up. Each go one-on-one with one of them. Saffron and Pepper seemed to be getting the upper hand on foxy-boy for a moment, but I don't know about bird-brain."

"Kokonatsu's going for the boat group, and judging by his hand-to-hand preference, you'd be more suited to fight him. And you're a better climber than me."

"But what about-"

"She has an actual weapon from what we can tell. If I can get a good feeling on whatever those tendrils are coming from, I can corrode it and maybe take her out of commission. He's just really good at punching."

"But-"

"Good plan, Midas. Now get ready!"

Kokonatsu pried himself up from the broken balloon stand and followed his superior's command to advance. He wiped the remaining pepper spray from his mask. "You better back down, kid…" he clenched his fists, "I'm not the killer type… and I don't want you to be my first exception..."

"But it'd be my pleasure!" Midas fired, the slug passing mere inches between the two villains. The sign above the boardwalk entrance exploded and crumbled apart.

"Interesting. So _that's_ what your Semblance looks like when you intend to hurt a person instead of a Grimm." Sanguwalker noted as if she were observing a wild animal. "No matter," She shoved Kokonatsu forward, "Get going. We don't have much time until the Maelstrom arrives."  
"I thought you were in charge of keeping it on its rampage?" Kokonatsu shot back.

"Their annoying friends got ahold of some of our Grimm control devices from our more incompetent drones and have diverted the Maelstrom from my originally intended path. Now enough questions. Go!"

Kokonatsu darted forwards with his fists raised. The boardwalk cracked as he launched himself upwards.

Midas cocked the hammer back once again to make another attempt to attack, his opponent's boots slammed into the boards not even a foot away from him, throwing him off balance.

Kokonatsu raised his fist to strike, then used his other hand to cover up the end of his new target's gun.

Midas fired anyways. Even with an aura, the blast should have been strong enough to launch him backwards.

Kokonatsu's arm was sent back, but nowhere near the incapacitating launch it should have been. He returned the attack, driving fists into Midas's face and torso. With a final spinning kick, Midas fell back against the golden frame of the ferris wheel.

Midas groaned as he was suddenly forced harder against the reinforced metal by Kokonatsu's forearm. Luckily for him, his aura was still holding strong.

"Don't. Get. In. My. Way." He threw Midas to the side by the collar of his jacket and immediately began ascending the tilted ride.

"I just got this thing dry cleaned…" Midas gave an exasperated chuckle. "When the Atlas military gets ahold of ya, I'll have to ask General Lionbutt if she'll have you reimburse me before she throws you in _prison!_ " He looked back to see bursts of red light and black tendrils flying back and forth from the other fight. He wanted to back Titian up, but as he took another second to watch, it was obvious she could hold her own for the time being. Besides, he had his own mission to attend to. There was no telling what Agent Kokonatsu would do if he actually managed to get aboard the boat.

.

Dante kept a white knuckled grip on the steering wheel of the boat. Her breaths raced past her lips. She felt light-headed enough from overexerting herself, and the hyperventilation certainly wasn't making matters any better. _A panic attack?! Really?! I have to have a panic attack now?!_

"We-we're getting close!" she stammered out. Lurida raced across the water a few hundred feet to their left, and Opal and Oro ran parallel to each other along the beach to their right. A brilliant flash of multicolored light exploded out from Opal every time Oro tried for a strike.

Arty was firing Nova Dust paintballs at the towering monster rushing towards them. Despite them normally obliterating anything in front of them, the resulting explosions seemed to be doing nothing more than just annoying the beast. "Um… guys? I think this thing's _way_ more powerful than we originally thought. My Nova's not doing anything to it!"

"Hold on. I can enhance your weapon. Take the wheel, Rime," Dante stood up and pushed Rime into her seat, giving the poor girl no other choice to grab onto the wheel and hope.

"Dante, I don't know how to-"

"Hold it still and keep your foot down on the right pedal," Dante flipped through the pages of her book with her trembling fingers. She tried to push down each racing breath, "Okay, Arty. Let the flames… of…" her eyes widened as pain ripped through her head. She fell to her knees, but kept trying to read, "Let the flames of chaos… flow… across…" tears formed in her eyes. She knew she couldn't get the words out. She knew that she was at her limit, "the…" she held onto her stomach. Try as she might, she couldn't push the panic attack down, "and…" a sob passed her lips as the pain grew, "take…"

"Hey! Dante!" Timbre told Arty to keep firing as she ran to Dante's side, "What happened?!"

"I… I can't…" Dante shivered. She finally fell over on her side and let her tears flow, "I did too much. I'm useless now…" she looked at her book of poems with a mixture of disgust and rage, "We're down one now because I overdid myself…"

"No, you did fine! We can still handle things from here!" Arty shouted as he continued his seemingly ineffective attacks. "Timbre, call Roland and Sepia. Ask for a status update on the gun!"

Timbre made sure Dante was laid as comfortably as possible on the speeding military vesile before pulling out her scroll.

Rime jumped up and quickly snatched it from her hands.

"Rime! What are you-"

"Let me call. It's something I actually know how to do. You take the wheel, T."

"Right…" Timbre jumped into the driver's seat and kept them on course, slowly angling the boat away from shore to move around the boardwalk they were quickly approaching.

.

Roland was leaning against the starboard side railing to keep up with the fight below. He put his scroll on speaker as soon as it started ringing, "Status report, right?" he didn't wait for an answer, "Saffron, Pepper, and Namib are down. Sanguwalker is back, and has some new guy with her. I'm guessing he's called Kokonatsu, and he's climbing up to us. Midas is on his tail, and Titian is holding off Sanguwalker," he paused for a moment, "Oh, and the gun isn't looking great. We might be able to get one shot off, but that's it."

"But it's ready to fire!" Curie called from the bow, "I'm just making some last-minute tweaks to improve the accuracy!"

"Get that?" Roland asked.

"Yeah… I think so." The sounds of explosions and a running engine tearing through water came in loud and clear from Rime's end of the line, but the sound quickly began to merge with the sounds coming directly from the boat coming up to the boardwalk.

Xannie jogged over from the gun, "About how long until it's in position?" she asked into the scroll.

"Um… hold on, let me check." Rime held the scroll away from her mouth as she asked the group on the boat. "It's about two minutes give or take. Maybe four?"

"That's not good enough!" Ahab shouted while winding rope back into the metal box attached to his hip, "We need more time!"

"Hey! Calm down! We're just getting it in position. It's up to you guys to aim and fire at it!"

"Right. Got it. We'll have it ready to fire when you get here." Roland finished before Ahab could shout again. He turned back to Curie and Sepia, "Be ready to fire in two minutes. That's how long you've got to put the finishing touches on!"

"Going as fast as we can, but we'll make it happen!" Curie shouted back as she slapped some metal panel inside the gun closed.

"Oh… and Roland?" Rime shuffled on the other end of the line.

"What?"

"I don't want to worry you… but your sister… she's not doing too good. She tired herself out from using her Semblance so much. She's pretty much out cold in the boat right now."

"Damnit, sis…" he pinched the bridge of his nose. As much as he admired his sister's ability to push herself well beyond her limits, he hated it about just as much, "Don't let her out of your sight. If she wakes up and starts saying _anything_ , freeze her mouth shut. She'd kill herself before she gave up."

"I'll keep a close eye on her, Roland. Don't worry." The line went dead as she hung up.

"Okay… not to sound blunt, but it's obvious our situation isn't the only one going down the crapper…" Xannie commented as she listened to the scuffles and gunshots from down below.

"That's what she gets…" Ahab grumbled. He kept his gaze cast over the side of the boat. Kokonatsu was nearing fast, "She thinks she's _so_ selfless, but-"

"Shut up about my sister and do your damn job," Roland began typing away at Writer's Block, "Xannie, leave Kokonatsu to me, Midas, and Ahab. I want you on support so can get as much info as you need to get a good read on him. If things go from bad to worse, Sepia and I will switch out and I'll help Curie," he glanced back to see Sepia pointing at various components of the gun with her eyes flickering with a bright golden light. Her Semblance was streamlining the process of fixing the gun for Curie, but she'd be even better in a fight, "You can be our trump card if you can learn enough about him."

Xannie nodded as a majority of her rings expanded and floated around her. "Right. I'll go ahead and set up a perimeter." She darted down the starboard side with her rings zipping along behind her.

With Xannie gone, Roland was left alone at the railing with his half-brother. He finished typing out a double-bladed axe jutting out from Writer's Block's ream, "I know that you're not the most supportive person when it comes to Dante, but this really isn't the time," he readied himself to fight, "You're on her team. Act like it."

Ahab spat onto the ruined boards of the deck before sneering at Roland, "Don't tell me how to act towards my _real_ family, mutt," Ahab shoved past him and headed further down the railing to where Kokonatsu was bound to come up, "We'll get the job done, with or without her. That's all that matters."

"Real family… huh?" Roland followed Ahab out, "I don't know what that has to do with anything considering that your only _real_ family is Shirley and Dad. If Dante cares about me, the Faunus born because Shirley wasn't good enough for Dad, then I _know_ you don't have it in you to care about her."

The sound of metal sliding against metal rang out as one of Ahab's harpoons shot from his weapon. He shot around and held it horizontally underneath Roland's adam's apple.

Roland wasn't fazed in the slightest. He'd been through nearly two decades of this type of behavior, after all. "I'm not going to stand by while you talk that way about my sister, Ahab."

"Keep talking, _brother_. All it does is get you in more trouble." He sheathed the harpoon, his point made. "You're lucky we're actually trying to kill something. If we had been back home, you bet I wouldn't have let you off so easy."

"You're the least of my worries, Ahab," Roland shoved past him, "I've fought people worse than you, killed things that are stronger, and overcome challenges greater than anything that you could _ever_ throw at me. You aren't a threat to me."

Ahab sucked at his teeth for a moment, considering pulling out one of his harpoons again, but even someone like him would know that there was more important things to be done, "Whatever. Let's just defend this stupid boat."

.

Lurida watched the glow begin to fade from the paint smeared across her arms. The Dust was finally almost used up, but at least they were almost to the boardwalk. _Well, here goes nothing…_

She emptied out the attraction devices from her tube into the zero-gravity field around her and smeared the remnants of wet paint from her hands onto them and the others floating around her. She splayed out her fingers and allowed all the attraction devices to shoot off towards the boardwalk, then used the last bits of Dust that still clung to her to send herself shooting back towards the Maelstrom team's boat.

"How is Opal holding up?!" she shouted as soon as she grabbed the railing of the boat and threw herself over it.

The team looked towards the beach. Oro was right on Opal's heels. They watched in horror as the masked figure raised their arm, releasing a large cloud of steam.

"Opal!" Timbre shouted.

"Yeah? Whatcha want?"

Opal suddenly appearing in the middle of the boat in front of them. Another trail of rainbow after images leading from her to the beach where Oro was left stunned from her target suddenly disappearing.

"Good god!" Lurida jumped, clutching her chest. "You about gave me a heart attack!"

Timbre jerked the boat to the side to avoid a piece of lumber from the boardwalk. They finally made it, and the Maelstrom had followed without too much of a hitch. She eased down on the throttle, readied her gloves, and turned to the other students, "Okay. I hate to do this, but I think that it might help us here…" she took a deep breath, " _Stay calm and don't panic while we fight this thing. We'll all be fine._ "

"Wait, what are you?..." Lurida began to ask.

"Just trust her, okay?" Arty cut her off as a strong sense of confidence and courage fell over him. Despite the shock of the revelation, he was really starting to appreciate Siren's Song.

"Yeah! Let's kill this thing!" Rime jumped over the edge of the boat. Using blasts of ice from her necklace, she was able to make large frozen stepping stones on the surface of the water. Lurida followed close behind, and Opal took to jumping across the ice platforms with Rime.

Dante also appeared to be caught in Siren's Song. She began to push herself up using her elbows.

"Okay… I think I've had enough of a rest…" she got one foot under herself. Her legs shook as she stood up straight. After flipping a small mechanism, her flare gun opened up to expose a small empty receptacle. From a pocket in her cloak, she pulled a small bright red Dust crystal and loaded it into the gun, "I'm ready to keep going…"

"Dante are you sure?" Arty asked, his voice full of concern. He was almost scared what Roland would do to him if his sister got hurt under his watch. He looked back to the short girl hopping off across the stones. _Wasn't she supposed to watch Dante?_

Timbre held Dante by the shoulders, "You know, _you should really res-_ "

Dante pointed up at the ferris wheel to show Timbre the masked man scaling the structure. He was just a few feet from getting to the yacht's hull, and then he'd be an issue for the boat crew.

"Get me onto the boardwalk… I can't fight the Maelstrom… I can't use my Semblance… but I've still got my weapon. I may play a more supportive role in my team, but I can still fight," she clacked her flare gun back together, "Don't try and use your Semblance to convince me not to keep my brothers and my friends safe… it won't work…"

Timbre was taken back, "You… you know about Siren's Song?..."

"Roland tells me everything nowadays…" Dante managed a smile through the needles of pain shaking around in her head, "It's like he trusts me again, and I'm not letting that trust go to waste. Get me over there and I'll do my best to keep those two GB agents from hurting anyone else."

Timbre was about to object when Arty cut her off.

"Timbre. Think you can make a bridge for her?"

"But, Arty!"

"No buts, Timbre. If she has a plan, then let her do it. Remember, we may be the Maelstrom _attack_ team, but we're not the ones that are actually going to kill it." He pointed to the yacht. "That up there is our only real chance. If that new GB guy gets up there… there's no telling what he's going to do to Roland and Sepia since they're on the list, too. I don't even want to think about what he'd do to Ahab, Xannie and Curie. So please, let Dante do what she needs to do. They're in trouble up there." He sighed, "Anything's better than nothing right now."

Timbre was a bit peeved that she was being shut down, but she understood the stakes. "Alright." She aimed a fist to the boardwalk and launched a wire. It stuck firmly into one of the main supporting pylons. "Your balance good enough to run on this? Or should I use the body-throw technique I've been working on to get you over there?"

"I'll be fine. I'm a decent swimmer if I fall…" Dante grabbed the wire between her hands and put a foot down on it, "But… shoot me with some Gravity Dust just in case…

.

"That's fantastic…" Roland held up his axe as Kokonatsu jumped over the railing onto the boat. He looked beyond to see the Maelstrom's shadow looming across the boardwalk. Its bulbous white head pulsed with dull flashes of rainbow colored light along the veins of color running through it. Its eyes twisted and turned as it examined the boardwalk and its occupants. It raised its tentacles to attack, but a few ice spikes to the eye made it focus the attack on the girl running on ice platforms beside it.

"So… are you gonna give a big long introduction to us, or…" he looked to Ahab and Xannie as she neared. Her Semblance must have told her that he and Ahab wouldn't be able to take him by themselves, which he definitely didn't find reassuring. He finally faced the molten eyes of the newcomer, "can we just get to throwing you off the boat so we can get on with our day?"

Kokonatsu balled his fists in preparation for a three-way attack. "No need. It'd be a waste of my time talking to another _Faunus_."

"Then talk to _us_ then. I'd love to know your plan in full detail. All crummy villains end up spilling the beans every now and then." Xannie held her arms out, the controls on a holographic screen causing her bladed rings to spin like table saws.

Ahab elected not to waste any more time talking. He rushed Agent Kokonatsu with two harpoons raised. He brought the hooks of both down towards his head, their steel gleaming through the air.

They clanged loudly as they collided with Kokonatsu's crossed arms. He had successfully blocked the sloppy attack and repaid it with a swift kick to Ahab's stomach.

"Ah!" Ahab fell back. His harpoons clattered to the side as he hit the deck. He slid all the way to the open area on the stern of the yacht. With the stern being the part of the boat that was actually lodged into the ferris wheel, his back hit a stray beam to stop him.

Kokonatsu ran and raised his foot for another attack while Ahab clambered to get up.

"Deja vu…" Roland muttered. He swiped at Kokonatsu's side from behind, having kept up the pace with his adversary. Behind him, Xannie's rings shot forwards and around him.

Her rings zipped the air and clanged against Kokonatsu's gloves. The rings slammed down into him over and over. Xannie had no intention of giving this lunatic any room to breathe.

Roland backed away from Kokonatsu as Ahab got back up to join the fray. He leaned against the starboard side to get a look at the gun, "Can you two fire on the Maelstrom now?!" he shouted back to Curie and Sepia.

Sepia clapped as Curie climbed up through the broken windshield to the bridge of the yacht.

Curie flicked on the LCD display and looked through the camera mounted behind the sights of the gun, "It's… almost… in… range…" she watched the gun turn and level itself on the monster. The Maelstrom's eye was moving back and forth within the crosshair. "It's gonna be close, but I think I can shoot it!"

"Sepia! Slam the paint into the barrel!" Roland shouted.

Sepia threw three vials of Nova Dust down the barrel of the artillery gun. The breaking of glass and ensuing _splat_ told her that it would cover the inside well enough. She hopped down from the gun and ran across the deck to take cover, then whistled to tell the boat crew that it was good to go.

The plan was going downhill fast. Kokonatsu latched onto a pair of Xannie's rings, "I've had enough of… _**WHAT?!**_ "

The rings collapsed around his hands and threw him down against the deck. Two more closed around his ankles to pin him down completely.

"This guy is secured! Our success rate went up dramatically! Fire when ready!" Xannie happily shouted back.

Curie waited until the crosshair was completely filled with the white and rainbow sheen of the massive creature. "Firing in 3… 2…"

.

As the fight on the boardwalk raged on and the Atlesian scouting boat continued to circle the Maelstrom, a deafening boom echoed across the island. The left barrel of the yacht's artillery gun exploded into a great ball of fire, blowing that half of the gun apart. A similarly burning projectile shot towards the Grimm. The artillery shell, charged by Arty's Nova Dust paint, caused a second explosion against the Maelstrom's giant round head.

"Direct hit!" Arty cheered as dark black smoke enveloped most of the monster. The sense of triumph was short-lived, however, as he watched the tilted ferris-wheel slowly continuing its course towards the ocean, completely at gravity's whim. "No… no no no!"

Snaps and splashes echoed across the ocean as the concrete pylons beneath the ferris wheel crumbled. Unable to stop it, the attack group could only watch as the structure tilted further and further. With a thunderous splash, salt water sprayed high into the sky as the wheel hit the water below. The golden supports had worked for a time, but something had gone horribly wrong.

"Curie!" He knew he should've expressed worry for his teammates and his best friend. Even Xannie and Ahab should've been called for, but as he watched the ride where he had realized how happy he truly was with his life outside of Atlas, the only name he could think of to call for was Curie's.

Rime and Opal stood still as the ferris wheel crashed into the water. Neither of them could do a thing as it crumpled lower and lower into the ocean. Lurida tried to float towards it, but she knew that she wasn't going to get there fast enough. They all could only watch and hope as the black smoke faded around the Maelstrom.

Rainbows shimmered across the surface of the Grimm. A wad of crunched metal sloughed off of its flesh. The artillery shell had merely crumpled against the monster, but the impact was enough to give the students a revelation as to how the thing was surviving against the Atlesian military. The shimmer across its body was something that they all knew well.

"That thing… it has an _aura_?..." Timbre whispered in disbelief.

Arty threw an entire vial of white paintballs against the floor of the boat and jumped on them.

"Arty! No!" Timbre reached for him, but it was too late. He had already launched into the sky above her.

Left alone on the boat, Timbre cursed to herself. "Dammit Umber… _Dammit!_ " She ran and jumped into the driver's seat and floored the gas. If her leader was going to possibly get himself killed, she was at least going to be there to watch his back.

.

The groans and aching whimpers coming from inside the yacht were starting to be drowned out by the sounds of rushing water filling the rooms within. The bottom half of the boat was sinking fast, but for the time being, the bow was still out of the water. They weren't quite dead yet.

Sanguwalker jumped back away from Titian. Her tendrils rushed back behind her and began pulling her away from her opponent, "Well, it has been wonderful fighting you once again! I think you've got enough to deal with for the time being."

Titian snarled as she looked to the other members of her team lying about the boardwalk. She knew they were all still alive. "Dammit…" She turned to give a last glance to Sanguwalker, but she was already gone. "Dammit... dammit…" Titian ran for the ferris wheel, knowing that others were still on it, including members of her own team. She jumped down off of the boardwalk and began hopping from beam to beam of the mostly sunken ferris wheel. As she neared the minty-green hull of the boat, she saw a flash of gold amongst the metal. At first, she thought it was just a piece of the supports Midas had strengthened earlier, but then she saw tan skin start to move amongst it.

"Midas!" Titian jumped carefully from beam to beam until she reached him. He was still breathing, thank god, but he was definitely banged up and soaked from the ferris wheel falling. As she helped him to his feet, pounding on his back to get out any sea water in his lungs, she took a chance to glance at her scroll. Of her team, Midas still had around half of his aura following the fall. Curie's was mostly intact, with only a small fraction gone. She more than likely got beaten around inside the cabin of the boat, tossed like a ragdoll as it fell and hit the water. Ledning's aura bar was nearly full, and her own was closer to one-fourth. "Dammit. Well, at least we're all still alive."

Midas coughed and let Titian help him gain his balance on the side of the ferris wheel. "Oh… hey Rusty. What're you doing out here?"

She egged him to start moving to the yacht with her. As they ran across a beam, she filled him in, "Bird-brain ditched and the ferris wheel fell into the water. The Maelstrom's still kicking and… you're not going to believe this, but it has an aura."

"What?! Look, Titian. This isn't the time for jokes."

"I'm dead serious, Midas. Look." She pointed to the giant squid monster. The only sign that it had a super-Dust-charged artillery shell hit it was a little singe mark on the side of its head, above its right eye. "I've seen your buddy Burnie use Nova Dust before. It should've at _least_ taken a chunk out of that thing. But when that shell exploded against it, there was a large shimmer of colored light."

"Like when your aura gets hit…"

"Like I said, moron."

They climbed up onto the exposed bow of the Forté yacht, having to hold onto the guardrails and slowly descend towards the cabin in order not to slip and slam into any walls.

A whistle pierced the air. Sepia pulled herself over the railing of the boat. In the final fall of the ferris wheel, she had been tossed off. Only the rail caught her foot as she fell.

"Sepia! You alright, girl?" Midas motioned towards her, but she was already running down the near vertical deck.

 _He can't swim! He can't swim! Why is it the Otter Faunus that can't swim?!_ she raced down the yacht using every rail and window to help her descent that she could. If Roland, Xannie, and Ahab were caught by the beams of the ferris wheel, then they would be fine for a little while.

Her heels clacked against the fiberglass walls of the boat that she was forced to stand on as she reached the crumbled stern. Water slowly rose as the ride began to crumple under its own weight on the seafloor. Luckily, Xannie, Roland, and Ahab were all piled up and dazed on what was the center support of the ferris wheel.

"Sepia… glad you're safe…" Roland pushed himself up and began helping Xannie and Ahab up, "How are the others…?"

' _Midas and Titian are fine, and I think Curie is, too. What happened to that guy that you were fighting?'_ she signed to him.

In a flurry of motion, Sepia was thrown against the broken boards of the deck. Xannie received a quick kick to the face, and Ahab was slammed back down against the metal supports.

"You runts are really starting to get on my nerves."

Roland reached for a grenade, but he found himself being forced against a bent beam originally intended to support one of the ride's cars. He felt Kokonatsu's powerful punches slamming into his face.

"Stupid Faunus! Always ruining things for everybody! First the stupid heifer on the dock, and now I have to deal with some rich kangaroo brat!"

"Hey!"

Kokonatsu froze with his fist reared back. He turned to see a girl dressed in red crouched down on a bright yellow passenger car.

Dante flipped the switch on the side of her flare gun. The Fire Dust crystal inside glowed so bright that every crack and crevice on the weapon glowed bright red. She squeezed the trigger, "Back off of my brother!"

A fully charged Dust crystal exploded out from her gun, sending her crashing into the water below. The crystal burned through the air. Light poured across the yacht as the crystal burst like a star against the side of Kokonatsu's head. Bone cracked across his mask, and the force of the explosion sent him flying straight through a support beam and hurdling down into the foamy water of the sinking ferris wheel.

Roland rubbed his eyes. His back ached from being pressed even harder against the beam by the explosion, "Ahab," he tried to shake off the daze that Kokonatsu had left him with while pointing to where Dante had fired from, "She-"

Ahab was already up and jumping from beam to beam. Upon reaching the car Dante had been standing on, he dove into the water.

"Hey guys." Midas commented as he and Titian slid down next to them all. "Damn! You sent that freak _flying_!"

"Please… not so loud... Oh _geez_ that hurt…" Xannie said, rubbing her jaw as she pulled herself to her feet, "Thank goodness for aura…"

"Well… kinda…!" Curie cautiously climbed down from the bridge. The lenses of her glasses were cracked and her hair was even messier than usual, but other than that she was fine. "Aura's good for us, but… I don't know how we're going to deal with the Maelstrom now. I don't even think it's a Grimm."

"What do you mean?" Xannie asked.

"I mean, I don't think that _thing_ is really a Grimm. Look at it! Have you ever seen a white and rainbow-colored Grimm before? Last I checked, they've only been black and red… This thing can't be a Grimm. It can't be… but judging from what we know the Grimm Brotherhood is up to, I'd say the most likely answer is that they managed to make an artificial Grimm."

Xannie's eyes went wide with understanding while everyone else left on the boat looked at her as if she were crazy.

"That's impossible…" Midas cracked, "I mean, Atlas looked at weaponized Grimm at one point, but they abandoned that venture _decades_ ago."

"It would explain the aura… and how it's surviving on Vytal." Xannie began tapping away at a holographic panel, obviously not too shaken by the sinking of the boat and ride that it was attached to, "Ever since mankind settled on Vytal, any Grimm that made it anywhere _near_ the island would just… vaporize. If this were a real Grimm, it'd be hundreds if not thousands of years old, but even old and powerful Grimm die on Vytal. If they're truly sticking to that story Lurida told me to look into, then it makes sense for them to _make_ something to fit their whole agenda. Vytal is heavily protected from _people_ , not _Grimm_. So it makes sense for them to… I guess bioengineer something like this. How… I don't have a clue…"

"Maybe they stole the old research notes from Atlas?" Titian suggested, despite knowing full well that General Léon wouldn't let something like that get by on her watch.

"There's no telling…" the screen in front of Xannie dissipated, "I also don't have a clue as to how we beat this thing… If you're right, this isn't even a real Grimm, half of our gun blew up, we're on a sinking boat, and about half of us aren't in any shape to fight. I'd say our chances are in the 'slim to none' range as of right now…"

Roland tore off his axe and shaped it into a straight rod, "The Maelstrom team had to see its aura too. If it has an aura, then it can be broken. It's probably close after Atlas attacked it and we fired on it. Once the Maelstrom team breaks it," he tossed the black and white rod to Curie, "We fire again with the barrel that didn't blow up. There's the new firing pin. Yes, it'll hold up for one shot. Think you can get the other side of the gun functioning enough to pull this off?"

Curie examined the rod carefully. "Did you… you just made a _firing rod_ with your Semblance? How did you even know how to make this?"

"I've read a lot of books, Curie," he began clacking away at Writer's Block once more, "A few of those books were about guns. I just made a bigger version of what's in your typical pistol."

Sepia gave a thumbs up from behind, _And Curie tried to tell me that it was nothing like the ones in my guns! Ha!_

"But can you make that happen if we're all helping you?" he asked again.

"Y-Yeah! I can! I can do that!" Curie nodded quickly, "I fixed the whole thing for the most part. We can do thi-"

A strong wave rocked against the half-submerged boat and the ride. It lurched, sending the boat leaning forwards. The ferris wheel had finally settled, and gravity took its hold on the heavier end of the boat. Roland, Sepia, Xannie, and Team MTLC minus Ledning scrambled to jump onto the boat as the deck leveled out. When the creaking finally stopped, the boat rested peacefully atop the crumpled ferris wheel.

"Yo…" Midas croaked as he pulled himself up, "Everyone good…?"

"Yeah…" Titian pried herself up off the deck.

Curie straightened her glasses, "I'm alright."

Sepia clapped to confirm that she was, in fact, still alive.

Roland looked out in horror as he leaned up, but he was relieved to see that Dante was already being safely dragged through the water to the beach by Ahab. He let out a sigh of relief. However, this sense of security disappeared as a shadow grew around them.

Xannie flipped herself over onto her back, "Oh god…" her eyes widened as the pulsing white tentacle descended upon them.

.

 _No. Don't you dare._ Arty felt a strange mixture of panic, courage, and disbelief. He knew what he was doing was crazy, but as he watched the tentacle readying to slam into the yacht where his friends were, he had to speed up his plan to beat the Maelstrom with everything he had. The air Dust on his boots kept him aloft, zooming along the surface of the water similar to how Lurida had done earlier. He'd done this enough times to actually be used to it, unlike his first fumbles back in the Emerald Forest upon arriving at Beacon.

"Arty!" he heard someone call from next to him.

"Timbre?!"

"You're going to get yourself killed you moron!" She jumped up onto the seat, wires drawn, "But you're not doing this alone!" She fired a wire at the tentacle and reeled in, sending her winding around the Grimm's appendage. The wire began tightening around it, causing it to bulge and twitch violently. Timbre landed on top of it and held on with all of her might, but it was obvious neither her or her wire would hold for much longer, and it was still on its crash course with her dad's yacht. "Arty! Hit it!"

Bone plating cracked out around Arty's boots as his feet connected to the Maelstrom's tentacle. He let himself fall back off the side of the appendage, then turned in midair with his bat glowing violet, yellow, and red. He and Roland hadn't quite figured out a name for the mixture yet, but it was a toss up between Galactic Dust and Supernova Dust.

The end of his bat connected with the Maelstrom's tentacle, and nothing happened for a moment aside from a flash of violet, yellow, and red light. Then his ears popped as if were in the depressurized cabin of an airship. Rainbow colored light collected around the epicenter, then the world went black for Arty. Black fire burst out from the point of impact with a visible shockwave. Arty was sent flying back and the Maelstrom's appendage was sent rocketing back away from the yacht.

 _Okay… definitely more powerful than we envisioned…_ Arty thought to himself as he soared through the air. He turned, gritting his teeth as he saw another tentacle reaching for him. "But I think I have enough in me for one more hit!" He reeled Palette back, ready to strike, but he didn't account for the jerky and unpredictable movements of the tentacles. With a quick flicking motion, Arty found the air being knocked out of his lungs as he slammed full-body into the tentacle.

Timbre shared a collective wince between herself, Rime, Lurida, and Opal. She had already clipped her wires and landed on the same ice platform as Rime and Opal to give Arty space after saving the group on the boat, but she never once thought that he would be stupid enough to use the newest iteration of he and Roland's line of 'Dust that should never be used'. Then her scroll dinged, and so did Arty's in all likelihood.

 **Roland Wells: I'm thankful for it right now, but I'm just gonna say that we need to get rid of all of that Gravity and Nova Dust mixture…**

She quickly messaged back.

 **Timbre Forté: how close do you think we are to breaking its aura now?** **those explosions werent exactly tiny**

A response came almost immediately.

 **Roland Wells: It's gotta be close. I doubt that Atlas would use anything close to something as unstable as we've been hitting it with. Between us and them… Xannie says that it can't have much more left, but there's no real way to know.**

Timbre swore to herself, realizing how helpful Carmen would be in their current situation. She quickly typed back a response.

 **Timbre Forté: so we just need to keep hitting it**

Timbre closed her scroll and returned it to its pocket in her corset. "Great… looks like we're stuck fighting directly for the time being..."

Rime crossed her arms, "You got a plan since your leader's kinda…" They all winced again as they watched Arty go flying again as the Maelstrom tossed him towards the center of the island. "Oh geez…"

"Arty!" Timbre yelled.

"He'll be fine for tha time bein. Kid's got enough Gravity Dust on 'im ta cushion tha fall! We just need ta start wailin' away!" She looked to Rime as she crouched down on their icy platform with her knees bent as far in as they would go, "Oi, Shorty, you might wanna make this thing a bit more stable. Eitha that or get outta tha way!" Multicolored afterimages formed around her flip-flops. She aimed her boomerang down between her feet, and used her Semblance to click the activation button a few dozen times before the slug could get all the way out of the barrel. Her weapon emptied itself, causing an explosion at her feet. The ice cracked and melted as she was sent up into the sky like a ballistic missile.

Opal shot off with a trail of afterimages behind her. As her speed increased, she shot right past the Maelstrom and into the sky above. Then she kept going. And going.

"Guess she's not coming down for a bit!" Rime pulled her hand away from the platform. She jumped onto another platform, "Good luck- _woah!_ "

She ducked to avoid a stray laser blast from Lurida's orbiters, then stood back up, "Good luck, T!"

"Right…" Timbre stood stunned for a moment as she watched the small orange dot soar towards the Amity Perch. "We're going to need it…" She shot a wire at a tentacle and launched herself off of the ice block.

.

 _I'm dead. I'm definitely dead._ Wind whipped past him, causing his hair and clothes to flutter rapidly. _Yep. I'm dead and this is the afterlife_. _Everything is dark here._

 _Hey, buddy, chill the hell out. It'll also help if you opened your eyes._

Arty obeyed. Upon opening his eyes, all he could see was blue sky and clouds. _Yep. I'm dead, and that's the voice of a god or some other deity talking to me. Hi… whoever you are._

 _I'm flattered, kid…_ the voice in Arty's head cut out for a moment, then came back in with hazy pop, _Orchid says that you'll be fine. She'll keep your wounds down to a minimum. She just wanted me to make sure that you wouldn't freak out too bad._

 _What? Who the hell is Orchid? And If you're not a god or… whoever, who are you?_ He looked down at his body, noticing he was flying through the air. "Oh crap… why is it always me?" Luckily Palette was held in a white-knuckled death grip in his right hand. He hated the idea of losing his weapon again. Upon observing himself further, he noticed there was a slight glow around him, but it wasn't his aura. _Hey, are you sure I'm not dead? I look kinda… ghostly._

 _That's Orchid's thing. Your aura is gonna break, and this is gonna hurt a lot, but you won't die. Vince sent us when your professor noticed a bunch of you had gone off, and when the general came up screaming about you guys stealing a boat._

 _Yeah… our bad. You said Vince, right?... You're with that Vincentas guy? And what exactly do you mean by 'this'?_ The experience of talking to someone in his head was extremely unnerving for Arty, and that was only intensified by the fact he was flying at high speeds hundreds of feet off the ground.

 _You ask a lot of questions, don't you? How about you worry about your landing on the tower. Orchid will fill you in there._

 _Landing?_ Arty turned just in time to see the white brick of the Perch of Amity rapidly approaching his face before everything around him became nothing but pain and dust. He groaned as he rolled against cold tile. He was back on solid ground at least.

"How nice of you to land in the recovery area!"

Dazed and confused, Arty lifted his head to see a woman clad in all green jogging over with a similarly pale green box with a white cross emblazoned across it. Her coat reached down to her ankles, but was only buttoned across her torso. Black hair had been ironed straight down her back, and it all flowed out from a mint green beret with a golden pin on the side.

She cracked open a pale yellow tablet and held it up to Arty's nose, then gestured down to the rows of makeshift beds around the circular courtyard far below. Dotted amongst were a few of his friends who were either in a bed themselves or out helping around with first aid. Out of all of them, Cayenne, Damascus, and all of Team ANTE were busting their butts the hardest to get every injured person taken care of.

"You have particularly good aim, or particularly good luck, to have landed here. Good show!" she cracked open another tablet to make sure that Arty was fully awake.

Arty shoved her hand away, "Good lord! What the heck is that stuff?"

"Sulfur," she smiled as she tossed the tablets out of the archway of the tower. She glanced up at the chunk of white stone that was missing from the top of the arch that Arty came in through. They sat in a circular hallway in the top of Amity Perch. Behind them, the center of the circular space was taken up by the large point of a jagged white crystal coming down from the ceiling. Arty quickly realized that it was the bottom of Amity Coliseum.

Orchid gestured to the broken arch in front of her, "That chunk there is where you hit your head. I'm thankful that I was able to keep you healed up enough to withstand that impact. Your aura is broken, though, as I'm sure you've noticed. You had just enough to survive with my help. That certainly is unfortunate… or is it incredibly fortunate? Perhaps the former..." the woman popped open her first aid kit and went to work patching Arty up without so much as asking first, "Burne 'Arty' Umber, correct? Basic memory test: tell me your mother's name, tell me how old you were when your sister was born, and tell me what you had for breakfast this morning."

Arty didn't know what else to do but answer. "Uhhh… Daphne Umber, ten, and… I just had some coffee... and a funnel cake… I'm sorry, but, who _are_ you and why are you asking me so many questions?" He suddenly jumped up and ran for the archway, "My friends! I have to go help them!"

"Woah!" the woman grabbed him by the back of the shirt and pulled him back to where he was lying before. Her strength came as a surprise from her small frame, "I'm Orchid, but you might know me better as Vincentas' wife. Second, I'm making sure you don't have any obvious brain damage. It'd suck if everything up there got all scrambled, right?" She let out a nervous chuckle, "As for your friends, you can't help them with a concussion and no aura. If you need to calm down, I can have you take a benzodiazepine."

"Please… no more tablets. I'll be fine. So… this is going to sound crazy, but, a voice in my head told me your name as I was flying here, and that was before the concussion."

"Oh you don't have to worry about that. That was just Dorimizu. He's one of my teammates… or co-worker, rather. That was his Semblance. I know, it's pretty weird talking to him for the first time, but you're not going crazy. I'm actually talking to him right now. Told him you were fine," Orchid began examining Arty's head by parting his hair, "Feel free to watch your friends. It won't be long before the Atlesian military gets to them and puts an end to this madness," she pointed out to the fleet of boats speeding across the coast, "They will be safe and sound then."

"But the Maelstrom… It'll wreck the rest of the island! The military couldn't do anything before. If they don't come with bigger guns, they're not going to finish that thing off before more people get hurt!"

"It is for them to handle, not you," Orchid went on wrapping Arty's head, "It is not for you to worry about… what… what is that…?" her eyes widened at the line of color streaking down from the sky towards the Maelstrom.

Arty smiled as he watched the rainbow-colored streak with her. "Oh… that's my friend Opal."

Orchid's eyes widened, " _SOME OF MY STUDENTS ARE OUT THERE?!"_

.

"She's coming back down!" Curie shouted as she finished replacing the damaged firing rod with the one Roland made. She slammed the hatch in the weapon's base shut. "We only have one more chance with the artillery. We need to make it count if we're going to save anybody."

"Better hope that thing's aura breaks from whatever she's planning to do…" Titian commented watched the Maelstrom from the railing.

Sepia held up her scroll, ' _Oh, it will. Afterimage is… pretty good when she gets enough force behind it. Hitting that thing at terminal velocity should do the trick.'_

Color burst out above the Maelstrom. Opal smiled from within a shell of after images of herself. Her multiplied fist came down on top of its head in a flash of rainbow colored light. Its white flesh caved in from the shockwave that rippled through it. She fell into its elastic skin and used it to jump back towards the water. Upon looking back, she let out a loud " _Woohoo!_ " as she saw the rainbow fractures across the Maelstrom that she was hoping for.

After being hit by the best guns that Atlas had to offer, a super charged artillery shell, a band of students, an incredibly unstable Dust mixture, and one giant punch from a girl-gone-missile, even the strongest aura would have to shatter. The Maelstrom's aura broke with a flash of prismatic light that dazzled the entire shoreline with every color of the rainbow. The giant monster let out a deep gurgling roar that seemed to emanate from deep inside its bulbous head.

"Midas, now!" Roland shouted from the busted windshield on the bridge.

Midas slammed his hand against the artillery gun. The entire weapon began to shine as it became a gilded version of its former self. Inside, the last remaining shell glowed gold, yellow, and red with Midas' Semblance and Arty's Nova Dust.

"Fire!" Roland shouted.

Xannie stabbed the button with her finger as soon as the monster entered the crosshairs on the screen.

Everyone on deck dove for cover as the gun exploded, firing the remaining shell as it did so.

.

From their perch at the top of the tower beneath Amity Coliseum, Arty and Orchid watched as a bright golden object soared from the downed ferris wheel and into the Maelstrom's right eye. The shell exploded, blowing half of the Grimm's head off. The tentacles flailed for a short while before finally falling limp against the sand and water. Even from their distance, they could see a white mist rising from the dead beast.

"We… we did it…" Arty chuckled. "We actually did it…" But something didn't feel right. He didn't feel accomplished. The fact that this thing had an aura meant it had a soul, and they had all snuffed it out. _But it was attacking the island. It wasn't normal. We had to do it._ He looked over to Orchid, who stood rigid and stone-faced as she gazed out to the destruction down below. "Hey… are… are you okay?"

Orchid flashed him a smile, "Yes. Yes, of course. I'm just… taken back that you kids just actually killed that Grimm," she went back to tending to Arty's wounds, "Now we can put all our focus on the Grimm Brotherhood…"

"They're still on the island? I thought they were retreating?"

"Atlas is catching whomever they can," she sat back upon finishing his bandages, "Don't relax quite yet. General Léon is not happy with you kids at all…"

"Oh… I bet not…"

Arty stared out at the fading mass of white and rainbow flesh. Though he couldn't see them from so far away, he could just imagine how everyone must have been doing. Roland would be staring out at the Grimm with a cold smile on his face. Timbre would be jumping around and screaming with joy along with Rime and Opal. Lurida would already be passed out with a small smile of success on her lips, and Xannie would already be running out along the ice platforms to congratulate her sister on a job well done. Saffron, Pepper, and Namib would all be laying out on the boardwalk with a feeling of joy and relief as their efforts were proven to be worth the outcome. Ahab would be blowing the whole thing off while Dante fought through a rush of sleepiness to cheer for their accomplishment. Midas would be screaming at the top of his lungs, and Titian would join in to share in his celebration. Curie would already be running to the Pillars of Vytal to check on him, but he also imagined that she would be crying tears of happiness in knowing that it was all over. He didn't know it at the time, but his artist's imagination was spot on in every account.

* * *

"Okay. Just got a text from Saffron. Léon and Shirley just wrapped things up with lecturing Team SPCE. Opal said that Team STON already got a talking to, and Xannie says that Team GLXY is pretty shaken up after their talk." Roland listed off. He sat cross legged on a blanket laid out in the courtyard around the Perch of Amity.

"Rime said that her punishment is… one thousand push-ups each day… as recommended by Frost after General Léon decided that she hadn't done enough to warrant any legal action given the circumstances," Timbre looked up to the rest of her team. All of Team ARTS with the addition of Dante sat in a circle of blankets to recover, "Don't you think that the general is going to be upset that you're not with your team, Dante….?"

"I just barely kept a lunatic from killing my brother… do you really think I want to let him out of my sight? I already talked to Robin about it, and he gave the go ahead," Dante took a bite out of a stale piece of bread. Beside her sat a pile of ten demolished MREs, less than desirable rations meant for Atlas soldiers, and she was in the process of chowing down on her eleventh.

' _Here I thought Roland got hungry when he used his Semblance too much…'_ Sepia leaned her head against Roland's shoulder, ' _How's MTLC holding up, Arty?'_

Arty took a sip of water from a canteen. "The usual. Stern talking to from the General and Lieutenant General and the punishment of cleaning the bathrooms and the obstacle course. Once they get back to Atlas that is."

"What do you think your parents are gonna do when they get here?" Roland gently sat his hat to his side and put an arm around Sepia with the same absent mindedness as usual. He didn't want to say it out loud, but he was just glad to have her so close to him after everything, "Your dad gonna scream his head off at you, or…?"

"I'm pretty sure my mom's going to be worried sick when she hears I got backhanded by a giant octopus and my dad's going to be just as furious as the General." He took another sip of water, "I'm more worried about whether or not we're going to be expelled…"

"We're not going to get _expelled_ , Arty…" Timbre fell to her back on her blanket, "We'll get in trouble again… sure, but not expelled."

"Yeah, but that was kind of… _our_ idea to go out there and try to fight," Arty looked up to the sky, "but maybe you're right… we'll probably just get yelled at and disqualified from the tournament."

"Right… because kicking a bunch of students out of the tournament during the celebration of one-hundred years without war for taking on a mythical Grimm and killing it to save thousands of lives when full-fledged Huntsmen and Huntresses were not present would be fantastic press, wouldn't it?" Roland rolled his eyes, "The tournament is under all four kingdoms. If they're gonna kick anyone out, then they probably need the approval of all the headmasters, and you know that Alabaster has our backs."

"Mother wouldn't dare remove any teams from the tournament. That would only give further legitimacy to the Grimm Brotherhood's actions…" Dante looked over to Sepia, "What's she saying…?"

Timbre looked over to her partner to translate, "She says that Shade's headmaster probably wouldn't do anything either. Apparently he's pretty lax."

"You don't think our parents would pull us out of it, then?" Arty looked off at nothing in particular, "I mean, Timbre, your dad already tried to tear you away from Beacon before. What's to say he won't do it again? I already know my dad hates the fact that I'm going to Beacon, so this isn't going to go over well with him at all…" he sighed, "I'm just scared that somehow, some way, somebody's going to tear us apart and away from the lives we want to live…"

"You haven't the slightest clue how much joy I would take in doing that, Burne," said the woman standing as straight as a rod just a few feet behind Arty.

Arty felt his blood run cold as he saw the two adults walking towards him and his team. He shot to his feet and, out of pure habit, saluted General Khidna Léon and Lieutenant General Tsuga Kauri. He didn't know why, maybe deep down, he thought he could earn her favor at least a little bit before she handed down her punishment. "General Léon, ma'am."

Timbre forced a smile up at the woman and her glorified secretary, "Oh, General Léon! We were just talking about you!"

"Yeah. I was just about to say how much of a bi-" Roland was cut off by a flying MRE to the head from Dante's direction.

"The next one's for you, Sepia," Dante held one of the bricks of food towards her next target.

 _Got it,_ Sepia gave a thumbs up in understanding, _I'll keep it down as always._

"Great… the little monster's corrupted Headmaster Wells's daughter, too." Tsuga sneered, "Why Onyx decided to let him into his school, I'll never know. Maybe the old coot has gone off his rocker."

"I am not in the mood to listen to your snide remarks today, Lieutenant General." Khidna growled. She pushed back a few frazzled strands of hair into her bun.

"Ma'am, we are willing to accept whatever punishment you are to hand to us," Arty said quickly.

Tsuga sneered, "Oh, you can bet your a-"

"What did I. Just. Say. Kauri?" General Léon snapped her neck to her subordinate.

At that, Tsuga finally shut his mouth.

She sighed, "I want this day to be over as much as you all do, so I will make this brief. You _children_ have disobeyed direct orders from an officer of Atlas, conspired against the plan that Atlas itself laid out, stole one of our boats to carry this out, put yourselves all in the line of fire without taking any of the proper pathways to do so, aided in laying waste to an entire boardwalk, and you all could have easily gotten hundreds killed had anything in your improvised plan gone wrong."

Timbre shot to her feet, "The _Maelstrom_ destroyed the-"

"But," General Léon went on, "you all were working to do what you believed would best help the general public. I acknowledge that none of you are soldiers, and that none of you are disciplined enough to be. You all acted as Huntsmen and Huntresses, and did so by acting without question for the good of the people during a time of crisis. I do not agree with your… choices, but they were ones that Huntsmen and Huntresses would make."

"So we're not in trouble…?" Roland piped up.

General Léon shot him a glare, "I am leaving that matter up to your individual headmasters. I have far more important matters to attend to."

"Th-thank you, Ms. Léon." Arty stuttered.

Tsuga took a step towards Arty, "Don't you _dare_ refer to her as anything other than her rank you miserable little-"

"Thank you as well, Arty," General Léon turned on her heels and strided away from the group.

Arty's hand fell away from his forehead. _Did she just…?_ _And by my nickname?..._

"That's your cue, bub," Roland grinned up at Tsuga, "Have fun with the paperwork!"

Sepia stuck her tongue out at the official while signing a plethora of obscenities.

Tsuga opened his mouth to say something, but was cut off by General Léon once again.

"I do not have time to wait on you, Kauri."

He huffed and stomped away with her, his face red with embarrassment.

"So… is that it?" Timbre asked, looking to her leader. "I mean… that went _way_ better than I expected it would."

"I… I guess?" Arty answered.

"Well then…" Dante finished off her eleventh MRE and stood up slowly, "I should be on my way. Mother would probably like to speak with Ahab and I. Thank you all for allowing me to help today," she smiled as she began heading the same way that General Léon had.

"Hey, Dante?"

She turned to face the odd boy in orange.

"You did great out there today. I just wanted to say thanks… again." Arty held his hand out to her.

Dante quickly wiped away what might have been a tear forming in her eye, "I'm… glad that I could be of assistance… truly, I am," she grasped his hand and pulled him close, "and thank you for helping him when I couldn't. He'll never tell you how much you've all done for him, but know that it's more than he could have asked for."

"Oh…" He looked back to his partner, who only nodded in response. "N-no problem, Dante…"

Dante let go, "I look forward to the chance of fighting you all in the tournament! I'll see you all later," she made her way towards the eastern section of the Pillars of Vytal and disappeared between two marble columns.

' _What was so important that she had to whisper?'_ Sepia signed as Arty sat back down.

Arty flubbed his words for a minute, "Oh… just… she was thanking me again… and saying she was glad we didn't die."

"Right… so…" Roland looked around at all the wounded civilians and students. Though there were hundreds affected, very few were majorly injured. Not a single casualty was reported despite the destruction that had befallen Vytal. People were already up and helping the medics tend to others. From what he heard, there were already people in town making repairs to the buildings. It seemed far too good to be true. That had to be part of the Grimm Brotherhood's plan, but he couldn't quite put his finger on why it would be. If they wanted to cause fear and show they meant business, why did they let everyone out alive?

None of that mattered for the time being.

He let go of Sepia to get ready to stand, "How about we head down to the city when we're feeling better. We could help get things back to normal. Between all the students… I bet we could have everything repaired in a few days. They're saying that there isn't a whole lot of major damage to buildings… except for that one condo… and the sea ports were hit pretty bad," he read off his scroll, "I mean, being Huntsmen and Huntresses isn't only about fighting, right…?"

Arty shrugged, "I mean… yeah. That sounds like an idea I could get behi-."

"Timbre!"

She jumped at the sound of her own name, "Turf?!"

Not caring how fast he was running, he tackled her in a bear hug. "Are you okay? I heard about what you guys did to the giant octopus Grimm thing that was attacking the island!" He held her at arm's length, as if checking to see if she still had all her parts and wasn't injured. Upon seeing she was pretty much unharmed, he brought her closer again. "Oh gods! I was so worried when Alice told me you guys ran off."

Timbre couldn't keep herself from laughing. "Turf! I'm okay. Really!" She looked around to her teammates, "We all are."

"Are you guys crazy though? You're just _first_ years! Not even the third and fourth years were allowed anywhere near that thing!"

"I dunno…" Arty scratched his head, "Just thought we had a plan. The military couldn't make a dent, but we… kinda just went for it."

A wide grin filled Turf's face, "You guys are _nuts_ ," He went over and slung his arms around the rest of Team ARTS, "and I think that's why I love hanging out with you guys so much!"

"Ow…" Roland pulled his head away from Turf. Taking a beating to the face usually lead to at least a headache afterwards, "How are Alice and Ebon?" he thought for a moment, "...and Navy?"

"They're fine for the most part. Got into a little scuffle with some of those Grimm Brotherhood guys while we were training farther inland. No biggie for us though. Some lady in a green beret showed up and led us back here and had us help out."

"You met Orchid?" Arty asked.

Turf's eyes looked up and away from him, as if deep in thought, "Is that her name? I never actually caught it."

' _Wait, Orchid is here? Vincentas' wife?!'_ Sepia's eyes lit up, ' _She's the best sniper in all of Vacuo!'_

"Oh yeah… should've guessed you'd know her…" Arty recounted his experience with the medic at the top of the tower. "How someone as… pleasant as her ended up with a jerk like Vincentas, I'll never know."

' _Vincentas is a jerk, but the rest of his team from school are pretty awesome!'_ Sepia added as the conversation continued.

"Well, one forced sulfur up your nose and the other beat you with a door." Timbre giggled, "I'm surprised you don't hate her just as much."

' _How could he? She's kinda weird, yeah, but she's super nice. I'd even say nicer than Ms. Weaver,'_ Sepia grinned up at Roland.

"I'll fight you on that one," he chuckled, "So… since Dante ate the food that they provided for _all_ of us, do you guys wanna go get something to eat before we start helping out with the repairs? Maybe Team ANTE wants to come along?" he looked to Turf. Now that they had had a year to get to know each other, he hoped that Alice would be more open to the idea.

Turf smiled, "I bet she'd be up for it. Considering the day we had, we all deserve a break. Besides, everyone's starting to get back up on their feet. I'm really surprised there weren't any… you know."

"Deaths?" Timbre finished his sentence. She seemed to shrink back at the mention of the word. Memories of Koruss came briefly flooding back.

Turf tapped out a message on his scroll, presumably to his team. "Yeah… it's incredible. A giant albino sea monster attacks the one place in Remnant that doesn't have to worry about Grimm and everyone comes out relatively fine. Pretty unbelievable if you ask me." His scroll dinged and his smile grew wider, "She said she's up for it. Looks like this'll be the first time Teams ARTS and ANTE actually went to hang out for once."

As they went to meet up with Alice, Roland couldn't help but remember something Curie had said:

" _Judging from what we know the Grimm Brotherhood is up to, I'd say the most likely answer is that they managed to make an artificial Grimm."_

He tapped his lips as he went through the events of the day in his brain, _What would they gain from artificial Grimm...?_

"What the hell are they planning?..."

Roland turned to Arty, "What?"

Arty shook his head as he stood up, "Nothing… I was just thinking that exact same thing…"

"I didn't…" Roland furrowed his brow, "Didn't realize I was thinking out loud…"

* * *

Footsteps echoed off of the limestone walls of an empty bazaar. Textiles lined the skylights stretching across the narrow alleyways that made up a winding maze of market stalls. Oranges, blues, golds, and greens brought the dead market to life. Everyone had been moved away from their businesses to the hills inland to wait the attack by the Maelstrom out.

One girl sat alone on a stool in the bazaar, though. The market stand behind her was brimming with dyes of the brightest colors that could be produced in Vacuo. She had just placed a cleanly folded black cloak into a cardboard box at her feet when someone came through the cloth divider into the room. "Oh, Kokonatsu! Good to see you again! Sorry that I didn't get to stick around and help too much with the kids, but I had a few other things to tend to," she tucked a lock of black hair behind her ear. A rainbow of color shone bright underneath the thin veil of jet black that served as the outer layer of her hair.

Agent Kokonatsu, despite his short time within the Grimm Brotherhood, was given the privilege of wearing one of the highly coveted Grimm masks. The only reason he was ever given was that it was a gift for showing so much dedication and skill so early after his induction. "Doesn't matter. Everything went fine in the end… except the part where I got shot in the face with a flare gun."

Captain Sanguwalker shrugged, "Sometimes you have to take a hit for the team. That's not to say you weren't actually trying to cause harm. You fought _very_ well for your first time in the field, Kokonatsu," she hopped down from her stool and smiled at the pepper spray covered mask. Her black and rainbow hair levitated for just a moment while she looked him over. Her dark eyes finally settled on the glowing eyes of his mask, "I congratulate you on a job well done," she held out her hand. Dusty spots of red, yellow, and purple covered the dark skin of her arms all the way up to her shoulder. What was once a pristine pale yellow shirt and a pair of bright white jean shorts had become a mottled mess of dozens of different shades of color.

Kokonatsu glared back at her.

"Come on. I won't bite. I may outrank you, but I honestly believe that one day we can truly be equals. At least let me make this small gesture now to show my respect."

Reluctantly, he shook her hand. "Right…"

From the archway behind him, he could hear the cloth divider being pushed out of the way as a third person came to join them.

Sanguwalker smirked as she returned to her seat and crossed her legs, "Ah, Agent Deathstalker. How nice of you to finally join us."

"Yeah, sorry. Midas just would not shut up about how he couldn't believe that the General let us off so easily," Titian stopped between Kokonatsu and Sanguwalker, "That, and how _worried_ he is that his cousin's still in recovery… how funny is that, right?" she nudged Kokonatsu on the arm before returning to her superior, "Nicely done, by the way. You made our fight pretty convincing."

"Thank you. To you as well, and they never would've gotten such a good shot on the Maelstrom had you not degraded the supports of the ferris-wheel. Had Kokonatsu here not led his meddling cousin to the boat, the whole mission might not have ended so well." She glanced to the girl in red armor. "It's nice to see how well your Semblance combats his. That's good to note for any… future conflicts the Atlas branch may have with him."

"If he's around long enough, of course. I mean, we've already got Kokonatsu around, so Golden Boy is more of a hindrance than anything," Titian laughed, "I don't give him enough credit, though. He did help kill that thing, so… he's got that going for him. Commander Maelstrom's gotta be thrilled to bits that that thing isn't around to cause us any more trouble. There's not much more than those self-righteous jerks standing in our way now."

Kokonatsu reached up and grabbed his mask. Upon taking it off, silver-gray hair spilled out. Ledning Coyle looked to the two women standing before him. "Yeah. But we have the upper hand. They're nowhere closer to figuring out how close the Brotherhood has gotten to them."

Titian smirked, "See? I told you guys months ago. He's a natural at this stuff." She walked over to her partner, circling him in a stiff-legged march, "All that pent up rage and jealousy." She stopped and grabbed him by the shoulders from behind, "That thirst for power. That feeling that we were wronged by the world. All of us feel that way, Led. Once you opened up to me about your dear old father being the leader of not only Midas's dad's team but also the _general of all of Atlas itself_ , I knew you had to feel cheated. Like you weren't living up to the expectations left by Team Orichalcum. There just had to be something in you that'd bring you to us eventually. Thank god I decided to speed things up a little, hm?" She leaned into his ear, "I bet you can't wait to see the look on Midas's face when you have your boot over him, ready to crush him like the insignificant bug you always knew he was."

"You know that's not why I want him gone," Ledning yanked away from Titian's grasp, "With him gone, then it's just me to do what has to be done. Commander Maelstrom made it clear that I'm better suited for the job she has in mind. I'm here to do what's needed for the Grimm Brotherhood. That's it."

Titian pretended to pout, "Aww… are you sure that's all? You know you don't have to be as obedient as if you were actually under that Léon hag. Commander Maelstrom is _far_ more lenient with getting satisfaction from what we do. Maybe that's another reason you were so ready to join our cause."

"Shut. Up. Titian." Ledning balled his fists, the dark-colored metal coating his hands at it had earlier. Maybe someone just needed to teach the girl a lesson about pushing people's buttons. Maybe that would get her to drop it.

"Enough," powdered dyes shot out from their baskets behind the market stall. They encased Ledning's hands in a swirl of colors, "Now is not the time for this. Everything has gone according to plan, and we've even got the added benefit of having the third one of them confirmed to be awoken now. Let's not ruin the gains from today by snapping each other's heads off, alright?" She looked between the two Agents, "You wouldn't want me reporting to Lieutenant Chiman that we had an incident of Brother on Brother violence, do you?"

Both shook their heads.

The dye around Ledning's fists fell to the ground as Sanguwalker stood, grabbing the box containing her field attire as she did so. "Good," she headed to the bazaar's exit as they heard merchants beginning to return. "If you want to fight, leave it for the tournament, okay?" The dividing curtain fell as she disappeared into the growing crowd, nobody the wiser as to who she really was.

Titian smirked and looked to Ledning. "Better get changed out of your field outfit. Don't want anyone seeing you in that now do we?" She poked him in the chest before leaving to follow Sanguwalker, presumably back to the Atlas students' hotel to regroup with those foolish enough to fall for their facades.

Ledning tightened his grip on his mask. When everything was over, the world would be a better place. No unnecessary death. No pain. No expectations. With those few sentiments in mind, he got changed and packed up his clothes in another box as Sanguwalker had. Not long after, the Grimm Brotherhood's most promising recruit went on his way without a single regret from the day. From this point on, there was no turning back.


	54. V3Ch1: Warming Up

The coliseum was filled with the cheers and shouting of thousands of fans. In the late morning light, all of Amity Colosseum seemed to be glowing with a bright energy. Two days before, in the opening ceremony for the Vytal Festival, the massive structure's Dust levitation system was activated, pushing the tournament's locale into the sky just above the Perch of Amity.

It had been only two weeks since the Maelstrom's attack, but the island, its inhabitants, and all of the guests were going on with the festivities as if nothing had happened. It wasn't too difficult to recover from the massive Grimm attack since most of the damages were already repaired thanks to the collective efforts of the Atlesian military, the Academies, volunteer Huntsmen and Huntresses, and local construction crews.

In the middle of the combat arena eight contestants stood, four against four.

"Okay… you can do this, Timbre. _Just ignore the thousands of people watching you and chanting your name… Just… ignore…_ "

"Timbre, are… are you using Siren's Song on yourself?..." Arty asked, an eyebrow raised. Palette, his trusty paintball gun/baseball bat hybrid, was resting up on the black strap of his backpack.

Timbre nodded embarrassedly, "Yeah… it's… been a while since I've been in front of a crowd, you know? But..." wires uncoiled from beneath her flowy red sleeves. She made a quick adjustment to the mint green corset around her middle and flipped her black and red hair out of her eyes, "I think I can handle it. Don't worry about me."

"Hey guys!"

Team ARTS looked to Cayenne Canella, the flaming flamenco dancer of Team SPCE, who was waving enthusiastically with the hammer affixed to the bars on her arm from Team SPCE's side of the central platform. The red flower perched behind her left ear was positively glowing in the center, "Let's have a good fun fight! Okay?!"

"Don't expect us to go easy on y'all now." Saffron taunted. She toyed with the chain whip between her hands so she could accentuate every last one of her assets through the tied off blouse and mini skirt. A pair of filed cow horns stuck out through pale blonde hair and her wide brimmed hat, "We may have helped you kill that slimy sea creature when we all first got here, but that doesn't mean nuthin' in the ring!"

Roland snarled and rubbed at his temples. He straightened his hat to conceal a quick glance over to his teammates. He ironed his white dress shirt, violet vest, and even his khakis to look good for Team ARTS' team fight, but Saffron was making him feel like that was all a waste, "Can… can I _please_ just go against the plan and punch her?"

"Strategy, my dear friend," Arty said mockingly, "We stayed up late just to tailor a plan to deal with Team SPCE once we learned we were fighting them in the first round."

Timbre cocked her head at him, "Yeah, but I like to think that Roland knows more about what _they_ can do than they know what _we_ can do."

"Got that right, T. You and Arty didn't see Saffron and Pepper fight that Kokonatsu guy on the boardwalk." Roland growled as Saffron blew him a kiss.

Sepia grabbed Roland by the vest and dragged herself in front of him, as if blocking the kiss from reaching him. She stood as defiantly as she could within the shining dots of lights coming off of her sequin shirt. Even though the dress underneath came down to her knees, and her dark brown bustle kept her from accentuating as much as Saffron, she refused to be upstaged by that hussey.

Timbre rolled her eyes. Sepia and Saffron's little rivalry hadn't died down a bit since they first met. "Oh this is going to be _so_ much fu-" She jumped as the announcer's booming voice echoed throughout the stadium.

" _ **HEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEELLOOOOOOOOOOOOOOO VYTAAAAAAAAAL!"**_ the voice of Beacon's famous scatterbrained professor echoed across the entire stadium. Carmen Maple stood inside the announcer's booth with a microphone in hand, " _ **WHO'S READY FOR A MATCH FOR THE AGES?! A CLASH OF TITANS! BEACON'S ARTISTS VERSUS HAVEN'S FASHIONISTAS!"**_

Epazote's shoulders slumped. He looked down at the green sleeves of his baseball tee, then looked back to the forest green hiking backpack he had on, "How do they always forget I'm a dude…?"

"It's not too hard, man" Roland bit the inside of his cheek to keep from laughing, "Sorry, Epazota."

" _ **SO, WHAT DO YOU HAVE TO SAY ABOUT THESE FAAAAANTASTIC COMPETITORS, V?!"**_ Carmen held her microphone out to the side to smile at her co-announcer, "Vivian… that's you… that's your cue…"

The lanky man dressed head to toe flowey linen beside her inadvertently leaned away from her, finding her vast supply of energy somewhat off-putting. Being the headmaster of Shade Academy and close friend to Onyx Alabaster, he was never quite sure how someone like Carmen Maple made it to being a teacher in one of the Huntsmen Academies. At least Orchid, Dorimizu, and Yialli were somewhat serious about their jobs. He pushed his long straight dull brown hair out of his face. "Right…" he took the mic in front of him and leaned towards it, "Sorry about my co-announcer everybody. I believe she's just…" he looked over to see her bouncing in her seat and clapping rapidly, "excited… to see more of her students fight. I know we're all still _reeling_ from that last match, and so are the members of Team GLSS… considering they had to be carted off in stretchers... but it's time to continue! For the second match of today, we have Team ARTS of Vale against Team SPCE of Mistral! Combatants, you know the rules."

Both teams looked around as pairs of white hexagonal panels were projected around the far edge of the field.

Vivian let his voice get lower as he inched towards the microphone for dramatic effect, "Let's see what the roulette has in store for you, boys and girls."

The panels began to flicker with a collection of colored symbols. Each represented a different possible biome-based battlefield.

"No plants… no plants… no plants…" Roland mumbled to himself, knowing full well that Epazote would become a major trump card if he had even a patch of grass to work with.

The first panel of each set stopped, showing a dull brown symbol of a ruined urban area.

Roland patted Arty on the back as he pumped his fist, "Yes! That's perfect!"

The second panels stopped on a green symbol consisting of a few pine trees.

Roland's positivity died immediately. "No! That's _not_ perfect!"

"At least we both have a member with a large strength now. I work best in urban, Epazote can control plants… But whatever," Arty readied Palette as the stadium began to rumble, "Timbre will be able to maneuver great in both sides, so maybe we do have a slight advantage."

Sepia looked down at her guns, Avant and Garde, _But only three of us can communicate well… so that's a disadvantage as is…_ she thought to herself. Letting go of her guns to sign or text wasn't a risk that she could take in a fight like this

"We also have Sepia…" Timbre nudged her partner with her elbow and winked, "She's like the living embodiment of a trump card."

"Got that right…" Roland rested his fingers against the keys of Writer's Block, his arm mounted typewriter, "but I think she'd be better described as a wild card."

 _Guilty as charged,_ Sepia grinned at her teammates.

"Wild card in a deck of trump cards, then?" Arty remarked.

.

" _ **ENOUGH SITTING AROUND! FIGHT!"**_ Carmen screamed into the microphone. She kept her back turned to Shade's headmaster, Vivian Willows, to keep him from snatching the device back, " _ **I WANNA SEE IT ALL! PUT MY COMBAT CLASS TO THE TEST! RIP EACH OTHER A NEW ONE!"**_

In one fluid motion, the headmaster used one hand to push Carmen away from the mic in order to take it away from her. "Once again, I'm sorry about her, everybody." He covered the mic and turned to her, "Ms. Maple! The biomes are still in the middle of changing! And can you refrain from using phrases like 'rip each other a new one'? This is a family program being broadcast across all of _Remnant_ , for Dust's sake!"

Carmen giggled. "Haha. I forgot that was a saying in Vacuo. It sounds funny." She scoffed, " _For Dust's sake._ " She mocked him, faking a deep voice.

"Please… just act your age." As they turned back to the battlefield, the large ring around the central platform had changed drastically thanks to the marvels of the combined engineering of the four kingdoms. One half was littered with ruined concrete structures resembling a destroyed cityscape. The other half was lush with green foliage and tall pine trees. Vivian removed his hand from the microphone. "The battlefield is ready. Let's start the countdown." He pushed a button on the control console in front of him to activate the countdown.

"You should be a radio host, V. You have the voice and attitude for it."

"Not if I have to work with anybody like _you_ Ms. Maple… I was _supposed_ to be announcing with Onyx and, to be honest, I was quite excited about that, but when I got here… I learned that he had one of his faculty take his place because he thought they'd have more 'energy' and be more 'entertaining' for the audience. Because of that decision, this has been more torture than fun."

Carmen sat back in her chair and crossed her arms, a triumphant smile spread adorning her face. "Your mic's still on, V."

"Oh… oh son of a-" the announcer's intercom buzzed loudly as the microphone was shut off.

.

"Two… one… an', zero…" a smile spread across Saffron's lips as she watched the countdown on the holographic screens finish, "Now, I don't plan on prolongin' this here fight too long, so…" she unfastened the top two buttons of her blouse as she had to pull Agent Kokonatsu under her spell, "Let's be real nice, now… ya hear?"

Clicks and clacks came from Writer's Block as Roland typed out a strip of paper, "Oh, come on. That trick? I already told them to keep their eyes clos-" his nose twitched, though he wasn't the first to sneeze.

After loudly sprayed snot out in front of him. He began to wipe his nose on his sleeve, "Man, Pepper must-" his eyes passed over Saffron for a split second as he recoiled from his sneeze, "Woah…"

Pepper shrunk back away from the others, her hands over the front of her Haven uniform, one clasped firmly on her burnt-orange miniature lance. Her big brown eyes filled with tears, "I-I am so… sorry… I didn't mean to… make you sick…"

"That's one down," Epazote held his spherical weapon, Archimalter, in his hands. He pressed one of the three green buttons centered around each other on a flattened panel along its curved surface. The gears and plates inside began to shift. Bronze clanked in place around his arm to form a small cannon, "Looks like this is a five versus three situation now."

One of Sepia's guns floated up towards Timbre's side. Her finger slammed down on the trigger with the hope of impressing Saffron guiding her hand.

Before Timbre could realize what was going on, a string of bullets were fired into her side. She'd been hit by Avant and Garde's special film ammunition before, but that was usually when she was expecting it. She knew she had four opponents in front of her, but she hadn't even fathomed one being right beside her. Timbre went sliding across the tile of the central stage.

"Wow…" Epazote's eyes went wide, "I… honestly wasn't expecting that, Rol."

"I was…"

"So why didn't you _warn_ me!?" Timbre said as she pushed herself to her feet.

Roland shrugged, "Thought you would've remembered," he ducked down to let a bright yellow paintball fly safely overhead, "Great…" the strip of paper on his arm twisted into a round shield much like the ones that Epazote's weapon was capable of transforming into, "Come on, T!"

Timbre raised her wires in an attempt to block Sepia's barrage of bullets. She watched as Roland darted into the urban area, so she shot one of her wires into one of the ruined concrete buildings behind them. She reeled in and joined Roland as he rounded a corner.

As soon as she turned onto one of the open simulated streets, a hand latched onto her arm and pulled her through a sagging doorway. Roland shut the busted door behind her and put his back to it.

"Okay… hopefully they won't expect us to hide so close to the rim…" he tapped the side of his head, "Six versus two aren't good odds. If we don't get Arty and Sepia back, then we're done."

"So wha-?" Timbre stopped herself, she tried to keep her voice down, but if there was one thing she knew from getting caught chit-chatting in class, it was that her voice carried very well. She decided to switch to her hands. ' _So what are you suggesting we do then? It would kind of suck to be taken out in the first round because your ex-girlfriend can brainwash people with her… looks.'_

It wasn't the first time that he was glad that he was dating a mute girl, nor would it be the last, ' _It's more than that. I'm not affected by it because I just don't find her attractive like I used to…'_ his hands froze for a moment. Since attractiveness was the key to Attraction… ' _You use Siren's Song to convince Arty that Saffron's the most disgusting witch he's ever seen, and I'll… do what I can to snap Sepia out of it.'_

' _You think my Semblance can beat hers?'_

Roland rolled his eyes, ' _You clearly can change people's opinions, so yes._ You _are the only real deciding factor in your Semblance. She_ needs _other people to be a certain way for hers to work. That, and I'm sure that it would really take a burden off of Arty and Curie's budding relationship if he didn't drool whenever he saw another woman. You'd probably be doing them a favor.'_

Timbre began to bounce on her heels for a second, ' _Speaking of which, did you hear that they had their first kiss on the ferris-wheel?! You know, before the Maelstrom atta-'_

Roland smacked her on the back of the head.

' _Right… sorry…_ _so… what's the plan to get that plan in motion?_ '

Saffron's voice rang out from outside, "Heya! Where you two mosey off to now? You two makin' out in the middle of a fight?! That wouldn't be too good for your relationship now wouldit Rowland?"

' _Epazote and Cayenne are probably going to stay in the forest area,'_ Roland had to fight the urge to jump out and follow Carmen's instruction to tear Saffron a new one, ' _If we keep our distance from Saffron and Pepper, they can't do too much. We focus on Arty and Sepia. That's about all we've got.'_

' _Okay then… well, should we just make a run for it and hope we find Arty an-'_

"Hey! I found them!" Arty shouted from the blown-out window across the room.

Roland and Timbre found themselves staring down Palette's barrel.

" found us first," Roland pulled his shield up in front of him and Timbre. Flames exploded against paper and ink. Of course Arty still had enough sense to use Fire Dust against him, "Do it!"

Timbre drew wires as a precaution. They had up to five other opponents coming. "Arty! Please! _Listen to me_!"

Arty fumbled for a second, obviously confused as to what he was doing. "I'm sorry T… but it's what Saffron wants." He fired more Fire Dust paintballs at Timbre, who tried her best to block them with her wires.

Flames blasted past her as the plastic orbs burst against the wires. True to their technique for their Modernism team attack, her wires became coated with bright red paint.

"Arty, I don't want to do this, but you're not leaving me much of a choice." She rushed him, swinging her wires at him. In preparation for the onslaught, he shifted his paintball gun into its baseball bat form in order to block her attacks, but each time he batted away one flaming wire, the other would bash him in the side.

High above, the screens showing their aura via a video game lifebar-like system showed Arty's aura slowly draining.

"Would you look at that folks?!" Vivian yelled excitedly into his mic, now turned on after dealing with his small incident previously. "It appears Ms. Saffron Sassafras is using her Semblance to turn one half of Team ARTS against the other!"

Chipper as ever, Carmen came over the speakers, "And Timbre Forté has no choice but to beat her own team leader! If she doesn't break the spell soon, then Team ARTS may be down one of their members!"

"Arty!" Timbre shouted as she pushed against Palette, "Will. You. Just. _Snap out of it!?"_ She drove a fist into his face, making him stumble backwards. She ran at him, ready to knock some more sense into him.

Arty blinked a few times. "T-Timbre?" The next thing he knew, the grey sole of her boot was driven into his face. The force of the kick sent him to the ground.

"Oh my god! Arty!" she ran to his side, "Don't beat me up. Don't beat me up. _Don't beat me up_."

"Oh god..." Arty groaned while holding his nose, "Owww… What happened?..." his eyes widened, "Oh god… did I just… in front of Curie?!"

Timbre winced, "Yeah… you kinda did… but… just to be safe. _Ignore Saffron and don't fall for that stupid crap again._ " she smacked him on the head as Roland had done to her earlier, "Got it?"

"Ow… yeah. At least I didn't take one of you guys out…" Arty pushed himself up, "So where's Roland?"

"He's right…" she turned to find the Otter Faunus gone. Even more ominous was the fact that she couldn't see _any_ member of Team SPCE, "Oh… he was just…"

.

No weapon. No time to type one out. Even if he did have enough time, Sepia's bullet hail would just fill the paper up with holes before he could mold it into anything useful. All he could do was run and hope that he could turn the tables on her somehow.

Sepia ran across the ledges of ruined buildings with her guns aimed down at her favorite Faunus. Her eyes burned bright gold, and her orbs lined the streets and alleys that Roland ran along. She knew that he wouldn't dare break one of them and cause her that pain.

"Come on… think…" Roland's eyes locked onto a dented trash can at the end of the crumbling alley that he ran across, "That'll do…" he grabbed a plastic ball of ink off his belt and lobbed it at the lid of the can to coat it in a thick layer of tarry ink.

He latched onto the lid's handle and held it back behind him. He ground his boots into the concrete and steeled himself against the bullets that bounced off the reinforced metal in his hands. With his aura covering the ink, he couldn't keep his makeshift shield up for too long.

Roland's aura monitor began to drain to the point it was lower than Arty's following his scuffle with Timbre. The bar was slowly creeping upon the three quarters mark.

A bullet grazed his nose as he turned out of the alley to the cracked street that made up the edge of the urban battlefield. It didn't come from Sepia.

"Hey! Sugah-pie! My dahlin'!" Saffron spun her chain whip around loosely in her fist on her stroll towards her target, "Havin' girl troubles?" she cracked her chain whip again, sending out another shot that barely missed Roland's ankle.

 _Okay… this might work…_ he stepped back to keep out of Sepia's line of fire while she ran down the alley after him. There wasn't a whole lot of time, but he could manage.

"I guess you could say that," Roland kept his hand over another grenade on his belt, "Where's Pepper?"

"Oh, ya know. 'Round here somewhere," Saffron cracked her whip again, only to have the shot clang off of Writer's Block, "C'mon… ya cornered."

Shoes clacked closer down the alley off to his right.

"You wouldn't ruin a couple's moment, would you?" Roland yanked the pin out and tossed the grenade towards the sidewalk. Black inky mist exploded out from the orb, then condensed, "Gotcha."

Pepper tried to pull her legs free from the inky slime holding her against a nearby wall. "No…! I'm sorry, Saf…!" she reached for her weapon, but it had been caught in the mist too, "Oh no…!"

Of course Sepia knew what he would do before he did. She was the one that he sparred with. She knew his fighting patterns like the back of her hand.

Lead slammed into the small of Roland's back, sending him crumpling to the ground. He flipped onto his back just in time to see Sepia flying through the air. She tackled him and raised a gun over his heart. Her eyes had returned to their normal shade of tan.

"H-Hey, babe!" Roland raised his hands and grabbed the straps of Sepia's sequin shirt, "Listen, I really just have to say how beautiful you look when you've got your guns aimed at me. You're really something else!"

Sepia stayed still. Her finger hesitated on the trigger, but never once left it.

"Shoot 'im, dahlin'. I'll make sure ya have a wonda'ful time later if ya do!" Saffron called out while tugging on Pepper to get her out of her inky binds.

"Okay, this isn't working fast enough…" Roland pulled Sepia down and leaned up. Their lips met and stayed locked for a few moments. He hated the idea of thousands of people watching him kissing his girlfriend, but it was certainly better than losing in the first round of the tournament.

Sepia's finger fell away from the trigger when she leaned into the kiss, which gave Roland just enough leeway to bring a knee up and shove her off of him. She hit the sidewalk beside him and looked up with rage-filled eyes.

 _Please work…_ he jumped up. Hopefully a kiss and a kick would be enough to snap her out of Saffron's spell, but he didn't have time to wait around to find out. He had to run.

"Okay, see you girls later!" he darted down the alley that he came down to group back up with Timbre. He could only hope she had managed to break Saffron's hold on Arty.

.

Arty ran as Timbre swung through the trees. After losing Roland, they thought the next best step would be to find the other members of Team SPCE and attempt to distract them. If they could take them out, however, then that'd be even better. The less people Roland had to deal with, the greater their chances of winning the fight. They considered staying in the urban biome to try to group back up, but in the game of numbers they would've lost three to five. Upon entering the other end of the battlefield, it wasn't long until Roland's hypothesis about Cayenne and Epazote's location turned out to be true.

Green balls of energy and huge plumes of flames licked their heels as they ran.

"Do they have to be so _overkill_?!" Arty shouted as he shot bright yellow paintballs back at the pair as they charged through the forest after them.

"You're one to talk, Dust Devil!" Timbre taunted as she felt the white-hot flames from Cayenne's flamethrower scorch against her back, "Ow. Ow. _Ow!_ Can you guys _cool_ it!?"

"You've gotta keep on your toes, Tim!" Cayenne slid around a tree with her hammer drawn to the side. Her boots dug into the damp soil beneath her feet, and the fire burning across her hammer singed the grass behind her. She began to turn for a spin, her hammer pulled close to her chest and ready to slam into the side of Timbre's head.

For a moment, there was bronze and bright red. The next, blinding white.

Timbre flew through the forest, slamming through trees after being hammer-smacked in the face. A shower of splinters followed her in her wake. The extra propulsion from the lit fuel made it impossible for her to stop.

"Timbre!" Arty shouted, but he knew he had to keep running.

"Cai, go after her! I got Art!" Epazote flicked his wrist out towards Arty and grinned as his weapon shifted into a large polearm at the press of another green button.

Arty felt himself fumble, the toes of his boots catching on something every now and then. Taking a quick moment to look down, he found small vines lashing out at him, acting as small sentient tripwires thanks to Epazote's Semblance.

"I know you're worried about Tim, but I think you have problems of your own!" With Arty sufficiently slowed down, Epazote leapt into the air, ready to bring the blade of his polearm down on him.

.

Flames exploded across Cayenne's dress with every burning step through the forest. Fire curled off of the end of her hammer. Ash marked the path that she made to get back to Timbre, "No hard feelings after this, right? I've been seriously jamming out to your music lately, and I'd hate to think about how much you hated me from the beatdown I'm about to give you every time I decided to put you on!"

Timbre pushed herself away from the tree that acted as her brakes. A large impact crater was blasted into the trunk about halfway up the large pine. Looking back down towards Cayenne, she could see a trail of fallen trees coming from the way she had been launched. After all the damage caused by that single attack, she could tell her aura was getting frighteningly close to the regulation level for being taken out of the tournament. _15%... 15%..._ Timbre thought to herself as she looked to the screen with the faces of Teams ARTS and SPCE. Of all the meters, hers was the lowest, nearing 30%. _I just need to stay above that..._

Cayenne looked off in the same direction as Timbre, "Oohh… down to 34%! That must've _really_ hurt, huh?!" she smiled wider as her gaze wandered to the other side of the board, "And would you look at that?! All of Team SPCE is still in perfect shape!" she dug her heels into the ground once more in preparation for another spin, "I'm sorry that I'm not sorry about how bad this is gonna hurt."

Timbre reeled out a length of wire and let them attach to the branch she was standing on, "No need to apologize." she jumped, letting gravity carry her in a wide arc around Cayenne. With another wire, she changed direction in order to head right for the Pyrodancer of Haven. Her leg was outstretched, and ready to deliver a kick.

The warmth of Cayenne's hammer filled her core as she drew it close for a spin. Embers whipped through the air on the hammer's way to give Timbre another lesson about taking on Team SPCE's pyromaniac. Flat steel only trimmed the sole of Timbre's boot to her surprise, and her eyes reflected cinders as they widened in realization of what had just happened.

Right as Cayenne's hammer would have hit her, Timbre reeled in her supporting wire just enough to pull herself out of the weapon's trajectory. Her foot flew over the scorched bronze on its way into Cayenne's cheekbone.

Cayenne hit the ground with her hammer held out in front of her. It still burned bright with fresh gas-fueled flames. As Timbre came down for another kick, she swung upwards at her and let a fan of fire spew out of the nozzle of her weapon.

Timbre knew that her aura was low, but she was already through her trajectory. The spewing flame blasted her legs like a primed oven. Even that couldn't stop her descent, though.

Metal clanged against Timbre's boot as it struck Cayenne's hammer. Cayenne slammed the weapon forward to send Timbre tumbling back.

Cayenne glanced up at the aura meter to check her own aura as she got back up, "I've still got most of my aura left. That's a shame for yo-"

Paper rods appeared in the nozzle of Cayenne's flamethrower moments before the entire system backfired into the gas canister on her back. A coin sized hole popped out of the back of the canister and released a jet of flames that sent her slamming into a tree before fizzling out.

"Hey, Cai," a paper blade cut through the trunk of the tree and slashed Cayenne's side.

"Should have guessed that Saffron and Pepper wouldn't get you…" she groaned, "You don't think you'll show a little…"

"Mercy? Nah," Roland pulled the blade out from the tree, "See, I've got an agenda for winning this thing. Gotta make Mom proud, you know?" he stepped around the tree and threw his blade towards her.

Cayenne caught the blade with her extinguished hammer, but didn't see Timbre coming up from behind.

Timbre drove a series of punches into Cayenne's back before grabbing her by the hem of her skirt and throwing her towards one of the fallen pines.

Bark and wood cracked as Cayenne slammed face-first against the fallen tree. Falling to her butt, back against the log, she gave Roland and Timbre a dazed grin. Her weapon was down. Her aura was low. She was outnumbered.

The hammer detached from the rods on her right forearm, falling uselessly to the dirt, "We're still cool, right?" she held out her arms, accepting her defeat.

"Duh," Roland and Timbre said in unison as they raised their boots.

.

Epazote rushed around Arty, hearing the light splats of paint balls smashing against the bronze shield in his left hand. After a failed bout with his polearm, he needed a new plan of attack, and he needed it quickly, "Sure hope the girls aren't having as much trouble as me right now…"

" _ **AND ROLAND AND TIMBRE HAVE TAKEN MS. CAYENNE CANELLA OUT OF THE MATCH!**_ " Carmen's voice boomed throughout the stadium.

"What?!" Epazote looked up to the monitors. Sure enough, a large red 'X' over Cayenne's portrait. Her aura meter was just below the 15% threshold. "Cai!"

Arty took a break from his assault on Epazote to pump his fist, "Way to go guys!"

Things were finally starting to look up for Team ARTS. They started off on a rocky and… brainwashy start, but the tides seemed to be turning. Even with the small victory, Arty had to remember that they were still at the disadvantage. Cayenne may have been taken out, but Team SPCE was still presumably fighting with a full group of four if they still had Sepia under Saffron's Attraction.

"I'm not going to lie. I was kind of counting on her to take Timbre out…" Epazote adjusted his glasses. The small fires that Cayenne started were starting to burn across the trees. He held up his shield and shut his eyes to focus on the burning branches just overhead.

Arty thought that he had the fight in the bag, until the air was knocked out of his lungs. He stumbled forwards with Palette raised. The tree branches around him moved up and down as if taunting him. Several were on fire, but that was far more than he saw Cayenne light up. Then he remembered the Fire Dust loaded into his weapon. "Dammit… not again…"

"Thanks for the upgrade." Epazote threw his arm towards Arty, "Too bad they're…" he whimpered, "not in good shape…" it always hurt him to see plants get damaged, but with a Semblance like his being used in a combat setting, it was inevitable.

Arty ducked and rolled in an attempt to dodge the burning branches extending from the blazing pines around him. He didn't exactly want to be skewered on live television.

"Okay… chill out. Chill out… Chill out!" He grabbed a vial from his belt, the one containing, arguably, the most stable Dust fusion he and Roland had concocted together. He raised the vial above his head, the swirling white and blue paintballs glistening with an icy haze as his aura activated them. As a few of the branches closed in on him, he said a small prayer to himself before throwing the vial.

"Oh please don't let this kill me!"

He could barely hear the noise of glass shattering as a branch gave him a hard smack across the face.

.

The entire stadium gasped as the forested half of the battlefield became littered with snow.

"Well would you look at that!" Vivian called out as he observed the sudden change in the arena, "It appears Arty Umber has used a high concentration of his specialized Dust paint to bury him and his opponent in an artificial avalanche!"

"Bet you don't see that everyday back home in Vacuo, eh Vivian?" Carmen laughed.

Vivian replied with a less-than-enthusiastic tone, "It's not everyday you come across someone who has the capability to change their battlefield like this, much less someone that's actually _willing_ to do so."

"I was talking about the snow."

He sighed, "I'm just going to try to ignore you from now on."

.

The small part of the forest where Arty and Epazote were previously fighting was completely void of movement. Flakes of ice swirled around in the remaining gusts of wind from the Rime Dust vial exploding open.

An ashen-skinned hand broke the pristine surface of the snow. Following shortly after were tufts of black hair and one particular spike of forest green. Epazote gasped as he was finally able to get ice-free air into his lungs. "Are… are you _crazy?!_ "

"Probably." Arty's voice should have been muffled by the snow, but it rang out clear as day.

Epazote looked up and found Arty standing on one of the lower tree branches, no longer on fire thanks to the cool blast of ice and air.

"But that isn't even the start of it, buddy." Arty grabbed another vial from his belt, these a bright orange. Instead of throwing this one on the ground, he poured the contents into the hopper of his paintball gun.

"Wha-... what are you doing?!" Epazote struggled, but he couldn't break the lower half of his body free. He looked for Archimalter, but unfortunately, his weapon was hidden somewhere in the drift.

"Evening the odds." A loud crunch rang out as the top of the hopper was twisted, releasing the Magma Dust paint. Arty gave a quick swipe, speckling the snow with orange blotches. It quickly began to melt.

Epazote stood dumbfounded and soaked as the snow vanished. He looked up to Arty, "Why did you trap me in snow just to melt it and free me?" He eyed the branch, carefully moving his hands in preparation to make it snap upwards against Arty's legs. If he could just knock the painter off balance, then maybe he could get a point for Team SPCE and make up for Cayenne's loss to Timbre.

"Again. Evening the odds."

Arty and Epazote both made their moves at the same time. Arty threw a third vial. Electrified yellow paintballs flew through the air towards the soaked earth. Epazote flicked his wrist, causing the branch under Arty's boots to quiver violently and send him tumbling off of his perch.

Both their eyes widened as they realized how much trouble they were both in.

Arty hit the ground just as the vial shattered. He barely had time to register the powerful jolt of electricity passing through him.

.

" _ **WOULD YOU LOOK AT THAT, V?! TEAM ARTS IS MAKING A COMEBACK BY TAKING OUT CAYENNE AND EPAZOTE ONE AFTER ANOTHER!"**_ Carmen screamed into the mic. Bunches of curls were frazzled across her head from her excited hair pulling, " _ **THIS MATCH IS JUST FULL OF SURPRISES! THOSE ARE MY KIDS, V! LOOK AT 'EM G-"**_

Even though the crowd couldn't see it, the way Vivian Willows spoke made it obvious his face was in his palm, "Couldn't you at least _try_ to act unbiased during your commentary?"

" _ **TEAM SPCE HAS ALSO BEEN INCREDIBLE WITH THEIR USE OF THEIR SEMBLANCES! SAFFRON'S SEDUCTION GAVE THEM AN AMAZING LEAD, AND CAYENNE'S RAW POWER IS UNMATCHED!"**_ Carmen's screaming took on a slightly more sarcastic ring, " _ **THEY PROBABLY HAVE A LOT OF MOTIVATION FROM THEIR HEADMASTER, WHO HAS A HECK OF A LOT MORE PEP THAN ANOTHER CERTAIN HEADMASTER FROM ANOTHER CERTAIN KINGDOM!"**_ she leaned over with her hand over the microphone, "Better?"

"Now you're just being loud and antagonizing."

"Then put Orchid up here if you think I'm so obnoxious," Carmen turned her nose up at him.

"Can we save this argument for some other time? It appears your student isn't exactly in the best shape."

"Oh no. Which one?"

.

Upon reaching the scene, Roland and Timbre saw a sopping wet and unconscious Epazote and one smoking and sparking Arty. Burnt branches still steamed. What was once lush grass had been turned into brittle black wires. A few flowers that were caught in the crossfire had been reduced to damp ash.

"So Epa's out, and you're down to 22%," Roland grabbed Arty by the shoulder and hoisted him up, "T's at 29%, I'm still sitting pretty at 74%, and Sepia's got 94%... but she might still be brainwashed… by the way…"

"I figured she was…" Arty licked his fingers and put out a small flame in his hair. "So… we're not looking too good in other words."

"Yeah… and I embarrassed myself by making out with Sepia in front of millions…" he pulled the brim of his hat down over his eyes.

"Hey." Timbre pat him on the back, "At least you two are actually dating. Imagine if you had to, like, kiss _me_ instead for whatever reason," she began to jog off into the trees, "Now _that_ would be embarrassing!"

"Hey! Timbre!" Arty ran after her.

"We need to stick together!" Roland added as he joined.

"Hey. It's fine now. We're actually evenly matched!" Timbre laughed as they entered the central platform where they started the match.

"Um. Aren't you forgetting about our aura levels?" Arty reloaded his gun, readying himself for an ambush, "Saffron and Pepper haven't even gotten hit yet."

"That just shows how cocky they are," Roland growled, "and they're willing to pin the whole match on them-" he held his blade out in front of Timbre's face. A bullet made an inch deep crater in the paper construct right where Timbre's nose would have been, "selves… Saffron forgot that my hearing is better than hers. It's a predator versus prey thing…"

Arty cocked his head to the side, "Otters are predators?"

"I think we have bigger issues at the moment Arty." Timbre drew wires as Saffron and Pepper appeared between the rubble of one of the decrepit buildings. "Try not to fall for her again, Arty. I don't want any nose blood on my clothes."

"I think I'm done falling for her today…" Arty grumbled, "Thanks for the push earlier, T…"

"No problem, Painter-Boy."

"The key is to look at the really gross mole that she has right on the side of her neck. She tries to hide it with her collar," Roland lowered his blade. His eyes locked onto Saffron as she strolled out from the crumbling ruins of the building and onto the central platform. "You have no idea how many of the exchange students I've had to tell that to…"

"I can't ba-leave you three managed ta take out Cay-anne and Epa," Saffron flung her whip around herself constantly as she spoke. Pepper and Sepia followed along behind her. While Pepper had a bit of pep in her step, Sepia's movements seemed almost sluggish.

"Great…" Roland suppressed a smile, "so I guess we're just gonna go for a three versus three brawl… or…?"

Pepper shakily held up her lance, "P-Please just forfeit… I am okay with hurting Grimm… but people actually… hurt…"

"Then… _maybe_ you shouldn't have been part of a tournament where the sole objective is to beat the ever living crud out of other people?" Arty pondered for a moment, "Just saying."

"But… but I… my team…" tears welled up in Pepper's eyes, "I didn't… I didn't want to let them down…"

"Way to go, man. You made her cry," Roland pinched the bridge of his nose, "She's like the _one_ person that we might feel a little guilt over beating to a pulp, and you made her cry. Way to go…"

"I… I didn't mean to!" Arty winced, "Hey… Pepper? I'm sorry, okay? I didn't mean to-"

" _I'M SOOOORRYYYYYY!"_ Pepper wailed as tears poured from her eyes. Her Semblance kicked into overdrive, causing all of Team ARTS and even Saffron's eyes to water, " _I-I-I-I-I-"_ she sniffled for air, " _I just wanted to b-b-b-b-be a g-g-g-g-good teammaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaate! I wanted my p-p-p-parents to be proud of me! I'm so SOOOORRYYYYYYYYY!"_ she sobbed harder.

"This just got…" Timbre held her finger to her nose, feeling a sneeze coming, "r-r-really… awk-wa-wa- ACHOO! Awkward…"

"Peppa… hun… it's alright…" Saffron fought off a sneeze. She pulled Pepper into a hug and pat her head comfortingly, "Ya jus' sit back and shoot 'em, 'kay? Ya don't have ta hit nobody. Just make it sting. Them non-lethal peppa spray pellets were made jus' for that purpose, huh?"

"A-A-Alr-r-r-right…" Pepper pushed away and ran to the edge of the central platform. Once she was in position, she raised her minature lance. She kept her puffy red eyes locked down the weapon's shaft as the lance's blade opened slightly, revealing a tiny gun barrel in the end.

"'Kay then…" Saffron cocked her head back towards Arty, Roland, and Timbre, "Y'all good?"

"I'm just worried Arty's going to throw that kind of verbal abuse on me someday..." Roland pressed a little bead of ink into the dent in his blade from Saffron's bullet. It filled up the divot and smoothed the blade back out.

Timbre reared her fists and wires back, taking a fighting stance. She hadn't fought Saffron head-to-head before, but she'd seen that chain whip in action, "Bring it on."

Arty aimed his paintball gun towards Saffron and Pepper. Even though Sepia was fighting for the opposing side, he didn't want to fry her with his Dust paint. "I made a girl cry…" he muttered under his breath.

"Aight…" Saffron snapped her fingers, "Get 'em, gal."

Sepia shot forward with her guns raised. Golden orbs burst to life around the central platform. Her eyes burned with the same golden light. Her bullets peppered the tiles leading up to Timbre.

Roland jumped to take the hit. His aura was the only one that could handle a barrage from her at this point, "I've got her. You guys focus on the other two," he slashed at Sepia, but she ducked under the blade and threw the butt of her gun up into his gut.

"Got it! T, let's take Saffron first!" Arty commanded as he and Timbre ran for Saffron. Silver wires and burning paintballs fired past her.

Arty knew he had to keep his distance due to his aura being so low. He had to come up with an idea.

Timbre swung a wire down at Saffron's head, but it seemed like each time she went for a blow, Saffron deflected it with her chain whip.

"Sorry doll! But a little bit o' twine ain't gonna do nuthin' against my Daisy Chain!" Saffron ducked low, swiping the opposite end of her weapon along the ground towards Timbre.

Timbre felt a few of the links clasp shut around her ankle. The next thing she knew, she was on her back and on the ground.

"Looks like Team SPCE is gonna be takin' the lead back now, huh?" She raised the other end of the chain whip and aimed it at Timbre's face. The dark barrel of a gun was plainly visible at the tip.

"Not really!" Timbre swung her arms down. A wire wrapped over each of Saffron's shoulders and clasped against the tiles of the central platform. With the wires anchored in place, Timbre began reeling them in. She flew up off of the ground towards Saffron. With her being so close, there was enough slack on the weapon wrapped around Timbre's ankle to let her get close to Saffron before she could be whipped away. The momentum carried the singer right where she needed to go, and she drove a knee right to Saffron's face. With the attack finished and her ankle free, she landed on her feet and clipped the wires before drawing new ones.

The Faunus girl stumbled back as her hat fell to the ground. She lowered her head, hand rubbing her chin, "So ya wanna play dirty…?" she lunged forward. The blunt end of her horn grazed the side of Timbre's corset, but caught enough to pull her along with Saffron. She dug her heels into the tiles and threw her head upwards.

Timbre's feet came off the ground before slamming back down. She stumbled to retain her balance. Metal slammed against her thigh, then again against her ankle.

"There ya go! Dance for me!" Saffron shouted as she threw her chain whip around herself once more, "Dance like ya did on stage!" She laughed as she watched Timbre bounce about to dodge the bullets, "Ya ain't got _nuthin'_ on Cai!"

Timbre shot a wire towards Saffron.

In mid-crack, Saffron's arm stopped and was yanked out of its trajectory.

Timbre yanked on her wire, drawing Saffron closer to her. As her target drew closer, she spun her body to gain momentum and then delivered a kick to Saffron's face. "Sorry, I don't dance anymore. I'm retired. Besides, singing was more my thing. I just did what the choreographer told me to do."

Saffron stumbled back. She wiped her lip with her forearm, "Well…" she smiled, "Don't matter much whatcha do if it's a three versus two…"

"Wait, what-" Timbre's eyes widened at the screen overhead.

.

" _ **OH MY GODS, VIVIAN! SEPIA HUGHES JUST TOOK ROLAND WELLS OUT! WHAT A BETRAYAL! AFTER THAT LOVING EMBRACE, SHE STABBED HIM IN THE BACK! OH! MY! GODS!"**_ Carmen shrieked over her microphone.

Vivian groaned, "Onyx Alabaster, I know you're watching and listening to this. Please do something before I throw myself off of this coliseum."

A red laser blade appeared in front of Vivian's face, "Quit complaining and announce… If I can't break from the norm to express my feelings, then neither can you..."

There was a pause before Vivian spoke again. "As it appears, Sepia Hughes is still under the effects of Saffron Sassafras's Semblance. In a scuffle with Roland Wells, she made it seem as if she was back to her normal self before finishing off his aura with a quick barrage of attacks. Arty and Timbre are the only ones left fighting _for_ Team ARTS, and both seem to be in pretty bad shape!"

.

Sepia turned to face Arty and Timbre with the same psychotic grin that she gave all of her targets. Being on the receiving end was significantly more terrifying than merely observing Sepia try and psyche out her opponents. Unfortunately, they knew that they couldn't call a bluff that wasn't there. Seeing Roland crumpled on the edge of the center platform was enough to tell them that she meant business.

Arty felt frozen. They were going to lose this fight because they couldn't get on the same side… that and he didn't want to shoot the girl he made cry earlier. _Okay, so then do something that'll take them both out without actually… shooting Pepper._ A lightbulb went off, but as Sepia dashed to join Saffron in the fight against Timbre, he knew he had to act fast.

Timbre swung frantically as she tried to deflect attacks from Saffron, Pepper, and Sepia. "Arty! A little help would be _greatly_ appreciated!"

Tube-full after tube-full of paintballs went into Palette's hopper. The only way they could stay in the tournament at this point was to go all out. The entirety of his remaining arsenal was loaded except for two white paintballs. He twisted the cap. Through the viewing port, a swirl of colors glowed with pent-up energy. "Timbre! Keep them moving!"

"What?! What are you doing?!" She was skeptical, but she followed her leader's order and began to run in a circle around the central ring.

"Just trust me! I have an idea!"

"Oh, that sounds as fun as a box a' Rapier Wasps!" Saffron taunted, "Hey, Sepia. Why don't you go take care of your artsy-fartsy little leader, huh sugah?"

"Oh dammit." Arty threw the paintballs on the ground and jumped on them as he saw Sepia divert from chasing Timbre to come after him. He went shooting into the air.

Sepia raised her guns. Her fingers held down the triggers of her pistols. She kept the barrels of her guns trained on her leader without so much as a hint of remorse on her face.

As Arty flew upwards, he could feel bullets shoot past him, a couple bouncing off his aura. If he was going to set up for a possible winning strategy, he had to do it before his aura hit the 15% threshold. As he shot even higher, higher than the tallest pines left standing in the forest biome, he looked to the aura monitors. His was down to 17% and Timbre wasn't too far behind. _Gotta move fast. Please let this work._ Using the propulsion from the Air Dust on his boots, he began to spin, whipping himself around rapidly while holding the trigger down on Palette. A myriad of colors sprayed from where he was levitating in a sickening blur of movement.

Timbre and her opponents actually stopped for a moment to watch as the multi-colored paint rained down from the sky, coating the center battlefield. _What the heck are you doing, Umber?!_

The paintball gun clicked as its contents ran dry. Steadying himself from his dizzying spin, he let his vision correct itself. The world felt like it was spinning as a wave of nausea hit him. _Don't puke. Not yet. At least try to finish this._ He turned, letting the air from his shoes shoot off away from the ground so they no longer kept him aloft. As he fell through the air he shifted his gun into its bat form. With all of Remnant watching, he thought that he must be proving himself to be a full-on lunatic for trying something so crazy. _Just gotta land one solid hit in the middle..._

Twin pepper spray pellets spun through the air. One slammed into each of Arty's eyes to send pain searing through his face. From the edge of the central platform, Pepper looked up from her lance, " _I'M SO SOOOORRYYYY AAAAARTYYYYYYY!"_ she sobbed.

Arty let Palette slip from his hand as he wiped at his eyes frantically. His legs shot out to his side, rocketing him towards the forest area. A loud buzzer went off as one of the trees shook violently.

" _ **HOLY CRAP DID YOU SEE THAT?! ARTY TRIED TO SACRIFICE HIMSELF IN ORDER TO LAND A FINAL BLOW AGAINST TEAM SPCE, BUT TWO WELL-PLACED PEPPER SPRAY PELLETS FROM PEPPER PAPRIKA HAVE OFFICIALLY TAKEN TEAM ARTS'S LEADER OUT OF THE MATCH!"**_

" _I DIDN'T MEAN TO! I'M SORRY!"_ Pepper wailed in response to the announcement.

"Oh, hun," Saffron shook her head. She kept Timbre at bay with her chain whip. A cocky smile twisted onto her lips, "Sepia, please!"

Bullets slammed into the small of Timbre's back without hesitation.

Timbre fell forward onto her hands and knees as another buzzer sounded. Out of all four members of Team ARTS, the only one left in the game was the one under the spell of the opposition. She felt the color rush from her face as she realized that they had lost.

"Looks like you gotta leave the ring, hun." Saffron smirked.

Timbre shakily pushed herself to her feet, drawing in her wires as she did so. Reluctantly, she retreated to the edge of the arena to join Roland and Arty. Roland stood stone-faced as he watched the paint-coated battlefield. Arty slumped over on a bench, pine needles and branches sticking out all over his body. He looked a little too tired and battered to really pay attention.

Pepper ran up to Saffron and wrapped her arms around her. She sobbed and sobbed, but still smiled from their victory, "W-W-W-We d-d-d-d-did i-i-i-it…!"

"Almost," Saffron pointed to the rest of Team ARTS, "So, Sepia, why dont'cha take a hike? Join the rest of yer team ova in the loser's circle."

Sepia's eyes returned to their bright tan as her orbs faded. She zombie-walked past Saffron and Pepper towards her team. Her eyes seemed to glaze over from Saffron's spell. Her cheeks were red from the desire that she felt. Her heart beat steadily. Her palms didn't sweat. Her eyes brightened again as her guns shifted.

"Whelp, that's a victory for- _**WHAT?!"**_ Saffron looked down at the layers of film and bullets binding her and Pepper together. She looked back up at Sepia, who was holding both Avant and Garde in their whip forms. Their reels stopped spinning and the binds went taught.

 _Being an actress sure does come in handy,_ Sepia grinned wide. She yanked Saffron and Pepper down right onto a giant splotch of bright orange paint.

The ensuing explosion sent them rocketing up, and Sepia threw her whips down to send them into a splotch of bright blue Force Dust paint. Once again, Saffron and Pepper were sent screaming up into the air and slamming back down into a splotch of paint. Fire Dust exploded around them. Another slam, and Gravity Dust sent them up. Another slam, and electricity burst across the battlefield with enough kinetic force to send the girls upwards again. The final slam sent them into a splotch of Air Dust. At the apex of their flight, Sepia cut the binds and switched her whips back into their gun forms.

Bullets slammed into Saffron and Pepper as they flew across the battlefield. Two buzzers went off right before the film-bound girls slammed into the force field separating the viewers from the contestants.

Left alone on the battlefield, Sepia bowed to a silent crowd. Well, silent aside from Carmen's incessant screeching over her microphone.

Arty and Timbre sat dumbfounded.

"What… what in the world just happened?!" Timbre shouted.

"Sepia happened…" Roland grinned, "She's the wild card in a pack of trump cards, after all."

The three of them ran back into the field to congratulate her, all giving her hugs before Roland picked her up and swung her around.

"I can't believe this folks, but… after what seemed like certain defeat, Team ARTS's Sepia Hughes turned the whole thing around in a surprising show of skill and misdirection! The winner of our second fight of the day is-"

" _ **TEAM AAAAAARTS!**_ " Carmen screamed, finishing Vivian's statement.

The whole stadium erupted into cheers.

"Holy crap…" Arty looked around as he waved sheepishly to the crowd, "That… they're all cheering… for us… That's a first…" He looked over to Timbre, who was flashing her famous smile and waving enthusiastically, "Well… for me that is."

"Shut up. This still makes me _very_ uncomfortable." She said through her teeth, not breaking her expression.

"When did you break out of her spell?! Was it the kiss?!" Roland shouted as he spun Sepia around and around. He set her back down on her feet and held her at arm's length with tears brimming over his eyelids.

Sepia's grin widened as happy tears trailed down his cheeks, ' _When Saffron sneezed. Her face looks gross when it puffs up.'_

"W… what…?"

' _Kidding!'_ she slapped him on the arm, ' _Of course it was when you kissed me! It was like when you're bored at a restaurant and your scroll is dead so you start reading the menu, but then your food comes out and reminds you of what's really important in life!'_

Roland just pulled her in for another hug, "Gods, you're just…" he hugged her tighter, "I love you, you know tha…" he froze and let go, his face blazing red.

' _I love you too…?'_ Sepia's heart picked back up unlike what it did with Saffron. Her cheeks turned the same shade of bright red as Roland's.

"Okay, lovebirds." The speakers boomed, "Get your team and head out of the arena so we can prepare for the next fight." Vivian chuckled. They couldn't exactly tell if it was from finding Team ARTS funny, or if he was just happy to have a break from Carmen for a little bit.

Arty laughed and pat Roland on the back, taking the lead to get them out of the ring. They stopped in their tracks when they heard what sounded like multiple people crying.

" _WE WERE SO CLOSE, PEP! SO CLOOOOOOOOOOOSE"_ Saffron wailed from the dugout around the arena. She cried harder than even Pepper had, and did so with a face that totally negated any effect that her Semblance might have had, " _NOOOOOOO! NO THIS AIN'T RIGHT! WHHHHHY?! WHY DIDN'T THAT LITTLE B LISTEN?! WHY PEPPA?!"_

"Well… I…" Pepper was cut off as Cayenne stepped between them.

"Hey, we fought hard," Cayenne pulled Saffron up by the arm, "Let's go grab some lunch and calm down. Epa seriously needs it after he got zapped!"

"I… I… I guess…" Saffron trudged towards the exit, "I… I did good… right, gals… and Epa…?"

"Yes… Saffron. You did." Epazote twitched a little, as if still getting over the shock from Arty's Lightning Dust. He walked over and held his hand out, "Good g-g-game guys!"

"No kidding! Glad we got to duke it out," Roland reached for Epazote's hand, recoiled after a static shock, and then firmly grasped it for a handshake, "You guys rocked out there!"

Pepper sheepishly stepped up to Arty and held out her hand, "S-S-Sorry… I… shot you in the eyes…"

Arty shrugged as he shook her hand, "Hey. All's fair in the tournament, right? Gotta say, that stuff's pretty good for disorienting an opponent. So anyway… got any tips for… making the burn stop sooner?" He squinted, feeling the stinging intensify again.

"Lemon juice… can neutralize it, but… yeah… that… isn't great for your eyes..." Pepper looked down with tears welling back up in her eyes, "Milk… maybe…?"

While Arty looked for some kind of solution to his eye problem, Cayenne punched Timbre in the shoulder, "You're _so_ fun to fight! We should seriously spar more! You were amazing out there!"

Timbre rubbed her shoulder. Cayenne may have been lanky, but she had a surprising amount of strength. "You too! That hammer of yours really packs a punch! Sorry for the… boot to the head earlier…"

"Sorry for the hammer to the head!" Cayenne laughed.

Timbre laughed back, "Fair enough!"

"So…" Saffron looked down at Sepia. She reluctantly held out her hand, "Um… good game… partner…"

Sepia bit her lip to keep a fit of silent laugher off. Here Saffron was, beaten and burned, and Sepia barely had a scratch on her. She gave Saffron's hand a hearty shake and then gave her a thumbs up. It was a battle well fought and a game well played.

It felt good to be the wild card.


	55. V3Ch2: Chilled to the Bone

"So… you're the boy who's dating my daughter…?" Amadeus adjusted his glasses at the boy before him. With his salt and pepper hair slicked back, his navy blazer and dark blue jeans pressed, and his leather shoes freshly polished, his very appearance radiated disapproval of Turf Fescue.

Turf was stunned into silence. He thought he was stressed in Team ANTE's team fight the day before, but that was nothing compared to meeting his girlfriend's father.

Timbre rolled her eyes, "Dad, stop trying to be intimidating. It isn't working."

"It kinda is…" Turf whimpered quietly.

"I would hope so," Amadeus adjusted his glasses again, finding it to be his only strategy to make him seem like he meant business, "I honestly thought you fought _yesterday…_ but you're still covered in dirt…"

"I uh… usually am, sir."

"And you take my daughter out like that…?" Amadeus shifted his lip in confusion. He was surprised enough that Timbre would fall for a Faunus boy, though that certainly didn't bother him very much. It just shocked him after Timbre spent so little time around Faunus before, and she turned around and began dating one.

"I mean… yeah?..."

"He can move earth with his Semblance, he fights with a shovel, and he likes to dig. A little bit of dirt isn't exactly unexpected, _Dad_." Timbre looked to the restaurant they were waiting to enter. Her team, some of her friends, and their families were already inside, but she wanted to get the awkward introductions out of the way, "I mean, we just got done fighting a girl that could make people sneeze just from being around her. A lot of Semblances can lead to… not so favorable extras…" she glanced over to her boyfriend, "I actually find the dirt a little charming. It shows he's not afraid of a little scuffle."

"I see…" Amadeus tapped his foot, "Well," his scowl turned into a warm smile, "I'm glad to hear that you make my daughter happy. I've heard a lot of good things about you, Turf! I can't tell you how much of a relief it is to know that she's got a good guard dog-" he stopped himself, "Oh my god… I didn't mean it like that. I'm so sorry," his face went white, "That came out very… not right. I am so sorry."

"Eh. It's cool. Really. I've been calling myself that for a while now." He looked to Timbre with a bit of a worried gaze. After he had found out that she was involved in the whole Maelstrom fiasco, he felt like he failed to protect her, even though she came out unscathed. Just knowing she was in that much danger without him even knowing made him feel sick.

"So," Amadeus pushed open the door to the restaurant to avoid disguising his verbal slip up any further, "You two get whatever you want, and as much as you want. I'm buying."

"Don't say that, Dad." she poked her boyfriend in the side, "He'll eat you out of house and home."

"I will not…" Turf's face turned red.

"Yeah, you're right." Timbre walked into the restaurant as her father held the door open, "He'll eat all of the _meat_ in said house and home, but he'll leave all the fruits and veggies."

The Mistrali themed restaurant was buzzing with competitors and fans alike. Paper lanterns hung over short tables lined with cushions for diners to sit or kneel on. Plate after plate of sushi, fried rice, and huge bowls of noodles were carted around the room by stressed out waitresses dressed in kimonos and wooden sandals. Around one of the tables sat Team ARTS and a few members of their families and, to Turf's relief, their significant others.

One woman's voice cut above the rest.

"And that's when my girl _BROKE HIM IN HALF!"_ a red-eyed, red-headed woman shouted with her hand on Sepia's shoulder. Apparently Aubrey Hughes, Sepia's famous 'Auntie-Mom', had taken the voice that Sepia lost and put it on top of her own, "Best film my girl ever made! First time using CGI! Best gore put out on the silver screen!"

"Uh, so you're saying _Blood Breakers II_ wasn't even better?! C'mon! Sepia's the only director I've heard of that can make a sequel better than its predecessor every time!" Roland slurped an oyster out of its shell and slammed it back down, "That looked almost _real_!"

' _I mean, it wasn't that impressive. I did a lot better with_ Death Killing Death _. I mixed together the CGI and the traditional effects on that one.'_ Sepia grinned as Roland and Aubrey went on arguing about her films. She hadn't expected them to get along so well, but she certainly wasn't complaining.

"Hey guys." Timbre waved as she took a seat at an empty pillow. Amadeus and Turf joined her. The poor Dog Faunus gave the floor a confused look, "Just sit down, Turf. It's a cushion, not a Grimm."

Turf awkwardly scooted himself in on his knees, at one point slamming one against the table.

"Timbre!" a woman with mixed blonde and orange hair sitting across from them called, "So good to see you again!" Daphne Umber smiled as she clapped her hands together, "You did fantastic today!"

She winced as she returned the smile, "Gee. Thanks, but I still think Sepia deserves most of the credit."

"Hey," Arty cut in, "It was _my_ paint she used to blow Pepper and Saffron to smithereens…"

"And she used it!" Henry Wells laughed from beside his son. His curly black hair was just as messy and sweaty as usual, and his business suit was just as disheveled as the day Roland left. Rose red glowed around his cheeks and his nose, "Buddy, she just came out and-"

Roland snapped away from his conversation with Aubrey, "Dad… please… you're not completely right..."

Henry tensed up, "I-I'm fine! I…" his shoulders slumped a little, "right…" After his stops at the concession stand during the fight between Team ARTS and Team SPCE, he was feeling more than a little hazy. The bottle of sake he was sharing with the Umbers and Aubrey wasn't helping matters.

"We'll just be taking _this_ then." Daphne laughed as she moved the bottle of sake between her and Aubrey.

Of all of the adults at the table, only one wasn't acting jovial over the victory. Tuscan Umber glared at Henry Wells, "So it must feel good to know that your son made a real contribution in their fight, right? I mean, he sacrificed himself too, but he did it with a plan."

"I'm not sure that I follow…" Henry frowned, "You've been hitting the sake a little harder than me, haven't you?" his drunken grin slowly returned.

Daphne's smile faded as she turned to address her husband, "Tuscan, please. Stop this. Not in front of everybody."

"What? Excuse me if _my_ son did nothing more than spray paint across the battlefield like a lunatic," Tuscan crinkled his nose at Arty, "You'd think he would have learned his lesson when he lost that tooth."

"Hey, that's not fair!" Timbre raised her voice. "If Arty hadn't have done that, we would've lost in the first round of the tournament!"

"Better that than confuse dumb luck for actual skill."

' _You mean the skill that set up for me to finish them off?'_ Sepia had heard plenty about the infamous Tuscan Umber, but she never thought that he would end up _exceeding_ her expectations.

"I'll translate," Roland leaned forward, "She says that you must be pretty crappy at your job if you can't even see a team of students setting up for a finishing blow. Those weren't her exact words, but it gets the point across."

Tuscan looked to his son, who was trying to hide his face with a sushi menu. For a moment, he considered telling Arty to reprimand his team for speaking so rudely to a faculty member of one of the Academies, but he let it pass for the time being to get back to the matter at hand, "Is that true son? Was all of that actually part of your plan?"

Arty slowly lowered the menu, looking to his friends for reassurance or even some help. "Well… Dad, to be honest… no. That all came out of desperation. But we did have a plan at the start… it just got… foiled pretty quickly."

"And, as usual, the backup plan was Sepia. She works well under pressure," Roland chimed in with another oyster at his lips.

"None of you even knew if she could get her head out of the gutter enough to fight back. That was not a plan. That was dumb luck," Tuscan's fist clenched and relaxed as he spoke. His displeasure in his son's performance was clear, "Son, don't get your hopes up. Your team's luck is going to run out by the second round of the tournament, and that's because you got kicked out of Atlas before you could learn the first _thing_ about strategy."

The table fell silent.

"Oh, I'm sorry did I-" Tuscan's rant came to an abrupt close when his scroll started ringing. He stood from the table and looked at his scroll, then left without another word.

"Your husband is very handsome, Daphne," Aubrey tried to lighten the mood a little once Tuscan was gone. She slowly lifted her cup of sake to her lips, "If not a little on the blunt side…"

Daphne watched as the restaurant door swung closed. "Yeah… but he has his moments," her smile suddenly reappeared and she turned to her son, "Don't mind him, Burne. You did _wonderfully_. Your father just doesn't understand that you can try to plan for everything, but sometimes one teensy little thing will go wrong and everything will start to fall apart. You don't have the time for plans. You just gotta go with your gut. Like you told me, Onyx said that you work well as a team because of how much you four pay attention to your surroundings. Plans have to come on the fly if everything's going crazy around you!"

Arty nodded, feeling somewhat comforted. _Yeah… I'll just keep telling myself he's still uber ticked off at me for getting kicked out of Atlas._

"Yeah… like a few weeks ago." Curie added, pushing her glasses up the bridge of her nose.

"Please. No more talk of… _that_ incident." Amadeus waved his hands. He still wasn't truly comfortable knowing that his daughter was involved with taking down a six-story monster, "As Mrs. Umber said, go with your gut! Who wants more sushi?"

"The Maelstrom attack was weeks ago?" Henry scratched his head as he went through the past few days in his head. The haze in his mind was clearing just a little after the sobering speech that Tuscan gave, "I guess I lost track of time trying to get shipments back in order after that mess… but…" he pulled a credit card from his wallet and set it on the table, "I haven't gotten to thank you kids for dealing with all that. I'll cover lunch."

Amadeus started to retort, "Oh, no. Thank you Mr. Wells, but I've got Timbre, Turf and I-"

"Come on now! It's fine! It's on me this time!" Henry laughed, "Anyway, how was it? If I remember right, Dante was with Arty and Timbre, and Ahab tagged along with Roland, Sepia, and…" He drew a blank upon trying to remember Curie's name. Even as he looked her straight in the eye, it wouldn't come to him in his current state.

"Curie." She stated flatly.

"Curie! Yes!" Henry exclaimed, as if he had remembered the name on his own, "Along with all those other students! How did all of you manage to come together like that?"

Arty hated to use the words his father had just used, but they were fitting as a reply, "Like my dad just said... dumb luck."

"Well, I mean, we did kind of plan out everything. Things just got hairy when Oro, Sanguwalker, and Kokonatsu got involved. Here we thought we were in trouble with…" Roland was about to say 'Lieutenant Hulud' but he remembered their deal to keep quiet about taking on one of the leading members of the Grimm Brotherhood. Worrying their parents and friends probably wasn't the best idea, "the giant Grimm wrecking the shoreline, but those three ended up being the bigger issue," Roland pointed over to Curie, "There's the girl that let us get that final shot off. We wouldn't have been able to kill that thing had she not gotten over her acrophobia long enough to climb the ferris wheel with us!"

"Acro-what now?" Arty asked, dumbfounded.

"Fear of heights, moron." Curie glared at Roland, "And _never_ talk about ferris wheels _ever_ again. Got it?"

"Wait," Aubrey held up her hands, "You just listed off a bunch of Grimm. I thought Grimm couldn't survive on Vytal…"

Timbre held out her hand, "Well… he _kinda_ did. You've heard about the Grimm Brotherhood, right? Well, we're… kinda some of the first ones to figure out their hierarchy… apparently," she began playing with her chopsticks as she recounted the discussions in the infirmary following the attack in Vale. "At first, our only real experience with them was Oro and her lackeys in the Emerald Forest. Last semester, we ran into a few more agents during the attack in Vale. After all of that was said and done, our team and a few of the other students pooled our info together. They base their entire ideology and motives off of some old fairy tale-"

"Epic…" Roland corrected harshly.

"Sorry… _epic_. In it, five giant Grimm were created by the God of Darkness to basically get back at his brother, the God of Light… if you believe that sort of thing. The Grimm Brotherhood, or as one of my best friends, Rime, likes to say 'these GB yahoos' seem to be planning to… take over all of Remnant using the Creatures of Grimm as tools to scare the kingdoms into submission."  
Roland continued the explanation, "Their leader is most likely named after the Maelstrom, the strongest of the original giants."

"The Maelstrom we fought was more than likely artificial." Curie pointed out.

"Artificial?" Daphne looked confused, "That's impossible."

Timbre shook her head, "They've done the impossible before. They have devices that can lead, and maybe even control, Grimm now. If they have that, then they're definitely working more in-depth with Grimm than anybody on Remnant ever has before, so an artificial one wouldn't be too far out there for the likes of them…"

Roland tapped the table, "Back to the point, if their leader's the Maelstrom, there are four Lieutenants who watch over their respective branch in each of the four kingdoms. Beneath them are the freaks in the regular Grimm masks, like Oro and Sanguwalker. They're like… the more skilled higher-up minions, but they don't seem to have _too_ much influence. They're like the enforcers and special ops I guess."

' _And then there are the grunts in those stupid mirror masks that I have a blast beating the everliving shi-'_

"Sepia!" Arty, Roland, Timbre, and Aubrey all chided her in unison, recognizing the beginning of one of her favorite hand motions.

' _Geez… tough crowd…'_

Amadeus leaned over to Timbre, "So you're still sure about… this line of work after that monster…?"

Timbre tilted her head, "I mean… things went pretty well. We didn't get in too much trouble. Things obviously went better than expected, and nobody's seen any GB in Vytal since the incident thanks to the bump in security coming in from Atlas and the few stray Huntsmen they've hired on. So… yeah. Things are pretty fine other than that."

"Besides. We seem to be getting better at dealing with them whenever they decide to show up!" Arty felt his spirits rising a bit after his father's criticisms.

"No kidding! You kids kicked some serious butt!" Aubrey sat up from her seat a little and began throwing a few punches into the air, and then began acting out each recounted motion, "I saw on the news where they interviewed you kids! I got to hear all about that Saffron girl slapping the crap outta someone with that whip, and Timbre swinging all around those tentacles, and Arty hitting it with that big _**BWAAAAAH**_ , and Roland defending the big gun with all the swiping and dicing, and Sepia jumping around all crazy, and that Namib dude getting all that sand everywhere, and Opal ROCKETING DOWN FROM THE FREAKING SKY, and-" she stopped herself and shot back down into her seat, "Sorry… I get carried away sometimes…"

Curie leaned over to Arty, "I can see where Sepia gets it from now…"

He laughed, "No kidding."

Timbre smiled as she listened to everyone discuss the Maelstrom attack in a much lighter way than they were used to. As she listened, she let her eyes wander around the restaurant. Her eyes widened when they stopped on the large TV above the long sushi bar. She began shaking Turf, "Holy crap! Guys, look! Rime and her team are fighting!"

Everyone turned.

"Oh yeah… Frost still doesn't like talking to us, does she?" Arty asked.

"Me. She doesn't like talking to me, Arty. She's cool with you guys," Roland tipped back another oyster, "Whatever. It'll be cool to see what Everest does. Think he'll eat one of those Team Geist guys?"

' _Gods I hope so,'_ Sepia stared at the screen.

.

"Everest, you need to calm down." Frost wagged her finger up at the man-shaped mountain, "We are in a fight. I should not have to have a talk with you about your manners at a time like this." her voice was dulled by the sounds of shotgun fire, shattering ice, and other assorted methods of killing. She brought her favorite caveman behind a tree in the swamp biome of the arena to have a chat after he single handedly made a home run with one of the opposing team's members.

"BUT EVEREST STRONGEST ONE THERE I-"

She shushed him, "Yes, which is why I need you to _promise_ me that you will only hit them hard enough to take them out of the fight. Remember the talks that we had before class," she stood on her tiptoes to reach up and pat his cheek, "What did I say?"

"BREAK AURA. NO BREAK PERSON." Everest pondered for a moment, "EXCEPT FOR FAUNUS BOY AND RED WOMAN."

"No, you are not to break Roland or Alice either. You break aura, not people. That goes for everyone including them. Do you understand?" Frost tried desperately to keep her cool despite her team breaking from her original plan. She refused to let them go down as one of the teams taken down in the first round.

"BREAK AURA. NO BREAK PERSON. SMASH HARD WITH CLUB. NOT TOO HARD. MAKE CRY. NOT MAKE DIE." Everest nodded. He looked around the tree to see Rime fighting off two members of Team GYST, a team from Mistral that he had been told was to be pronounced like 'geist', whatever that was supposed to mean. Not like it made much difference to him. In the lava biome on the other side of the arena, Zero was going toe to toe with the leader of the opposing team, a young woman with face paint wrapped in a blue shawl, fighting with a shield that looked vaguely like an eye.

"Yes. Make cry, not make die. Very well done. You go help Rime, now," Frost jumped out from behind the tree and ran towards the central platform. White ribbons trailed behind her, the blades secured to their ends skipping and sending sparks against the tiles. The silky fabric shimmered in the bright midday sun as she ran through the battlefield, "Everest is feeling much better now! He will join you in a moment, and I will go help Zero!"

Rime ducked under the large crooked blade being swung towards her by a girl with long blue-green hair wearing a green tracksuit, "Eh, right!" she dodged another swing, "You have fun with that, Frost!"

"I do not think that fun is the right word for this, but I will try!" Frost looked back at Rime, "Oh, and we will not be sending Everest to the single's round if we get that far! I believe that he might actually hurt someone!"

"Isn't that what we _want_ to do though?!" she called back.

"In your words, I do not want that blood soiling my hands, Rime!" Frost jumped over into the lava biome to chase after Zero and his opponent, Team GYST's leader, Gris-Gris.

"Hey! Don't steal my schtick, Fro-" Rime had the wind knocked out of her by her other opponent's weapon, another large blade that, from her past reading in weapon magazines for ideas, she knew was called something with a name too long for her to bother remembering. All she knew was that the slightly curved blade was fixed to a handle almost equal in length.

"Looks like that blood's going to be soiling a lot more than just your hands, little girl." Yokai, a man clad in dull green samurai armor, raised his curved sword over his head, "I can't wait to-"

" _ **RAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHH!"**_

Yokai looked over Rime's shoulder just in time to see Everest charging towards him and his partner, Spectra. He gave her a panicked look and lowered his weapon, "It's that _thing_ that took Taupe out! What are we gonna do?!"

Spectra, Yokai's partner, gawked in horror as Everest drew closer. "I don't know about you, Yo, but I'm outie."

"Wait, what do you mean?!" He turned back just in time to watch her phase through a tree and disappear into the swamp biome. " _Spectra!_ Oh gods…"

.

"Zero! I see that you are holding up well! Would you mind if I aided you against Gris-Gris?" Frost weaved between giant Magma Dust crystals. She ran parallel to Zero, who was already on the run to get some distance on the voodoo witch chasing him.

He humphed in return, "If you really want to, Frost." he jumped along the rocks, kicking off large Magma Dust crystals in order to keep his opponent from getting a good shot on him. Bullets bounced off of the rocks immediately after each leap, "You might want to watch out." As he kicked off of some of the larger crystals, he folded his weapon in half, holding it by the blade as he aimed the shotgun barrels at the large red rocks.

Rocks began to fall and explode behind them.

"Zero! Are you crazy!?" Frost picked up the pace to avoid being blown apart by the activated Dust, "This is _far_ against protocol!"

"She would've shot you with the pistol in her shield had I not done that," he landed next to her as the string of explosions stopped. They looked back to the dust and embers floating around the path they had just come from, "You're welcome by the way."

Frost wanted to chide him for his cockiness, but that was cut short as Zero held his blade vertically in front of himself, deflecting a large blue disc aimed right for his face. She followed it on its path back to its owner.

"Now that right there was a dirty trick if I've ever seen one," Gris-Gris announced as she emerged from the ash. The patterns of dark gray face paint along her cheeks made her stand out against dark smoke billowing behind her. She held her shield out in front of her as she snickered, "Good thing I have a few of my own."

"Now that does _not_ sound very good." Frost commented as she held her fists out towards Gris-Gris, ready to shoot her blades towards her. The mechanisms in her bracelets clicked as the silk finished reeling back inside. A spring behind each blade was compressed and ready to fire, "Do you have any of those Ice Dust slugs that Umber made for you, Zero?"

"A few. What are you thinking?"

Ribbons of pink, green, and blue light came to life around her bracelets. They twisted and turned hypnotically around her hands. Just as she had hoped, Gris-Gris kept her eyes on the products of Frost's Semblance. Despite its lack of any offensive uses, it made for a great distraction and immobilizer.

"I want you to shoot her while I charge up my Semblance. Attack her until I tell you to clear out," Frost winked at Zero. Seeing the fight between Teams ARTS and SPCE made her want to try out a little deception for herself, "Gris-Gris, I hope that you are ready to feel the full force of my Aurora Borealis."

The girl sneered back, "Now you're just starting to sound like some cartoon character." Gris-Gris charged, pistol rounds shooting from the outer edge of her shield as she closed in on Zero and Frost.

Zero's katana clanged off of Gris-Gris's shield as she prepared to attack Frost. They took swings at each other. At one point, Zero fired at the 'pupil' of her shield.

A clicking noise came from the center of the disc. Gris-Gris looked down in confusion at the large chunk of ice blocking the barrel of the gun in her shield.

"Alright, now…" Frost looked down at her weapons and the ribbons of color surrounding them, "Well… I see… I must have an actual attack to be truly deceptive, so…" her blades shot out from her bracelets, hidden in the beams of light flowing from her hands. They both arced around Zero's shoulders and slammed into Gris-Gris' arms. Color exploded out from the impact points.

Zero pulled his katana down along Gris-Gris' shield. Once the tip fell from the shield's edge, he hooked it up between the shield and Gris-Gris herself. The blade slammed into her middle and sent her stumbling back in a blinded daze.

"Very nice work, Zero! Very quick thinking on your part," Frost reeled her blades back in, "I believe we have the chance to group up with Rime and Everest. Shall we?"

He nodded before they ran together to the center of the battlefield.

.

Leaves rained down as a willow from the swamp biome soared through the air and crashed into the marshy clearing in the biome's center. Everest's club came off the ground with a muddy smack, " _ **WHERE DID LITTLE GHOST GIRL AND GREEN BOY GO?! EVEREST TIRED OF WAIT!"**_

"Don't worry, Everest." Rime sat on Everest's shoulder and patted him on the head, "You'll get to vent your anger soon."

The sounds of rapid footsteps echoed from all around them.

 _Of course, Mistral has tons of swamps… we're fighting on their home turf right now…_ "Everest! Hit _everything!_ "

" _ **YES! BREAK!"**_ Everest slammed his club down against the wet mush that they stood on. The sheer force of the impact created a small crater and uprooted a tree a few feet ahead, " _ **EVEREST STRONGEST ONE THERE IS!"**_

"That's right, bud, but what do you say we make this go a liiiiiiittle faster?" Rime held her hand against Everest's back. A layer of frost emanating from her palm began to spread across his skin. Rime snickered as she heard Everest's breathing deepen, a primal rage starting to emerge in him. "Go get 'em, Everest!"

" _ **RAAAAAAAAAAAAAHHHHHHHHHHHHH!"**_ Veins popped along his arms and chest. Adrenaline surged through his system as his core temperature fell. Survival instinct took hold. He barreled through the trees, each exploding into splinters whenever they made contact with him.

Spectra and Yokai watched on in horror, now reconsidering their ambush. Had Everest turned and ran the opposite way towards them, they would have been just like one of those splintered trees.

"We… should probably go find Gris-Gris…" Yokai trembled inside his armor, "I don't want to be caveman food just yet…"

"Me neither!" Spectra chopped at vines with her sword to make a path for her partner, but, as the thundering footsteps and falling trees came closer, she realized that running wouldn't be enough. A few small orbs fell from the pockets of her track pants. Smoke filled the swamp as they continued to run. Everest still barreled on, the only sign he was ever affected by the smoke bombs was the singular cough followed by another roar. It was at that point Spectra decided that maybe this was a 'every man for themselves' kind of situation. "Yo. I'm sorry to leave you like this again… but…"

"But what?" Yokai looked to his side only to find his partner phasing through another tree yet again. "Oh come on!" He tried to run faster, but his armor was built more for stationary tanking rather than speed. There was no way he could tank a hit from that _beast_. He began screaming as he heard the trees exploding closer and closer to him. "SPECTRA! GRIS-GRIS! HEEEEELP!"

Everest raised his club, ready to drill the puny samurai into the mud.

The swamp trembled as dirt and water were thrown high into the air for all to see.

Everest raised his club expecting to see a freshly flattened disc of metal, but as he looked down for his prey, all he found was a deep muddy crater left in the swamp floor.

.

"Holy crap… Spectra, never do that again!" Yokai shouted as he was dragged literally _through_ the trees by his teammate.

"Shut up or I'll leave you stuck halfway in one of these trees and use you as a distraction while I get away to regroup with Gris-Gris."

"Please… not again…" He whimpered

"Okay then, shut up. I have a plan. You saw how Mr. Muscle got stronger thanks to his little ice pixie?"

"Um… yeah? I guess."

"Gods you are so useless, Yokai… If we can get them to the lava, maybe they'll be _a little bit more manageable_."

.

Frost and Zero were running across the arena to regroup with the other half of their team when they stopped to watch the results of the fight in the swamp. Water and dirt flew about in the air above the cluster of shaggy trees, and Everest's rumbling battle cries echoed throughout the colosseum. Dead spots formed a path around the semicircle of swamp, and she could only assume that this was a result of Everest's primal rage.

She looked up at the aura meters to see that neither Spectra nor Yokai's auras were going down, "They lost their targets. I will signal for them, so cover my back, Zero." she lifted her hands into the air and shot a beam of color upwards. An aurora formed a dome of colorful ribbons over head.

"So what's the plan now?" Zero muttered quietly, his voice somewhat muffled by his scarf.

"Team GYST has to know where we are now, so I do not think that we will have the element of surprise any longer. I propose that we all take them on all at once and set up for Everest to hit them all out of bounds. However, that will be hard considering Gris-Gris has yet to follow us away from the lava biome…" Frost looked back at the hellscape filled to the brim with Magma Dust crystals, black stone, and lava geysers, "If they group up there, we will have to rely on your Semblance. How long can you keep a field up at maximum capacity?"

"Long enough."

As much as Frost was hoping for a numerical answer, she decided that it would be best to just trust Zero and move on. A weak smile played on her face as Rime and Everest burst out of the treeline and into the center platform, "I am happy that you both saw my signal! It seems as though your luck ran out with Yokai and Spectra."

"But they were just…" Rime looked around for any sign of the two GYST members. She slumped off of Everest's shoulders, breaking the effects of his Semblance. "Dangit… and we almost had them, too."

" _ **PUNY PEOPLE GET AWAY?! THAT MAKE EVEREST EVEN GREATER ANGER!"**_ Everest's knuckles turned white against the handle of his club.

"It is alright, Everest," Frost paced between her teammates with the end of her thumb bit between her teeth, "They did not pass through here, so that most likely confirms my suspicions. The only logical conclusion is that they are grouping up in the lava biome and waiting for us."

Rime fidgeted at the sound of the word 'lava'. Ever since it was chosen in the roulette at the beginning of the match, she made a promise to herself and Everest that they wouldn't set foot in that area, "Yeah, but Everest and I are pretty much useless in hot environments, Frost…"

"Then we shall make it cold," Frost released the tip of her thumb, "Would you be so kind as to go find a hiding place and set that up for us, Zero?"

Without any further acknowledgment, Zero dashed off to the right edge of the lava biome.

"You think his Semblance is strong enough to cool something like an active volcano off?" Rime pointed to the direction Zero ran off to.

"I believe so. While he goes to do that, I would like you to chill Everest to the core and create a rather large structure of ice. I will group them up and immobilize them, and Everest will finish the job. Can you both handle that?" ribbons of color danced around Frost's hand as she spoke. Provided that Zero could make the environment a little more habitable for them, the battle could be finished quickly.

"Hey!"

Rime, Frost, and Everest turned to see the three remaining members of Team GYST standing at the edge of the lava biome. Gris-Gris stood on a large mound of rock and Magma Dust, "Are we going to fight or what?!"

Rime nodded, "Yeah, I think I can handle that." she cupped her hands around her mouth to shout to Gris-Gris and her team, "Just a second kids! The adults are forming a game plan!"

"Do not antagonize them," Frost wrinkled her nose at the ice witch of Team FREZ, "I do not want them to realize that Zero is not here," she whispered.

"Where is your ninja friend?!" Yokai shouted from behind Gris-Gris. "He give up?!"

"A little late for that," Rime began scaling Everest's side to get in position on his back.

"Well," Frost watched as steam began rolling up from inside the lava biome. The light from the lava streams and geysers inside began to dull, "that does not matter that much anymore. Shall we?" she raised her bracelets to fire.

" _ **YES! MAKE PUNY GHOST PEOPLE CRY NOT DIE!"**_

Everest charged towards the lava biome. Ice encased his torso, which cued Team GYST to fall back deeper into the hellscape. Unfortunately for them, a large chunk of the area had been chilled over and covered in a layer of frost.

"Is it just me… or do these F-F-FREZ freaks really live up to their name?" Yokai asked as he began shivering, the plates of his armor clattering as he did so.

"Haha!" Rime shouted as she manifested and threw razor-sharp icicles at Team GYST. "You guys had your turn! How do you like us now that _we're_ in _our_ element?!" she crouched down and placed her hands against the ground. The blue haze from her necklace intensified.

Streams of ice shot across the circle of frost. Ice pillars erupted from the icy veins and sprawled upwards through the air. They twisted and merged until a cone of branching ice standing tall in the circle of tundra that Zero made. Rime's Semblance borrowed from his, and the result was one giant ice sculpture over the heads of Team FREZ and the remainder of Team GYST. Gasps and cheers of excitement rang out from the stands.

"Got 'em!" Rime tried to stand, but her knees gave out. She kept her hand pressed against the ice. Even though she felt like passing out after expending the energy of creating the ice sculpture, she still had a little left in her to give Everest an even greater boost.

An ice spike shot up between Everest's legs and branched off to wrap his legs in large frozen crystals. Coils of ice formed around his legs and arms to complete his ice armor. With that, the light from the Dust crystal around Rime's neck went dull. She was out cold.

Frost smiled at Gris-Gris, Yokai, and Spectra, "Did none of you believe that we had a counter to heat? We are Team _FREZ_ after all."

Yokai slowly began raising his hand, but Spectra slapped it back down.

Gris-Gris scoffed, "Whatever, we just thought the lava would make it easier to beat you guys. Just because you turned that off doesn't mean we can't still win."

Spectra brought her leg back and kicked the car-sized crystal she was standing on. Despite the newfound cold, the Magma Dust embedded in the rocks were still very active. The large orange rock began tumbling down the rock formation towards Rime's sculpture.

Frost knew that, with Rime unconscious, they'd never be able to set up for their final attack again if the structure got destroyed. "Everest! Stop that Dust!" She just hoped that her command would still be heard through his thick ice-coated skull. His temper had a tendency to get out-of-hand when he was in this overcharged state.

Gris-Gris drew her shield again as her and her team began circling the rock. "Yokai, go left! I'll go right! Spectra," She smirked to her teammate, "Go right down the middle. Let's finish this quickly."

"Yeah, sound's… wait…" Yokai's eyes widened as Everest charged straight towards the giant Magma Dust crystal. The caveman slammed into it with enough force to stop it dead in its tracks, his frozen fingers digging dents into the sides of it. Orange shards exploded outwards as he got his grip. With the ice covering his body, his aura wasn't activating the Dust. As it stood, it was just a big useless boulder.

"That's not good. That's really not good! How is he doing that?!" Yokai gawked at the half ton of Dust that Everest was already beginning to lift a few inches off the ground, "What _is_ he?!"

"That doesn't matter!" Gris-Gris shouted as she rounded the corner of the rock, "He's useless right now! Spectra, attack the caveman while he's busy! Yokai, go find the ninja!" Gris-Gris kept her sights on Frost as she ran towards the ice structure her enemies had made, "I'm going for the princess."

Spectra ran towards Everest with her warped straight sword out to the side. She phased straight through the giant Dust crystal and Everest, then turned around to skewer him through the back and hopefully make him drop the rock. The tip of her sword only bounced off the surface of the ice. She tried again, but her blade couldn't even make a scratch on the gleaming blue surface of Everest's armor. He didn't even seem to realize that she was there while he struggled to get the Magma Dust crystal up into the air, "Gris-Gris! I can't get through his ice armor!" Her face went pale as she was suddenly plunged into the shadow of the large rock being lifted above her, "Oh gods…"

"Forget him and run, Spectra!" Gris-Gris went up close and personal with Frost. As she made her dash towards her, she had to deflect rope darts with her shield. Luckily for her, it took some time for them to retract back into the girl's bracelets. "Sorry, missy." Gris-Gris jumped, planting her feet square into Frost's chest before kicking her to the ground. She threw her shield towards Everest, hoping a well placed slice with the side of her weapon would cause him to drop the crystal and hopefully end whatever Team FREZ was planning.

A metal dart slammed into the bottom of Gris-Gris's shield mid flight, sending it careening downwards into the ground. The dart shot back towards its owner along a ribbon of silk. Frost leaned up as the dart clicked back into place, "I have grown tired of this, Gris-Gris," she sighed as she stretched her hand up to the center of the branching ice sculpture.

Multi-colored light exploded out from the ice core in the center of the structure. Magnified aurora beams shined bright and bounced along the ice and into the eyes of Gris-Gris and Spectra. Both of them stumbled back, but Yokai had his back turned to it all in his search for Zero.

He finally came upon his target, who was resting peacefully in the shadow of a boulder. Yokai raised his weapon to strike, "Gotcha!"

Zero didn't even seem fazed by the sword being raised over him.

Yokai brought it down, right onto Zero's head. His sword clanked against his.

"Wait… what?" Yokai could've sworn the katana his nagamaki was sending sparks against wasn't there before. "How did you…?"

"I'm faster than you…" Zero leisurely stood with his blade still held against his opponent's, "I can put an end to you, or you can face Everest. Choose."

"But… but…" Yokai looked back and forth between the boy before him and the massive caveman holding off Spectra. He began to whimper as he stared down the barrels of a shotgun.

"You took too long." Zero fired twice at point-blank range, sending Yokai crumpling to the ground. A buzzer went off overhead to tell the crowd that Yokai was down and out.

The rainbow of color was put to an end when an explosion ripped through the ice sculpture and sent bits of ice flying across the arena. Chunks of used up Magma Dust crystals rained down on Gris-Gris and Frost like hail.

Spectra flew past Gris-Gris and slammed into a boulder hard enough to send cracks webbing through the entire thing. Her entire body was embedded into stone, and a ghostly blue shimmer flashed across her body.

"It has been a pleasure fighting you all," Frost stood and began dusting herself off, "You all fought well."

Gris-Gris tried her best to compose herself, "This isn't over, princess. I'm still standin-"

" _ **AAAAAAHHHHHHHHH!"**_ Everest charged towards the leader of Team GYST with his club readied. Each thundering step created a new foot-shaped crater in the ground. Icy haze trailed behind him and his weapon. He reared back and brought his club down right on Gris-Gris's head, sending up plumes of black rock, ice, and orange crystals.

The fourth buzzer went off. Gris-Gris was buried feet first in the ground, her head being the only thing left exposed after Everest's attack. She, like the rest of her team, was completely out cold.

.

"How did you like that light show, ladies and gentlemen?! In yet _another_ dazzling display on today's growing list, Team FREZ is victorious!" Vivian Willows called out over the intercom.

"Wait, what?!" Carmen shouted as she came into the door carrying an arm-full of popcorn, soda, and various other snacks. She slammed it shut with her foot and shuffled her way to her seat. "You told me the FREZ and GYST fight wasn't starting for another half hour!" She glared at Vivian.

"I know. I did tell you that." He looked away, a sly smile crossing his face, "Thought it'd give me a little peace and quiet for a little bit."

Carmen lunged towards him and grabbed him by the collar of his jacket and began shaking him violently. " _You jerk those are my students I wanted to be here to watch them fight and commentate on what they were doing! What were you thinking?! Why would you make me miss my own students fighting?! What are you, some kind of big stupid meanie?!"_

"Ms… Maple… Please… Stop… Shaking… Me!" Vivian could barely get his words out as the world started spinning around him.

" _Why should I!?_ "

"The… Microphone… Is… Still… On!"

.

"Well… that was interesting," Henry scratched his chin. The color from his nose and cheeks was just about gone, "So those are your classmates? That Everest… person… is your age…?"

"Rime says he is, but she's not completely sure. He apparently doesn't have a birth certificate…" Roland looked to Arty, "Remember your first sparring match at Beacon?"

"Yeah. He almost caved my head in." Arty smiled at the memory, "Good times. Good times."

' _I bet he could bench his own weight with just his pinkies,'_ Sepia hopped up from her seat and pulled Aubrey along. With everyone's plates clean and the fight over, she was ready to go, ' _Do you want to head over to the Vacuo side and see what we can find?'_

"I'd love to, but…" Aubrey tried not to look at the bottle of sake that Daphne confiscated. If she showed any guilt, then Daphne might catch on to it going from half full to empty sometime after she took it from Henry, "I've got a little bit of a headache and should probably get some rest. You go have fun with your team, and I'll take you out for dinner later!"

Sepia nodded as she caught onto what Aubrey was trying desperately to avoid, ' _Gotcha. At least it didn't go to waste!'_

"Exactly what I was thinking!" Aubrey clapped her hands together.

"It was great to finally meet you, Ms. Hughes!" Timbre smiled.

"Oh, and it was great to finally meet you too!" Aubrey slid over to Timbre and hugged her tight, "And your boyfriend too! He's just as cute as can be!" without letting go of Timbre, Aubrey reached over her shoulder and pinched Turf's dirt-covered cheek, "You'd fit right in back in Vacuo!"

"Um… thanks?" Turf responded.

"And your future father-in-law isn't too bad either," Aubrey let go of Timbre and winked at her father, "Not bad at all."

Amadeus didn't quite catch Aubrey's comment until she was already strolling out of the restaurant, "W-What did she say…?" he asked, his face blazing red.

"Nothing, Dad…" Timbre held her face in her palm in an attempt to hide her blushing cheeks. "Just… we'll catch up with you later, okay? I think after that meal, I'm ready for some dessert."

Arty's hand shot up into the sky, "I'm up for that!"

' _Me too!'_ Sepia looked over to Roland, ' _What about you?'_

Roland pulled his gaze away from Henry, "Yeah, I'm down… but Dad and I were-"

"Don't worry about it, son. I've got a little business to handle back in the Atlas quarter anyway. I can catch up with you later," he pat Roland on the shoulder, "I'm proud of what you and your team did out there, and I'm sure that she would be too."

Had he said that a few months earlier, Roland might have brushed it off, but it meant a lot coming from his dad after everything that happened, "Thanks. I'll… see you around."

Henry waved back to everyone on his way out, "It was nice to meet you all in person! We should do this again before the tournament is over!" and without even waiting for anyone to respond, he was gone.

"Well," Daphne looked to Amadeus, "It was great to actually do some catching up. We should do that again over coffee. What do you say Amadeus? Oh! And wouldn't it just be fantastic if Naga were here to join us?!"

Timbre signed to Arty, ' _Who the heck is Naga?'_

He signed back, ' _We didn't even know my mom and your dad were childhood friends, and you're asking me if I know the third part of their little circle?'_

' _Just thought I'd ask._ '

"That… that sounds nice." Amadeus forced a smile. Seeing Daphne and Tuscan again was difficult enough, but the thought of seeing Daphne and Naga again formed a lump in his throat, "If she's around, then we should make that happen."

Daphne smiled. "I better go, I'm supposed to be picking up Merigold from the daycare back at the hotel in about twenty minutes. I better get back before she starts pitching a fit." she looked to Team ARTS, "I bet she won't stop talking about you guys _all_ night. She said she'd only stay behind if she got to watch her big brother's fight."

"So she watched him get pepper-sprayed and beat up his own team… Awesome." Curie snickered.

"And saw him get seduced by my ex," Roland pointed out.

Curie punched Arty in the shoulder.

"Ow! He was the one that said it! Not me!" Arty rubbed his arm. "You need to not punch so hard…"

"I know, but you were the one that _did_ it," she pushed her glasses up, "Besides, if I didn't punch hard, you wouldn't learn your lesson. That's one thing I've learned from dealing with being on a team with Midas the past year."

"Is it actually working though, Curie?" Daphne giggled, "I hear that Team MTLC gets referrals pretty regularly."

She crossed her arms and humphed, "Not. My. Fault. Mrs. Umber."

.

"And what for you, young lady?" asked the portly man in a stained white apron. He waved an ice cream scoop through the air flinging dots of chocolate flavored dairy onto the inside of the curved glass panel. Dozens of flavors of ice cream sat in their respective places just beyond the reach of customers. All of this was fairly typical of an ice cream shop in the Vale quadrant of Vytal.

Frost bit the end of her gloved thumb again as she contemplated her next move. Rocky road sounded great, but it could stain her skirt. Strawberry was a strong contender, but she didn't care for the bits of actual strawberry inside the ice cream as they always seemed a little too rubbery to be real fruit. Pistachio was out of the running due to the fact that she didn't even believe that it should have been a flavor in the first place. Only one real choice remained, "I would like one scoop of vanilla in a cup, please."

"Sure thing, missy! Comin' right up!" the portly vendor threw a scoop of pearly white ice cream into a cheap paper cup and handed it out to Frost, "There you are, now-"

"Thank you very much," Frost gingerly placed a spoon into the exact center of the scoop.

"You're welcome…" the vendor pushed his attention to the girl beside her, "What about you? What can I do for you, little lady?"

"Oh, just a raspberry popsicle, thanks," Rime pointed the freezer peeking out of the back of the store.

"Sure thing!" the vendor slapped Rime's order onto the counter, "What about you, big gu- _woah buddy!"_

Everest planted his hand on the glass right over an unopened tub of neopolitan ice cream. Fissures webbed out through the glass as the caveman gently pushed harder against it with the intent of sneaking up on it like he would a wounded rabbit, " _ **ONE. TUB. KNEE. OH. POLE. IT. AN. PLEASE."**_

The vendor snatched up the tub and slammed it against the counter, "Okay! Okay! There you go!" he sighed when Everest pulled his hand away to reveal a hand-shaped jumble of shattered glass, "Okay… and for you, young…" he squinted his eyes at Zero, "kiddo?"

"Ernj drumsycl." Zero's muffled voice came from behind his scarf.

"You're gonna have to speak up," the vendor craned his neck out to get a better listen.

"I wunt an ernj drumsycl."

"Sorry buddy, but I still didn't catch that."

Zero ripped his scarf down and glared at the vendor, "I want an orange dreamsicle!" Immediately after finishing his statement, he brought his scarf back up and avoided eye contact with everyone in the room.

"Comin' right up," the vendor pulled a bright orange and white popsicle from the cooler near the back, "Can I get you a bib for that?"

"Nice, Z." Rime giggled.

Zero begrudgingly took his ice cream bar and turned to grab a table outside. "I'm going to stab _all_ of you…"

"Do not worry. I got the bill. You are all welcome," Frost waved Everest along and sat down beside Rime, "I am kidding, of course. You all performed wonderfully. Congratulations on the victory."

Rime was shocked, "Wow. Thanks, Frost. That's… really nice of you."

"You sound surprised."

"Well… after that whole… thing… when we first got here-"

"That is not important anymore. I have forgiven and forgotten. It is imperative that we discuss who will be going onto the doubles round, and I will not be allowing Everest to go on," Frost put a hand on Everest's arm. Luckily, he was too busy shoving handfuls of ice cream into his mouth to overhear.

"Well… okay then…" Rime found it odd she didn't continue on a rant about following orders and how she could've died fighting the Maelstrom. Frost didn't let it go up until the opening ceremony for the festival a couple days before, "Well... you're the boss. You choose, but if this were a democratic vote, I'd say me and Ev-"

"Everest might actually kill someone, Rime."

"What?!" she looked back over at her lifelong best friend sitting at a nearby cafe table as he scooped another handful of ice cream into his mouth. "He wouldn't-"

Frost held up her hand, "If he falls into that rage-state during the doubles round, then it will not matter if he pulls in a victory or not. If he seriously wounds someone, then Team FREZ is out of the tournament completely. I am not saying that he is inherently dangerous. He simply does not know his own strength."

"Then we don't let him get cold!" Rime began gesturing wildly with her ice pop, "I mean, he's the powerhouse of our team, Frost! What if you and him go in there? Your Semblance doesn't have anything to do with cold. But…" Rime looked to the ground forlornly, "He _really_ doesn't like fighting without me."

"Which is precisely why I am sending you and Zero into the doubles round."

Zero snapped his head away from his guilty pleasure treat, "Excuse me?"

Rime shook her head in confusion, "Ditto."

"You can both fight independently of each other, and you two synergize better than I do with either of you," Frost readied a small bit of ice cream on the end of her spoon, "You and Everest make a good pair, yes, but you two do come at the risk of being dependant on one another. Do you remember what Professor Maple said our first day in her class? Without direction, Everest's brute strength is useless. They will be able to hit both of you if you are constantly riding on his back as well."

"But-"

"You and Zero are good friends too are you not? You two have fought together and… caused _plenty_ of trouble for me on multiple occasions."

"I mean," Zero took the last bite of his popsicle, "I'm fine with it if you are… as long as you're done making fun of me."

Rime looked back into his icy blue eyes, one of his only features not obscured by his signature scarf. "I mean… Yeah… but we've always relied on Avalanche. I mean… this is the _Vytal Festival Tournament_ , Frost! Not only that, but the _50th_ Vytal Festival Tournament! How amazing would it be to say that we were a part of that if we won!?"

"You don't think we could win the doubles round together?" Zero began playing with the now-bare popsicle stick.

"It's not that, I just-"

"I trust that you both are capable of working together. In fact, I think that sending you two in is a safer risk than any other alternative," Frost popped a spoonful of ice cream into her mouth. As Rime and Zero went on arguing and eventually trying to work out a few tactics, her eyes stayed fixated on Zero.

It was in her best interest to keep an eye on him given what had happened already. He had continued to be a close friend and vital member of their team, but there was so much that she still didn't know about him. Zero was more than likely not his birth name, but nothing that she tried to dig up gave her a clue as to who he really was. He was a complete enigma to her, and something just didn't settle right, keeping her mind reeling whenever it attempted to solve that little mystery.

She knew there was an infiltrator among Beacon's student body, maybe even multiple. At this point, she could use the tournament to flush them out. With all the security and pressure, a slip-up was virtually guaranteed. They couldn't hide themselves from so many people for the entire duration of the tournament. The claustrophobia of being on a tiny island and being surrounded by thousands of people enjoying the festivities would get to them eventually.

Two facts kept repeating themselves in Frost's train of thought. First, the Grimm Brotherhood broke into Alabaster's office during the fiasco at prom and stole some very sensitive information from his personal system. Second, there was only one person that she had met during her time at Beacon that was able to sneak into their headmaster's office undetected.

Zero.


	56. V3Ch3: Take It From Me

"Come on, V! You're just scared that I'll whoop you at pool again! We don't have to bet money this time!" Carmen kept her scroll pressed against her cheek. She paced along the wall of the empty rec room in the basement of the hotel that was reserved solely for the students and faculty of Beacon Academy. Four pool tables, three poker tables, and a few ping pong tables dotted the middle of the room. A few dozen arcade machines lined the far wall. She would have thought that the room would be packed late at night considering all that offered, but she strolled around the room alone. Apparently, the nighttime festivities outside were more exciting, "Please, V. I'm bored. Everything's so quiet…"

"Sorry, Carmen. After those fights today, I'm beat. I just want to sit in my nice, _quiet_ room and try not to ruin my voice. You know, more commentating tomorrow and all that."

"But Viviaaaaaan…"

"No, Ms. Maple. I'm sure you have plenty of students still up at this hour considering there's a giant party going on right outside their hotel. Maybe you should try socializing with them a little bit. You know, congratulate them. They did win half of the fights today after all."

"I spend all day every day teaching, taking care of my students, loving those kids to death, and I would really like a chance to hang out with one of my _adult_ friends, V. Come ooooooon. We can be friends, right? We could head down to a bar and grab some drinks or something! Adult things! It's not like your wife is gonna be ticked if it's me! You're, like, the last guy I would ever go for..." Carmen whined.

"Enjoy your night, Maple. I'll see you in the morning for the first fight."

With that, the call ended.

" _YOU JERK!"_ Carmen pressed her back to the wall and slid down to a sitting position. In the outgoing calls screen of her scroll were the names "Alabaster", "Sofaira", "Shirley", "McGouran", "Khidna", "Orchid", and finally "V". Every one of her supposed 'adult friends' had turned her down, with Khidna even going as far to say that Carmen had more in common with a first year student than an instructor.

If the only people she could connect with were her kids, then that's precisely what she was going to shoot for.

* * *

Students milled around the lobby, completely overwhelming the staff at the Valian-style hotel in its respective quadrant of Vytal by sheer. While it was a bit late by normal school standards, the room was bustling as coffees and snacks were had and competitors became friends for the time being.

Team ARTS and Team ANTE took a table towards the window looking out towards the ocean. Bright lights and confetti flowed through the night air. Even though the festival was well underway at this point, the island's energy hadn't died down a bit since the opening ceremony.

Timbre was caught in a fit of laughter from Turf making his ears perk up and flop back down repeatedly when her scroll dinged. She was surprised to see Carmen's face and name pop up. They hadn't gotten to speak much since the festival started.

She waved for the other seven students to quiet down, "Hey! Carmen? What's up?"

"I don't have any friends, Timbre," Carmen sniffled from the other end, "My life sucks and I am a kid stuck in the body of a grown woman."

"Is… is she alright…?" Turf's ears drooped. He leaned closer to Timbre to get a better listen as to what was going on. After all, Carmen was his favorite among the instructors.

Timbre held her hand over the receiver of her scroll, "She's fine. She's just having one of her… moments," she rolled her eyes as she returned to the call, "Did you try calling Dad? I'm sure he'd be up to hang out."

"The last time I hung out with Amadeus, I nearly skewered him with one of my swords. He's a little wary of one-on-one time with me now…" shuffles came from Carmen's end, then an echoing clack nearly broke the speaker in Timbre's scroll, "You should come down to the basement so we can hang out. I just got done crying, so… yeah. I just want to hang out with someone! That's all!"

Timbre felt her lip quiver a little bit. The idea alone of Carmen crying was enough to make anyone feel bad. "Okay, Carmen. I'm heading down. I'm sure the rest of my team won't mind hanging out, to-"

"AAAAAAHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHH YEAH!" Carman screamed into her scroll, "SUCK IT, GROWN-UPS! I DON'T NEED TO BE MATUUUUUUUURE! I HAVE MY KIDS! I DO WHAT I WANT! I DON'T NEEEEEEEEED YOU!"

The line went dead.

"So… is she having a midlife crisis at like forty-five, or…?" Roland lowered the book that he was reading. The cover displayed an axe buried in a field of snow with footsteps heading into the distance, and the pages were tinged yellow from age.

Sepia bit her lip and signed, ' _You probably just added like six years to the woman. Even then, she only looks like twenty-six.'_

"No kids, and keeps in shape being a Huntress and all. Of course she looks fine for her age, but she's gotta be out of her thirties if she was on a team with Timbre's mom. That, and you can't hide those lines under foundation forever..." Roland flipped a page in his book.

"Don't go saying that to her. She's touchy about her age if it's not me," Timbre stood to head downstairs, "You gonna keep your nose stuck in your smut or are you coming with me?"

"I'm going!" Turf jumped up excitedly, "I wanted to hear her comments on Team ANTE's fight yesterday! Well… comments that she isn't screaming across all of Remnant, that is..."

"You expecting praise for being a good boy or something?" Timbre giggled.

Turf paused, "M-maybe."

"Okay, gonna ignore that one," Roland closed his book and stood, "And, I'll have you know, this book isn't smut. It is a story of a kid surviving an entire winter in a Grimm infested forest after his airship went down. It is not _smut_ this time."

Sepia got on her tiptoes to get in his face, then held her hands up between them to sign, ' _Yeah, you save that for when we're asleep.'_

He leaned in closer to her, "What? Like you do with-"

She threw her hands up in the air and stepped back. That was a can of worms that she did not want to open in front of everyone else.

Arty got to his feet to join them, "Wait. You said _this_ time, Roland. That means you've actively read it before, but we already knew that."

"It's good ammo because it isn't exactly hard to remember," Roland shot Arty a glare, "But that doesn't even matter right now since Alice still hasn't returned my copy of the third book in the _Nights of Our Days_ series. I couldn't even continue it if I wanted to!"

The three guys on Team ANTE glanced to their leader, who was turning beet red.

"B-Bugga off!" She glared at Roland and pointed at him, "You said ya wouldn't tell anyone about that."

"Hey, Ebon still has my copy of _Bright Lives for Bright People._ "

Turf looked to Ebon, "Isn't that one of those preachy self-help books?"

Ebon shrugged in return.

Roland slipped his book into his vest, "My library is always open, but the late fee comes at me saying what you checked out. Speaking of which, Timbre still needs to return that book on the do's and do not's of dating a Faunus. Before you guys ask, that's one of Mom's books… that Dad borrowed before I was born."

It was Turf and Timbre's turn to blush now.

Arty laughed as he clapped Roland on the shoulder, "Wow. Remind me to _never_ borrow anything embarrassing from you."

Roland cocked an eyebrow at him, "You did. Remember those Mistrali comics about the magical girl-"

" _It's called manga and it's an art form now shut your face._ " Arty latched onto Timbre and Turf and began dragging them off towards the elevator, "C'mon. Let's go before Carmen starts crying again."

Alice and Ebon followed closed behind, and Roland and Sepia followed close behind.

"Hey… uh…" Navy kept step beside Roland and Sepia, "Do you have any books on… guns or something…?"

Roland wasn't expecting to have a normal conversation with the guy he'd gotten into countless fights with over the past year, but he welcomed it with a hint of caution, "Uh… yeah, actually. Tons. I bought them to help Sepia with her weapons," he pulled back a bit, "I'll… get back to you on that, I guess…"

"Understood."

* * *

"Carmen… please… you're crushing us…" Timbre barely managed to get out through the bear hug her family friend and instructor was giving all Team ARTS.

"Well I have to give you enough hug for Alice and Navy since they're just going to push me away!" Carmen released the bone crushing grip that she had on the whole of Team ARTS… or at least on Arty, Roland, and Timbre. Sepia just _had_ to come in from the back and hug them just as hard from the other side, "Turf! Ebon! Come here!"

"I have no objections." Turf smiled to his girlfriend, "I'll take your place. Give you a break from getting your bones snapped in ha-URK!" a loud series of cracks sounded from Turf's joints.

"You were such a good boy in that match, Turf! I'm sorry that I didn't tell you earlier!" Carmen squeezed the life out of her student. One arm shot away from him, grabbed Ebon by the coat, and yanked him into the hug, "You did great too, Ebon! Great shots with your pistols! So expertly aimed! Your opponents barely had time to move they were frozen solid!"

"T-thanks, Professor Maple…" Ebon coughed as the air was pushed out of his lungs. He was lucky compared to Turf, since he had a good layer of padding from his down jacket to protect his skeleton from Carmen's embrace.

"Please," Carmen released them both, "You all can call me Carmen while we're just enjoying ourselves. That goes for you too, Alice. Call me Professor and I will… probably get a little upset since the other faculty are making me doubt my ability to be an actual adult…" she looked down.

"Aw…" Timbre stretched her arms and cracked her neck to relieve a bit of the soreness, "I feel like I'm losing a privilege," she faked a pout, "I've been the only, as you used to say, 'youngster' that would use your first name for years!"

"Well, tonight, I'm one of you youngsters, so shut up," Carmen ruffled Timbre's hair. "So, any of you guys play pool, or…?" she looked over to the billiard balls scattered about one of the nearby pool table. The breaking up of the balls was likely the source of the crack from her end of the call a few minutes earlier, "Alabaster won't play me anymore. He knows that I'll beat him."

"I'm pretty fair at it. Played a lot as a kid," Alice picked up a cue from the rack on the wall. "Haven't played for a while. I was actually hopin' ta get some trainin' in with Team ARTS, but… we have a few days until the doubles round starts. Let's 'ave a go."

"Right on," Carmen snatched up her cue, "Alright, kids. Here," she pulled eight rolls of tokens out from her coat and passed them off to Team ANTE and ARTS, "We're gonna have fun, got it? Go wild! Call food down for us! We're gonna make those _adults_ jealous with all the fun that we're having! Got it?!"

' _She's… she's cracking a little bit, isn't she…?'_ Sepia reluctantly took the roll of tokens from her instructor. Carmen was clearly not running at 100%, but at least she had the motivation to give more than 100% despite that.

' _Probably._ ' Arty signed back as not to drag Carmen's attention away as she re-racked the billiard balls.

"I heard that." Carmen called out.

"But you were facing the other…" Arty looked to Timbre, who shrugged in return with a knowing smile.

"Seeing aura isn't always seeing it with my eyes, Arty. It's sensing it, and I can tell how the aura around your fingers moves," Carmen leaned over and collected the balls back into a triangle rack on the table, "Anyone else want to hop on? One with me and one with Alice? She'll need all the help she can get." Carmen glanced to Arty.

"Oh no, I suck at pool."

"Doesn't matter. You're on my team," she nodded him over

"But-"

"Don't be a wimp, Umba," Alice chalked up the end of her cue, "'Sides, Carmen's unda estimatin' me. Can't wait to whoop this lady."

"Ooooooooo, tough talk for a _ginger_ ," Carmen sneered.

Alice scrunched her nose and pointed to Carmen's hair, "B-but… you're a…"

"Just deal with it, Alice," Ebon put his down jacket on a nearby coat hook as he took a cue, "I gave up trying to understand her logic a _long_ time ago. Just rack 'em up so we can start."

"Anyone else up to…" Carmen glanced up to see that Navy was already stationed an arcade hunting game, Timbre and Sepia were deadlocked in a ping pong match, and Turf and Roland were taking each other on in a motorcycle racing game.

"Guess it's just us. Right on," Carmen tapped the butt of her cue on the ground a few times. She rummaged through her coat pocket in search of her scroll, but found nothing but the steel handles of her weapons, "So…" she glanced around the room, "does anyone have a coin flip app on their scroll? I do, but… yeah… can't find the darned thing…" she absent-mindedly looked around the area.

"Carmen…" Arty held up one of the tokens from the roll she had given him.

"Oh… yeah…" she stifled her laughter, "I guess an actual coin works for a coin flip, doesn't it? Alice, you're the gambler here. Help us out."

Arty tossed the token to Alice.

She caught it happily, "Alright. Carmen, you call." With a satisfying flick of the coin, it whirred through the air above her.

"Tails."

Alice caught the coin and laid it on the back of her hand. The smiling face of a clown cartoon character looked back at her. "Sorry. Heads." she tossed the token back to Arty, "Looks like we break, Ebon."

"I've got this," Ebon said confidently. He pulled the rack away and set the cue ball out in front of him. He leaned in between Arty and Carmen. The cue was set between his fingers, lined up for the shot. The stick shot forwards and barely grazed the solid white ball. Much to his dismay, it only moved forward a few inches before stopping without so much as hitting the first ball in the set.

"Well… crap…" he pulled his cue away, "That… uh… do I get a redo…?"

"Mulligans are for golf, not pool," Carmen pat Ebon on the shoulder, "Why don't you give it a shot, Arty?

"I honestly don't know what I'm doing… but okay." Arty reached across the table where he had a clearer shot of the cue ball. With a stronger shot than Ebon gave, the triangular form of the billiard balls was shattered. They rolled around the table, and there were a few moments of weak excitement as they neared a pocket, but none sank.

"Not bad, not bad…" Carmen clapped. She motioned to Alice to take a shot, "So, Arty, I wanted to talk to you about a few things."

"Um… what things?" he watched as Alice pocketed three solid-colored balls, one shot after another, "Like how I suck at pool and you should've picked Alice for your team?"

"Like who you're sending to the doubles. I'm curious to hear from Alice, as well," Carmen lined up her shot and pocketed two balls on the same shot, "This stays on the down low, though. I'm just curious, and none of this will affect anything," she took another shot and got two more stripes in simultaneously, "But I am still your instructor, so I would think that my input would be valuable. Since the team round is the only one that isn't randomized at the time of the match, I don't have a _clue_ who any of you will fight," she finally missed.

Alice sneered, "I always _hated_ tha fact that tha Vytal Festival Tournament doesn't have an actual _bracket_. It makes it all seem so… last-minute."

"And can't be fun for the guys who end up in the very last fight," Arty chuckled as he rubbed chalk on the end of his cue. Why he had to do it, he wasn't sure, but he watched Carmen and Alice do it earlier, so he thought he should too, "They're stuck in the coliseum for the entire round until they're finally called out to fight."

Ebon took another failed shot, "Imagine the last two teams to fight for the doubles. They've got to sit through a heart attack every time the randomizer starts spinning."

"It was the same way fifteen years ago… and for the past hundred years… it sucks…" Carmen nudged Arty's arm with her cue, "Back to who you guys are sending in, though. Who are you two thinking?"

Arty and Alice looked to each other blankly before both glancing to their other teammates, who were all stuck in their own games.

"Honestly haven't given it too much thought. We only just got through the teams round today," Arty looked to his teammates. Who would work best together? Who would work best in the tournament setting? The arena wasn't exactly the same as fighting a Grimm. A tournament setting was a whole different world than the chaos of an actual mission. There was too much… order, despite the previously discussed randomness of it.

"I've been waitin' ta see who all makes it to tha doubles round," Alice took out her scroll and began looking through various videos and notes she had compiled, "I want ta get a good read on all our potential opponents before we decide."

"What are your thoughts _now_ , though? If you had to send in half your team within the next half hour or so?" Carmen tapped her cue against her toes as she waited for Arty to finish up his shot, "See, you're not going to be able to analyze who chooses what role out in the field too often, so the doubles round is good practice to prepare you all for that kind of quick thinking," she giggled to herself, "Sorry, I don't mean to get into my teacher mode, but I guess it's a little hard not to with you kids. I want the best for all of you. A teacher's work is never done, ya know?"

The cue ball fell into the corner pocket with a loud clunk, causing Arty to groan in disapproval. "Yeah, but… this isn't the field. I know you and McGouran try to recreate that for us all the time, but this is a tournament. Isn't this supposed to be the exact _opposite_?"

"Would be if the tournament was just for entertainment value," she pointed over to Timbre and Sepia, who were both still going at each other in a match of table tennis at blinding speed, "You guys have a great way of teaching yourselves. You all seek out experiences to learn, like they are right now. That's some seriously crazy practice with hand-eye coordination. If none of you noticed, they're still playing off of the first serve."

"No they aren't…" Ebon watched the white streak that cut through the air above the ping pong table between Timbre and Sepia, who were both standing several feet away from the table itself, "There's no way…"

"She won't let me win!" Timbre screeched from across the room. No matter how hard she spiked the ball back to Sepia's side, it was guaranteed that it would return to her.

"Just let it get past you then!" Arty called to her.

"NEVER!"

"Okay, then. I see your point…"

Ebon placed the cue ball back behind the quarter mark of the table, "I'd be down for going into the doubles," he lined up his shot a lot more carefully than before, "If you and I went, we could combo pretty well with your diamond cards. That, and I think that Navy's a little too abrasive to work that closely with another person, and Turf's so nice that he hesitates a little. You're good at getting things done and giving orders, and I like to think that I'm pretty good at cooperating without overthinking things," once again, he missed his shot. With a groan, he pointed to Carmen.

Alice nodded, "My notes would agree with you on those points, Ebon. But at the same time, I like ta think about tha possibility of us getting to tha singles round. Whoever isn't in the doubles can't go on. So, say, you and I go ta doubles, how well will either of us be one-on-one?"

"I've kinda been thinking the same thing..." Arty scratched his head as he tried to word his thoughts, "Every member of my team has their own strengths and weaknesses… but it's so difficult figuring out who would be okay communicating in the doubles, but also good enough to handle themselves in the singles…"

"You can't plan for everything," Carmen repeated the same words of wisdom said by Arty's own mother at lunch without having even been there as she lined up her shot, "but you can play to your team's strengths and weaknesses. What might be a disadvantage in some regards," she struck the cue ball hard into one of Alice and Ebon's solid colored balls. It bounced off of the bumper, and slammed itself between two striped balls that were sitting next to each other. Both went in, and Carmen lined up her next shot, "can be an advantage when dealing with your opponent. You've got to think about who can throw an opponent off more. Who on your teams can totally break the system and put the opponent at a disadvantage with their own personal disadvantage?"

Alice's upper lip curled up in a sneer, "What is _that_ supposed ta mean?"

"For once, I second one of Alice's notions." Arty added.

"It's good to keep the singles round in your thought process," Carmen sent the final striped ball into a side pocket, "A question that Aria asked our team all those years ago was simple. Who can protect the entire team if things go bad? If three are down and out, then who can they all trust despite the disadvantages that person has?"

"She asked because they'd be the best at acting on their own..." Arty was starting to piece together what Carmen was trying to say, "and they'd also be the ones that can get work done even despite their weaknesses."

"I'm still lost…" Alice sat back and watched as the game continued.

"It's good to send in the person on the team that can go toe to toe best, and who is the best _support_ on the team..." Carmen lined up her shot on the eight-ball, "rather than just sending in the two you agree are the strongest."

"Doesn't that count as planning?" Ebon placed his cue back in the wall rack and took a seat in a nearby chair, "Earlier you said you can't plan for everything."

"Yeah, well, you know me. I tend to say a lot of contradictory things. Doesn't mean that they can't happen. You are _planning,_ but you're planning for the _unplannable_. Once you're in the ring, you're stuck there, and you have to know how you're going to be best prepared for the unknown," a quick strike to the cue ball, and their little game of pool was over, "What I'm really trying to say is that you can plan and plan all day, but that's not going to do anything in a fight. If you really want to plan, it's going to be on the fly. If it's on the fly, then you have to know your team's strengths and weaknesses through and through beforehand. Remember my first lesson on adaptability?"

"Yeah, and we were reminded during our fight today," Arty recounted the discussion at lunch when that same lesson was brought up, "We had a plan set up. We knew not only ourselves but our opponents on Team SPCE. A small snafu at the beginning of the match threw all that out the window."

"When you fell for your partner's ex?" Ebon laughed.

Arty blushed and turned away, "Yeah… but I wouldn't say it like _that_."

Alice thought back to Team ANTE's fight the day before. While Navy and Turf held their own, she looked back more closely at how well she synergized with Ebon. As much as she wanted to point out the importance of knowing their future opponents, synergy within her own team was much more important.

"That settles things," a cat-like grin formed on her face as she looked to Ebon, "You're with me in tha doubles, and I'll go on to singles when the time comes."

" _If_ the time comes." he poked the side of his temple, "Don't let your ego get to you again, or we'll lose the doubles before they even start."

"Right, right, got it. Excuse me if I 'ave a little more of an… optimistic outlook for once," Alice laid her cue down, "Winnin' round one made for a confidence boost."

"Understandable. We just don't want pride being our downfall, right?" Ebon looked up to see Navy walking up, apparently done with his game.

"What's this about pride now?" He asked bluntly.

"Talking about game plans for the tournament since ANTE and ARTS are both moving on to the next round," Arty looked to their professor, "Carmen was just giving us her input. She was in the tournament after all."

"A looooooooong time ago that is," Timbre jogged up, looking tired.

"You done with Remnant's longest rally of table tennis?" Ebon chimed up, pointing to Timbre's arm as she rotated it in hopes of getting the soreness out.

Sepia leaned over the pool table with a flattened ping pong ball between her fingers. Once the poor thing cracked, she just went on hitting it to Timbre in hopes that it would make her slip up. Her plan finally worked when the ball resembled the flat stone that Roland carried around.

Ebon winced as he observed the mangled piece of plastic, "Right…"

Carmen pointed to Timbre, "Hey. I'm not _that_ old, missy."

"You just called me 'missy', Carmen. You are that old." Timbre giggled. "It's not bad, just shows how smart you are."

"I wouldn't go that far…" Carmen rolled her eyes. She collected the pool cues up and began placing them into the rack by the door, "Sorry that I got all teachery on you guys. I know I said I wouldn't, but you all know me. I'm going to stick down here for a while longer, but you're all welcome to head on to bed. Thanks for the company during my mini-midlife crisis."

"Would that be a quarter-life crisis?" Turf asked as he and Roland joined the miniature party around the pool-table, "Maybe a third-life crisis?"

Timbre punched him lightly on the arm, "That was _so_ bad, Turf."

"Sorry, sorry. Heard the opportunity and decided to take it."

"Seriously dude, she doesn't look a day over fifty. She's only got a _few_ silver hairs… just enough to notice," Roland tried his best to stay stone-faced.

Carmen ran her fingers through her hair in a panic, "I only had like five last week! Don't tell me I-" her eyes narrowed at her student, "Oh, now _you're_ the one sparring with Everest at the beginning of next semester. In fact, you get to fight Everest _and_ Rime."

"Woah, woah," Roland held his hands up, "Did I say fifty? I meant fifteen."

' _Not much better…'_ Sepia pat him on the back, ' _You get an 'E' for effort.'_

He thought for a moment, "That's not how that go-"

' _I know what I said…'_ she looked down at her hands, ' _signed…'_

"So what did you guys end up thinking?" Turf asked.

"I've always liked the idea of _voting_ for who goes to the next round, but I'm up to hear what Grandma Maple has to say," Timbre nudged her teacher lightly.

Before Carmen could retort, Alice spoke up, "The best stand-alone and the best supporter should be the ones that head on. In my personal opinion, that'd be Ebon and I."

Timbre raised an eyebrow, "Is that an actual observation, or is that your ego getting to you again?"

Alice's brow furrowed as she glared at the singer, "I'll have you know that I-"

"As far as versatility goes, I've gotta give points to Alice. She's got four separate modes of attack," Carmen smiled to Alice. She had come a long way since she stood up in their first lesson and shared her grievances, "Ebon's highly mobile, too. He'd be a serious asset on the battlefield. I'd call that a pretty solid pair, as long as her team agrees."

Turf gave the two a thumbs-up and a grin, "I'm cool with it. You two have always been pretty good with Royal Flush. Gotten us out of a ton of binds in the past."

"Royal Flush?" Arty had never heard Team ANTE say that outside of poker, but if he had to guess, it was a team attack.

"Mine and Ebon's team attack." Alice spoke up, confirming Arty's suspicion, "I hop on Ebon's skis with him an' he takes off while usin' his Semblance ta keep us mobile and unpredictable on his snow formations. I use my…" she glanced to Carmen, "Semblance… ta snipe enemies. It's hard enough ta hit a snipa, but it's even harda if they're on tha move."

Arty nodded, "Right… That's what I thought it was…"

"Then I guess that me and Turf will be rooting for you two from the sidelines," the corners of Navy's mouth pulled up just a hair, but it was enough to throw the rest of his team off, "I think that we have a high chance of winning the battle with you two."

The rest of Team ANTE were taken aback. Navy was _okay_ with being left out of the rest of the tournament?

The entire time she was discussing the tournament with Carmen, Alice was worried that Navy would be upset if he wasn't picked to represent them moving on, but here he was, perfectly fine with it. "Y-ya sure you're okay with that, Navy?"

"I mean, it's a good enough plan. You two can cover each other's weaknesses. I'm better by myself, and Turf isn't the best at working on his own," Navy mulled over the pros and cons of Alice's plan, "It's not bad to take pride in a good strategy."

Alice turned to head to the elevators, "If ya sure, then I'm goin' up ta bed. I'll see you all around tomorrow, then? Maybe meet up for breakfast?"

"Yeah. Definitely. Goodnight, Alice," Arty looked to the ground absentmindedly. Alice came up with a strategy everyone on her team could agree with despite their conflicting natures in the past. Team ARTS had probably gotten off to just as much of a rocky start, if not a worse one. What pair would make _everyone_ happy?

While Alice, Navy, and Ebon all headed for the elevators, Turf didn't budge from his space among Team ARTS.

"Is it cool if I stay down here for a while, Alice? I haven't gotten much time with Timbre since the whole Maelstrom thing, so…" Turf nervously glanced between her and Alice. Even though Alice was the one that pushed them to actually take a chance on a relationship, it still felt awkward to talk to her about it.

"That's fine, Turf," She stood facing him in the elevator, "Just be up and ready in the mornin'. I want ta go through some trainin' exercises with Ebon an' I'd like you and Navy ta play tha parts of our opponents in tha doubles." The doors closed and the elevator whirred as the three were lifted up to their floor.

"She's a lot nicer than before, huh?" Carmen strolled over to a poker table and took a seat. She waved for her students to come over, "I remember when you guys were all ready to kill each other, but now it's all bran muffins and awkward friendship. Reminds me of my old team."

Timbre tilted her head to the side, something she began doing more often thanks to being around her boyfriend and his canine-like mannerisms, "You… you and Mom didn't get along at first?"

"Me and Aria?! What a joke!" Carmen burst out laughing. As Team ARTS and Turf gathered around the table, she began recounting her experiences as a student, "As soon as Aria and I were put on the same team, she wouldn't quit bugging me about figuring out my Semblance. I might not have told you all, but I didn't have one when I got to Beacon. It seriously rubbed Aria the wrong way that I didn't want to work on it. I was too embarrassed to admit that it put me at a disadvantage… hence why I got to hear that little lesson a few times myself."

"You didn't have a Semblance…?" Roland sat across from Carmen. From what he knew about his team, everyone developed theirs relatively early. Carmen was the last person he would expect to not have a Semblance upon coming to Beacon, "I mean, I can't talk much since I rely on my Semblance to fight, but how did you even get that far, much less get into Beacon, in the first place?"

"That's right… he hasn't seen me fight…" Carmen tapped her lips, "See, I have eight swords to fight with. I developed that style of fighting when I knew that I couldn't rely on some kind of extra ability. I had to compensate, and I was comfortable with that. Aria didn't like that I didn't care to grow, and I can't blame her."

"So what made you finally get your little… aura sensing… thing?" Arty asked. While Team ARTS was absent from the lecture where Carmen revealed her power, they heard about it non-stop for the weeks following.

"Aria, Persimmon, and Trish were wounded. We went down to the Emerald Forest to fight some Grimm, and got overwhelmed. None of the teachers knew, and I was the last one standing. Then I just saw a bunch of color…" she twirled the handle of one of her swords between her fingers, "I didn't have to use my scroll to monitor my teammates' aura anymore, but it didn't just help with defending my team. Grimm look like big black spots to me, and I can usually see them through barriers because they're basically aura voids."

"So in other words, you did the same as us…" Arty recalled their first encounter with Oro and how it tore him up throughout their second semester. Now, it seemed like the Grimm Brotherhood was just another part of life for them. It was scary thinking about how it all seemed normal to them now.

She tapped the edge of the table, "Yeah, I guess so. Alabaster says that there isn't anything that the students nowadays do that I haven't done already," she held up a hand to stop anyone from asking the inevitable question, " _Including_ Team ASHS. I even scaled the CCT tower, but I didn't tell you guys about that if Alabaster ever asks."

Team ARTS nodded in understanding.

' _So they really did climb the tower?'_ Sepia pulled up a picture on her scroll. All of Team ASHS were in frame with the tip of Beacon Tower in the background, ' _Yamuna tried to tell me that they shopped it!'_

"Nope, that's real. I was there. Alabaster woke me up at two in the morning. The rumor that someone climbed the tower twenty years ago is true, and that was me. It's a lot easier with laser swords," she tapped the button on her sword handle. A bright blue blade extended towards the ceiling, "You can make some easy hand-holds with these things."

Timbre cleared her throat.

"Right… sorry… Team APCT," Carmen put away the weapon, "So yeah, my team was never as sweet as the apricots that we were named after," she thought for a moment, "Wait, are apricots sweet…?"

"Carmen…" Roland sighed.

"Sorry!" she scratched the back of her head, "Team APCT was like if you started the year by putting Alice, Rime, Set, and Yamuna on the same team. Imagine the fights that would break out. That was Team APCT, but we did at least act civil afterwards. All was well until Aria got on my case, Persimmon started throwing insults around, I started picking fights and goofing off, or Trish started crying. Trish was always the one to guilt trip us into making up."

Timbre gave a weak smile, "I always thought Trish and Persimmon sounded like great people…" she looked to the carpet beneath her feet, "I really wish I could've met them."

"Wait…" Turf looked to their professor, "You mean that…"

"Yep," Carmen nodded slowly, "After all these years, I am the sole surviving member of Team APCT. That's why I stopped being an active Huntress for hire and settled at Beacon as an instructor," the burn scar on her middle felt warm. Team ARTS had seen it, but it was only to make Sepia feel comfortable. Otherwise, she tried to ignore its existence, "Alabaster hired me on the spot, surprisingly."

Timbre had heard the stories before, so she was used to the numb and awkward silence that accompanied Carmen's reminiscing. As she tried to gauge her friends' reactions, she concluded that they didn't really know what to say other than 'sorry'.

"I know that's not the most comforting thing to hear. It's just kind of what you have to be aware of with this way of life. They didn't… pass in vain," Carmen tried her best to put on a smile, but it was nothing compared to her more genuine toothy grin, "Sorry, that's probably not something you guys want to hear."

"I mean… we always knew Remnant was a dangerous place." Arty spoke up, "but… we'll always try to look out for each other."

"And that's all I'll ask of you."

Sepia slowly got up from her chair and headed towards an arcade machine in the far corner of the basement. She couldn't help but feel a twinge of fear that her team would end up like Team APCT… or Team CIRS.

"Is she…?" Turf looked to Roland for an answer.

"It's a long story. Don't worry about it. She probably just doesn't want to think about a few things," he placed his hat on the table to get comfortable. Ever since the attack on Vale, Sepia seemed a little more on edge whenever the risks of being a Huntsman or Huntress came up.

It took a few moments for Carmen to snap out of the hazy feeling that was clouding her mind, "So… uh…" she struggled to think of anything to say, "How has Vytal treated you all? Aside from… the giant octopus…"

"It's been… good. Nice little collection of everything." Arty tried to push the discomfort from the previous conversation away, "Feels kind of like a whirlwind trip around the world. One minute you're in Vale and within twenty minutes you could end up in Atlas or Mistral." He looked back to Sepia, who was absentmindedly shoving tokens into a game for an extra continue.

"That's good…" Carmen bit her lip. The scar on her middle had begun to outright sting like a fresh burn, "Here," she pulled out another eight rolls of tokens from her coat and laid them out on the poker table. She ran her fingers back through her hair as she stood, "You kids have fun, okay? I'm going to go get some fresh air. Sorry to cut things short, but… it's just a little too stuffy in this basement."

Timbre jumped up to give her a hug, "Are you okay, Carmen?"

"Don't worry about me. Just have fun tonight, okay?" Carmen gently pulled away, "I'll be alright. Sometimes a Huntress just has to take a little breather, you know?" a shaky smile returned to her lips as she called the elevator.

Timbre wanted to call after her, but she realized that Carmen was right. Not only was she a Huntress, she was one that had twenty years of experience under her belt. She'd definitely seen things that no normal person would think they'd ever see even in their worst nightmares. It had to have a toll, but that just came with the job. "Right… you take tonight easy, too… okay?"

"I'll try," Carmen waved as the elevator doors shut.

.

Cigarette smoke and the smell of alcohol flooded the dimly lit bar. The few patrons were scattered about, doing some combination of talking, drinking, flirting, or playing pool at the tables in the farthest depths of the room near the bathrooms. While this was by no means the nicest bar on the island of Vytal, it wasn't the worst Vincentas Saurus had ever seen. The last time he was in a bar, he had to fight off twenty thugs who happened to notice he had a fair bit of Lien on him from his most recent paycheck. Here, nobody cared how much money you had. Life in a safe haven blinded you to the concepts of 'better' and 'worse'.

 _Nobody on this island even knows what Remnant is actually like…_ Vincentas scoffed to himself as he took a sip of his whiskey before throwing another hard candy into his mouth. He always liked the bite alcohol added to the sweetness. _You'd think they would've learned a little after they were almost destroyed by the big octopus_.

"Thanks for showing up…" Carmen leaned her back against the edge of the bar beside him. She held a half empty beer bottle by the neck between her fingers. Her eyes surveyed each and every person inside the bar, and her Semblance allowed her to see their dulled auras. They had all been drinking a little too much.

"So…" he held his glass towards her. She slowly clanked her bottle against it, "What'd you call me here for? Your group's little brats acting up again?"

"Shut up about my kids," she shot him a glare. She pulled her bottle away from him and took a short sip. She could still feel the burning sensation in her middle, "I just… you get what it's like to deal with things after they're gone… You get so callous about things that you actively get rid of them without a second thought. How?"

Vincentas nodded as he took another sip, "It gets easier the more things you _have_ to let go. What brought this up?"

"My team… and Trish Ferren," Carmen kept her bottle up to her lips.

Vincentas felt a slight chill go down his spine, and it wasn't from the booze or the sweet sourness from the lemon-flavored candy in his mouth, "Oh…"

"You didn't _have_ to let her go, but you did," she lowered the bottle below the lip of the bar, "I'm surprised you can act so comfortable on this island after all that happened between you and her. She loved you so much, but you just acted like she didn't exist after she was killed… just… what the hell, Vince…?"

"I had to try and move on with my life. Simple as that…" Even as he said it, he didn't believe it.

"You like to move on with your life quite a bit," she paused and took another swig, "with other women, I mean," her fingers tightened on the neck of her bottle, "but Orchid just thinks you're so damaged that she forgives you every time, so it's okay… isn't it?"

"Did you call me down here just to criticize me? You say damaged as if it's an excuse, but we both know that we've seen things that have actually changed us. You especially with that… little _gang_ Onyx runs."

"I called you down because I…" Carmen grit her teeth at the thoughts passing through her head, "I know they're going to end up like me, Vince. _Worse,_ even. I don't have a chance at getting married or having my own kids… my students _are_ my kids, but I'm sitting here telling them to go out and get the same scars as me and watch their friends die like I did," she tipped her bottle up to finish it off, then dropped it onto the bar without a second thought, "I hate us, Vince… I hate the Grimm Brotherhood… I hate all those bounties that you go after… but I hate us more."

"You hate lying for the sake of normalcy? It's part of your job, isn't it?" He looked to her, "Your _real_ job, not the one you use as cover just to make a bunch of children feel safe when they're nowhere close to it."

" _JUST SHUT UP!"_ she slapped his drink out of his hand. With every pair of eyes in the bar on them, she went on shouting, " _DON'T ACT LIKE I DON'T LOVE THEM WHEN YOU KNOW DAMN WELL THAT I DO! LIKE YOU EVEN HAVE AN OUNCE OF LOVE FOR THOSE KIDS THAT YOU LOST!"_

Vincentas shot to his feet and glared down to the woman in front of him.

Carmen breathed heavily in an effort to compose herself, "Did you ever even learn their names?"

"I don't know who you're-"

"The children you had with Trish! The ones we sent away to protect them from their mother's killer! The ones that _died_ because of the monsters that would eventually become the Grimm Brotherhood!"

"You leave that in the past, Maple."

"Why? Because then you won't look like the big badass monster hunter you try to be for the kid you didn't forget about? So your life doesn't look like an absolute mess with the woman you pretend you're actually with?" she stood and got up next to him, getting in his face, "Does she even know about you and Trish?"

"Shut up, Maple."

"Does she know that Ivoros might have a few half-siblings out there in the world because you wanted to feel loved after what happened back home in Vacuo? After Aria, Persimmon, and Trish died? After I got attacked? After you found that kid in the rubble? You try to use that as an excuse just so you don't have to settle down back home and instead sleep your way around, as you called it, 'Onyx's little club'!"

Vincentas pushed her back against the bar, "You only have that half-right, miss. Yeah, that mission is one of the _plethora_ of reasons why I'm not at Shade, but I haven't been the womanizing prick you apparently think I still am for the past 18 years since I married Orchid. So, how about you keep your trap shut about me and my life and focus on the mess you call yours?" he shoved past her and headed for the exit.

"Where do you think _you're_ going?!"

"Back to my hotel on the Vacuan side so I can get some sleep. I'm helping Ivoros and his team for the next couple of days until their team match. He wanted some pointers from a Huntsmen who's actually gone out and seen the world in recent years. You know, someone who's actually fought against people because of those bounties you oh so despise. I chose this profession after all," he pushed the door open, letting in the cool ocean breeze, "You know, those kids are going to think very differently about you once they know the truth, especially your team leader's little girl."  
She charged out of the door after him, slamming the infuriating man against the exterior of a building across the alley from the bar, "What the hell is _that_ supposed to mean?!"

He looked down at her without even a hint of concern, "You've been lying to them the entire time they've known you, and little miss pop-star since she was _born_. You feel like you're lying for the greater good, but I think that's just what the old geezer wants you to think."  
She slammed him against the stone wall again, "Don't you _dare_ talk about Onyx that way!"

He looped his leg around her, knocking her to the side. He grabbed her arm and held it behind her back as he swapped places with her, pushing her face against the wall she had held him against only a moment before, "Those kids you love so much don't even know who you really are. If I were in your position, which only the gods know who'd actually put me there, I'd flat out tell them what's really going on. About them. About this island. About the Grimm Brotherhood. Because if you don't-"

She pushed him away and freed herself, "If I don't then _what_?"

"Then the world will do it for you. At that point," he paused and pulled out another candy, this one a bright red, "it'll be too late to save them."


	57. V3Ch4: Ignes Fatui

**Lt. Chiman: It is imperative that you allow Team STON to move on. We cannot have traitorous scum in the latter phase of this operation. See to it that this is taken care of.**

Lockers lined the walls of the northern waiting room reserved for contestants. Two benches sat back to back in the middle of the floor, but only one was occupied by a single student. The rest of her team was just outside the door to give her privacy as she prepared for the coming battle.

 _Strange. I suppose that confirms my suspicions… How unfortunate…_ she closed her scroll. Her yellow scarf seemed to absorb her scroll when she tucked it inside. The pale yellow of her blouse was mottled with a myriad of different colors, as were her white jeans. With the sleeves of her shirt having been cut off, the streaks of color across the dark skin of her arms seemed to pop with life. The most mesmerizing bits of color lied in the thick rainbow-colored hair that was covered by a thin veil of black to cover it all up unless she happened to move.

Pohela Falgun stared at the door with her cold, yellowish-brown eyes, "You all may come in."

The rest of her makeshift team came into the room.

Tinsel Comet, the shortest of the four of them, bounced around, waving her arms spastically as she danced around the lockers. "Well hey-ya there, Captain! About time you finished putting your makeup on!" she tapped her cheek, which was covered with a liberal coating of light blue glitter. She giggled, finding her own joke extremely funny.

"Will you shut up, Tinsel? If you speak up any louder, then we'll _all_ be found out. I'd hate for all of our work to go down the drain just because they had to send a loud-mouth undercover at one of the academies." A young man with swirling cotton-candy-colored hair chided. He smoothed out his pink vest and the sleeves of his darker pink undershirt. Despite the fact that they were about to be fighting in one of any number of dirty environments, Valentino Eros had to look his best. "I'm sorry about her, ma'am. I sometimes think I hate myself for being the one to bring _her_ into..." he stopped himself to avoid making the same mistake he was just chiding Tinsel for, "our team."

"This is hardly the time for snide remarks, Valentino. Tinsel serves her purpose in this operation, and her success rate far exceeds yours. Think before you speak," Pohela narrowed her eyes at the door as her final teammate stepped through.

"How about both of you just shut up?" said the man clad in black and orange from head to toe. Orange thread held his leather jacket together, making every pocket and every seam easily visible. His ragged black jeans covered most of his belted combat boots. Aside from the orange threads and accents on his jacket, the only other bit of color came from the black and orange checkerboard pattern of his shirt.

Tinsel flipped back her silvery-blue hair, "Awww…. Look at that, Valentino. Tall dark and edgy knows how to use actual _sentences_ rather than just the usual one-word insults!" she snorted, "Only took him a year."

The dark rings under the newcomer's eyes darkened, "You want to start that with me? I mean… it'd be a shame if you had a little flashback, Tinsel." He held up a hand, reaching it out towards the girl.

Tinsel sneered, "Freak… how about you save your little carnival sideshow for those Vacuan losers? I'm sure people from a place as full of Faunus as that sand pit have to have something seriously nasty to fear considering the conditions they live in."

Valentino snickered, "And then it's times like that that make me enjoy having you around. Few and far between… but nice when they rear their ugly little heads."

"I should be the first to tell you all that we have a new objective," Pohela stepped over to one of the lockers and pulled it open, "We are not to move on to the next round. Lieutenant Chiman has made it clear to me that our skills will be needed elsewhere when the time comes. Samhain's skill set will become especially useful when dealing with Fear."

"So what are you saying, then?" Tinsel pouted.

Valentino smacked her on the back of her head, "Miss Sanguwalker is saying we purposely let Team STON win, you invalid."

Tinsel stomped her foot, "But winning sounded like fun!"

Valentino slapped her on the back of the head again. "We have bigger things to deal with. What part of that do you not understand?"

"Why would he want me to deal with Fear?" the man in black, Samhain, spoke up, ignoring the bickering duo next to him. "Wouldn't that run the risk of making her more powerful? That could cause far more troubles for us down the line," he crossed his arms, "That just seems unreasonable that Chiman would give an order with so much risk behind it…"

"As your superior, let me remind you that you are meant to _follow_ orders, not _question_ them," Pohela calmly explained with a hint of disapproval in her voice, "Remember what we are fighting for, and remember the position that you will attain if you simply do what you're told."

* * *

" _ **GOOOOOOOOOOOOOOD MORNING REMNANT! THIS IS PROFESSOR CARMEN MAPLE BACK WITH ANOTHER ROUND OF FANTASTIC COMMENTARY FOR YOU ALL! SORRY TO TELL YOU GUYS THIS, BUT VIVIAN COULDN'T MAKE IT TODAY! ISN'T THAT JUST IRRESPONSIBLE OF HIM?!"**_

As Carmen's voice echoed through the stadium, the crowd also caught a dull thumping noise. From somewhere just outside the announcer's booth, Vivian Willows' muffled voice could be heard, "Carmen, you let me in this _instant_!"

"Nope! You kept me from a match, and this is payback!" Carmen cackled. She leaned in close to the window overlooking the battlefield. Snack cake wrappers, empty coffee cups, and scattered gummy candies were already collecting ants littered the room, " _ **SO, LET'S GET ON WITH THE MATCH! GET THOSE BIOMES ROLLING! TEAM STON FROM VACUO VERSUS TEAM FSTV FROM ATLAS! SHOW US WHAT YOU'VE GOT!"**_

.

"Well…" Shorla examined her freshly painted black nails without even taking a moment to examine her opponents. She had spent a little extra time getting ready this morning, despite what the torn leggings and mess of black and purple that had been seemingly thrown on her might have said. She didn't want that effort going to waste, "Let's get this over with quickly… I just want to get back to the hotel."

"I mean, it's a bunch of Atlas goons," Torbern glanced around at the grey hexagons scrolling through dozens of different symbols. His arm blade gleamed in the bright morning sun, his square shield glazed over with a prismatic shimmer. The geometric patterns on his clothes, shoulder pads, and bracers were all freshly cleaned for the show to follow, "so they can't be _that_ bad."

"Don't underestimate them. You saw what the general's son and his team did in their fight, yesterday." Namib, unlike Shorla, scanned his opponents with a detailed and judgemental eye. If there was one thing he learned from fighting, it was that you could tell a lot about the way someone fought by the way they presented themselves. One by one, he went down the line, starting with Pohela, "Their leader is going to be much more melee-based judging on the blades on her hands and feet," Next was Samhain, standing like a grim statue in the middle of the battlefield, "the one in black isn't going to hesitate to annihilate us. I'm getting the feeling he isn't going to go down easily," Unfortunately, he couldn't see the man's weapon, "I don't know what he has or what he can do. That means he's the one to watch out for."

His eyes trailed over to Tinsel and Valentino, the latter of the two holding a long staff. Judging from its makeup, it acted as a bow in its ranged form, "Sparkles is going to be hyper and fast, my guess is that she's either hiding her weapons up her sleeves or she's going to be like the eldest Léon and fight hand-to-hand while relying on her Semblance. She'll be a hard target to pin down. Pink's going to work more from a distance," he fixed the goggles hanging from his neck while looking to Shorla, "You think you know how to divide us up, then?"

"Yeah, sure," Shorla twisted a little lock of violet hair between her finger. The first biome materialized behind her team. Miniature plateaus and sand formed a simulated canyon complete with a ball of bright light above to act as the sun.

"'Ey. 'Ey, Shorla. Shorla. Shorla. Shorla. Shorla." Opal began nudging Shorla repeatedly. "Shorla. Shorla. _Shorla_!"

"Oh my gods, WHAT?!"

"Can I fight rainbow-hair in tha scarf?" Opal was nearly bouncing on the balls of her feet, her cropped khaki jacket bouncing along with her thick auburn ponytail as she examined the other girl's blades, "She looks like she likes ta get up close an' personal. Like me!"

"Fine…" Shorla watched as a field of geysers appeared behind her opponents, Team FSTV. When she had heard the name 'Festive' upon seeing the schedule for the first round of the tournament, all she could think was _What was General Léon thinking giving them that name?_

The buzzer rang, the screens above flashed to life with their aura levels, and Team FSTV bolted towards them. However, they each disappeared into black tears in the fabric of space that had appeared in front of them as soon as the countdown timer ended.

"Torbern, use the canyon to your advantage with Samhain," one of Shorla's portals swallowed Torbern up, "Namib, take care of the sparkling one," Namib disappeared into another portal, "Opal… don't screw this up."

Opal crossed her eyes, "Pssh. C'mon, Shorla. You know me."

"That's why I'm telling you not to screw this up."

Opal stuck out her tongue and smiled to her leader before diving into the portal that opened up before her, "See ya in tha winna's circle!"

"Just stick to the task at hand," Shorla fell down into the hole at her feet. As she fell into the darkness, she gave out one more angry grumble, "All that pink is going to make it a lot easier to punch this guy in the face…"

.

A tear appeared within the tight ravine formed by two of the plateaus in the mesa biome. Sand poured through the whistling canyon and into the hole, stinging its falling occupant's eyes. Samhain was tossed out of Shorla's pocket dimension and into the sandy bed of the ravine. Heat poured into the stiff leather of his jacket, his pale skin already turning red from the simulated sun.

"Great…" he spat a glob of wet sand against the red stone wall to his right. Surveying the area, he found no easy way for someone to sneak around him, but that left his back exposed one way at all times.

Tarnished black steel reflected a greasy haze of light onto the walls of the ravine as his weapon unfolded from under his jacket. Massive scissor blades slid against each other as Samhain worked the handles. Two thick blades formed the snipping edges of what appeared to be a heavily-modified set of garden shears. Black haze and flashes of lightning emanated from the vents along the thick outer rim of each blade. The handles themselves were formed perfectly to his hands like the worn handle of a hunter's carving knife. The mere sight of Decima Morta was enough to send shivers down even General Léon's spine.

Samhain opened and closed the blade of his sheers, "To whoever that goth chick sent over here with me… she made a mistake."

The light sloughing of sand beneath feet echoed through the canyon from behind him. He turned, swinging the opened blade of his weapon at the sound.

There was nobody there.

"You're trying to unnerve me…?" Samhain slammed his blades shut. Arcs of electricity travelled along the edges of the blade and evaporated at the end, "That's not going to work. It'll get you killed if you're not care-" he whipped around and slammed his blades shut around the air again, "-ful…"

A blow came to the back of his head. A sharp blade cut against his aura and pushed him forward down the length of the canyon.

He grabbed a rock jutting out above him to pull himself back up from the sand. _So one of the other STON kids has some kind of invisibility or teleportation Semblance. Glad I got that update_. He thought sarcastically to himself. Even if the higher-ups wanted him to lose, he at least had to put up a fight to keep up appearances.

"Go ahead… keep playing games," he raised his weapon towards the end of the canyon that let out towards the outer rim of the battlefield, "I'd be happy to make it hurt when I break you…"

The sounds of footsteps returned. Puffs of sand came up as his unseen opponent shifted about.

"Looks like your leader set you up for failure," he opened the blades of his weapon and lunged forward. Metal clanged against metal as his weapon struck something, "Gotcha…" he squeezed the grip of his weapon. Electricity surged across the blades and into his opponent's weapon.

Torbern Argent was thrown back by the shock. He seemed to shimmer back into existence as the effects of his Semblance wore off. With Samhain able to see him now, turning invisible again would be useless in such a cramped space with nowhere to run or hide. All Samhain had to do was trace his movement and look for small changes in the environment. They were stuck in a true face-to-face battle.

Torbern shot his left arm over his right. Using his shield to block whatever projectiles might come from Samhain's shears, he aimed his bladed gauntlet over the top. Clenching his fist, a rapid string of bullets came shooting from a concealed barrel underneath the curved blade.

Samhain dug a heel into the side of the canyon. Red rock cracked under the force of his rapid ascent. After launching himself up into the air, his boot came down between Torbern's neck and shoulder. He planted his hands against the canyon wall to throw the steel toe of his other boot right into Torbern's Adam's apple.

As pain shot through his collarbone and spread throughout his torso, Torbern watched Samhain lift his free leg. In a split-second decision, he lifted his shield and extended it further, out to its maximum size. The layered metal shot out quickly, the outermost rectangle smashing into the side of Samhain's shin.

Samhain fell to the sand, his weapon tucked close to his chest, "There you go…" he held out his weapon. Lightning burst across the metal of the newly shifted weapon. What was a pair of massive garden shears had become a long rectangular box with black haze and blue arcs of electricity exploding out of the vents in the sides. He squeezed the grip, "One down…"

Light enveloped the canyon. What sounded like billions of chirping crickets filled the air and echoed off the walls of the battlefield. A single steel ball slammed into Torbern's shield, but buried itself into the metal and sent him flying through the canyon and slamming into the forcefield keeping the audience safe from just such a knockout.

"Three to go…"

.

"Geez, girl." Opal ducked under a blade being swiped towards her face. "You need ta learn ta take things a little easier!" She swung her boomerang downward, cracking Pohela in the middle of her head before kicking her backwards.

Pohela stumbled back as geysers erupted all around her. She had to admit, splitting everyone up was a smart move… in theory. If there was a good understanding of everyone's strengths and weaknesses, then a victory could be earned quickly and with little effort. If there was any misjudgement in those aspects, however…

A loud buzzer went off, signifying someone was out of the fight.

Pohela's eyes narrowed at the giant holographic screen directly in front of her. One of the portraits on Team STON's side of the board had been dulled out and crossed with a big red 'X'.

 _What the hell is going on?_ She afforded a quick glance around the arena. _We're supposed to be throwing this match!_

A shotgun blast whizzed past her head, snapping her back into her fight with Opal.

"C'mon now! Get yourself back to tha matta at hand!" Opal began to be followed by flickering rainbow-colored after images of herself as she ran in a wide circle around Pohela. "What's tha matta? Don't know how ta catch light afta your little trip through tha dark?"

"Do all of you Vacuan idiots speak like that, or are you just special?" bits of red hot stone crumbled against the blades mounted to the sides of Pohela's arms. She turned on one foot, another blade hooked to her ankle digging into the cracked stone, and hopped back over a geyser.

Opal winked, "Nope. Just me."

"Yes, of course. Of course you do," Pohela held her blades at her hips. For a moment, she glanced over to the skirmish between Shorla and Valentino. Shorla had disappeared, and Valentino was making it appear that he was struggling. All was going according to plan, but she still had to put on a show, "Better take this girl out quick…" she 'thought' aloud, "You haven't been using your boomerang as such… Afraid that it might get carried away by a geyser, or are you just toying with me perhaps?"

"I toy with everybody!" Opal scoffed back, "I like to see people freak out when the shotgun in my hands suddenly goes flying." she reared her arm back and threw her weapon. It arced through the air away from her and Pohela. With a few presses of her fob, the boomerang began curving in and around the blasts of hot water and steam.

Pohela lost track of it in the mist. But she couldn't worry about it long as Opal had begun running head-long at her, colorful after images following close behind.

"Gotcha!" Opal drove her color-coated fist in for a quick final blow. All she hit was air.

"Not quite," Pohela sneered mid-backflip. The blades fastened to her feet glistened with an oily sheen on their ascent. Both raked across Opal's arms, threatening to shear right through her aura.

Her palms hit the ground just in time for her to do a quick twist to slice at Opal again. She fell back onto her feet, then rolled forwards. Opal's weapon whizzed right past the back of her head. With her blades crossed in front of her, she slammed into Opal's middle. Both blades cut across her unprotected stomach, but her aura still wouldn't give.

Before Pohela could slice again, Opal rolled to the side. Normally, this wouldn't have put enough distance between her and the blades to prevent being hit, but with the use of her Semblance, she flashed a few feet away. Somewhere in her rainbow path, she had gone from her prone position to standing back on her feet. "Sorry, friend!" she drove a cyan flip-flop into Pohela's side, driving the girl straight into one of the geysers.

Pohela went rocketing into the sky as hot water and steam sent her upward. As she reached the height of her arc, now sopping wet and steaming, Pohela heard a faint whooshing noise headed towards her. Looking to the side, she could see the teal boomerang headed right towards her.

 _Great…_

A shotgun blast to the face launched her sideways.

Meanwhile, Opal ran to another geyser. She willingly stood in its crater. She held her arms out, as if ready to dive into a pool. "Going up!" Like Pohela, steam and hot water shot Opal into the sky. Using her Semblance to speed up her ascent, she timed her attack to perfectly drive herself into Pohela as she flew over her.

Air erupted from Pohela's lungs as Opal drove an Afterimage-charged punch into her gut. The stadium around her disappeared, blotted out by the stars filling her vision. Rocks that jutted out around a geyser ground into her back as she slammed down into them, then another jet of water sent her flipping upwards again only to receive another gut-wrenching punch from Opal. This one left her embedded in the hot, damp stone of the geyser biome. Her aura shattered like pale yellow glass around her.

Opal landed triumphantly on her feet with one arm above her head. Her weapon flew through the steam clouds and landed comfortably back in her hand. Looking up to one of the large screens, she saw that one of the cameras was focused on her. She smiled, saluted, and took a bow, "An' that's how it's done!"

Another buzzer went off as Shorla walked between the geysers. She jabbed a thumb back at the crumpled boy in pink sprawled out on top of a boulder, "Good timing. Just took out number two," a third buzzer rang, and a red X appeared over Tinsel's photo up on the screen, "and then three… With you, Namib, and I, this can be over quickly… then I can get back to my nap..."

Opal sucked at her teeth, "Darn… too bad they got poor Torbie. I was hopin' for a flawless victory out here."

"Don't worry about such petty things, Opal. It's three against one, now. We've pretty much won already." Namib held his circular blades out in front of him as he approached, "And here's that 'one' now."

"Namib, it's good to have you back," Shorla lazily held a crystalline knife between her fingers. Her eyes passed between Namib and the approaching man in black walking across the miniature desert ahead of them, "Let's not prolong this…"

Black tears appeared in rows on either side of Samhain forming a hallway between her remaining teammates and him as he stepped into the geyser biome.

"You're all going to be just as much of a pain as that grey guy, aren't you…?" Samhain snipped his shears in the air, completely unphased by the portals on either side of him.

A knife shot out from a portal to his right, then clattered to the ground at his feet. Bits of crystal tinked against stone as the shattered blade crumbled on the ground. Grains of powdered violet gem fell from the closed blades of Samhain's weapon.

"Do better…" he broke out into a sprint.

Shorla's eyes narrowed on her target, but he was running too fast for her to get a portal open between him and them, "Namib, Opal, fend him off."

Opal threw her boomerang towards Samhain, "What exactly you gonna do?"

"Just shut up and do as she says." Namib snapped as he too threw his weapons. The circular blades joined the boomerang in their crash course down the hall of portals towards their lone opponent.

Each time Opal and Namib's weapons clanged off of Samhain's, the shears in his hands seemed to shift a little more. The dark haze and flashes of lightning grew around the weapon. His heels dug into the damp stone as he slid to a stop and held up a flashing railgun.

Light flooded the geyser biome with an accompanying scream of electricity. A steel ball flashed through the air. A single well-placed strike from such a weapon, and Team STON would be out of the tournament.

.

Three portals opened up in the blown out canyon of the mesa biome. Opal and Namib both fell out, landing perfectly on their feet. Shorla, on the other hand, fell face-first into the sand. Her face was far paler than usual, and her eyes seemed glazed over. She shivered as her fingers grasped at the sand.

"I… I can't see…" she murmured. She looked around with wide eyes, unable to focus on any one thing, "That damn weapon of his… I barely opened those portals in time… They almost closed around our necks…" she grabbed at the red stone walls to pull herself up. Blue and white spots filled her vision, "This is so much worse than when that girl managed to shoot a flare into one..."

Opal tried to help her along, "Come on, Shorla! I don't exactly want ta be in front of anotha shot like that!"

"Then you're going to have to take him on… _I_ _can't see_ , Opal," Shorla rubbed her eyes to no avail, "I don't know when I'll get my vision back. This is the worst it's been in a while..."

"Dammit…" Opal cursed as she turned back to the edge of the geyser biome where they had teleported from. What worried her was the fact that she could no longer see the figure in black that should have been there. She looked to Namib, "Oi. Dusty. Take care o' her while I go try and finish this."

"You sure that's a good idea?"

"You got a betta one, mate? We can't _both_ sit here, or we'll all be sittin' ducks for his little sparky boom boom gun."

"Focus on getting that weapon away from him," Shorla reached out for Namib to take her arm, "Namib, I can maybe use a portal to throw him to the edge of the ring if you can get me in close. If I can pinpoint where he is, then we're in the clear…" the thought of losing the match with a two man lead on the other team angered her. What should have been an easy three on one skirmish was becoming much more than she had guessed it would be.

Namib nodded and began leading her deeper into the canyon. Without turning around, he addressed Opal, "You heard her. When you're done with his shears, get him over here. The canyon will make it easier to throw him out if he runs headlong like his team did at the start."

Opal saluted and rolled her eyes, "I heard ya, mate! I got this!"

Rainbow-colored light took her place as she ran off to confront Samhain.

.

Samhain stood atop the central plateau of the mesa biome with his hazy shears propped up on his shoulder. He could already hear the fit that Pohela was going to throw. She wanted him to put up an act so bad, so he couldn't just _not_ give them some trouble. If they lost, then they were simply not adequate. Being unable to beat an act would just show the higher ups that they shouldn't worry themselves with weak children like these.

"Oi!"

"Great… it's the fake girl…" Samhain snarled. He turned to face the most annoying Vacuan that he had ever met, "Where are your teammates? Too scared to face me?"

Opal threw her boomerang and ran for Samhain, keeping a close eye on the blades of his weapon, "Who you callin' fake? I'm always like this!" Using her Semblance, she flickered out of the path of his shears as he took a few swings at her. She drove a fist into his face, followed by a few rapid-fire shotgun blasts from her flying weapon, "I would say ya can't _always_ be this gloomy, but then again," she caught her boomerang, blocking enough light from the artificial sun to cast a V-shaped shadow across Samhain's face, "you are from Atlas, aren'tcha?"

"Like I give a damn about where I'm from," he wiped his lip. The blows from Opal had sent him sliding back a couple of feet, but at least he was still standing. His weapon still needed a little bit of time to recharge from the last shot, so close-combat was the only option for a moment. He clacked his shears together a few times and nodded at her, "If you think that you're all that, then quit standing around and fight…"

Opal smirked, "With pleasa!" Opal ran full-force towards Samhain, despite his shears being open and ready to close on her as soon as she got close. At the last second, she flickered to his side, letting him cut through one of her light doubles.

A series of rapid strong punches flew into his side. He swiped again, but as expected, she blinked away. The pattern continued with her mocking him every chance she got. As he looked to Opal, she giggled and waved her hand in front of her face, her digits leaving small reflections of themselves in the air in front of her. "What's tha matta, mate? Can't see me?"

He gritted his teeth as her fists slammed into his ribs over and over. Through it all, he was able to take a little solace in one little fact. She was perfectly in his range.

"I can see you perfectly…" his hand shot away from his side, his fingers digging into the sides of Opal's neck. Had he wanted, he could have finished her off by strangling her, but that wouldn't have been nearly as fun. The dark circles under his eyes only became darker as his Semblance took hold.

"What are you scared of, Opal…?"

Opal didn't know what was happening, but one thing was perfectly clear. Samhain was digging into the deepest, darkest parts of her mind. Everything having to do with her greatest fear: memories, regret, images, desires to avoid it. All of them were being made as clear as a giant neon sign to the man holding on to her.

Then they all materialized before her eyes in the surface of the rock they were standing on as she felt his grip loosen on her. Like the stadium around her, he too disappeared.

Opal knew it wasn't real, but with it right there in front of her, she felt as if she had been transported back to that fateful day that almost took her best friend away from her.

" _Sepia!_ " she called out as she sprinted towards the edge of the plateau, but in her mind, it was the set of Sepia's last movie, and the rigging was already crumpling over the pit. Wires trailed downwards. They trembled, but they were slowly coming to a stop.

Opal swore her foot hit dirt, but she could feel herself falling.

"Interesting…" Samhain whispered from behind her before bringing his weapon down against her back.

The girl went flying into the canyon. A giant cloud of red dust exploded outwards as a result of her impact against the canyon wall. A loud buzzer chimed as Opal's picture faded on the stadium's monitors.

"Should've come with backup…" Samhain held his weapon loosely by one handle. The blades glistened like oil in the artificial sun, "Two more to go… shouldn't be too hard."

.

"Please tell me that was the sound of us winning this stupid fight," Shorla muttered. Her vision was still too blurry to read the monitors, but it was definitely clearer than before.

" _ **OOOOOOOOH! OUCH! AND WITH THAT, LADIES AND GENTLEMEN, OPAL ULURU OF TEAM STON IS OUT FOR THE COUNT! IS SAMHAIN HOLLANTIDE POSSIBLY GOING TO GO AGAINST HIS THREE-TO-ONE ODDS AND TAKE OUT ALL OF TEAM STON TO WIN THE MATCH FOR TEAM FSTV?!"**_ Carmen's voice echoed across the stadium.

"Gods why does she have to be so damn _loud_ and _annoying_?" Shorla griped.

Namib helped her along through the narrow canyons of the mesa biome. He glanced up at the artificial sun for a fleeting moment. At least they could feel at home with the heat beating down on them. The stoney smell of sand dusted his nose. In the midst of a battle for their reputation, he felt like a kid again with the sand beneath his feet and passing between the straps of his sandals.

"Hey," Shorla squeezed his shoulder. His muscles felt tight, as if he of all people was becoming nervous, "Is it the battle, or…?"

"Don't worry about me. We need to get you somewhere safe." Due to Opal's trajectory before her knockout, Namib knew their opponent was above them, watching from the plateaus' surfaces. "I'm going to give us cover." Namib took off his goggles and handed them to his partner.

"Namib, what are you-"

"Just do it. Please." Namib held his free hand out and began moving it in a circle. Sand shot up the edges of the canyon as a fierce wind funneled through it.

To Samhain and everyone watching, most of the mesa biome was shrouded in a standing sandstorm. The only things still visible above the brown cloud were the highest peaks of the rock formations.

"He shouldn't be able to see us anymore. That should give you enough time to recover." He turned to her, barely able to make out her pale skin and dark purple hair through the grit in his eyes, "You almost ready?"

"I think so…" Shorla slipped her hands into two narrow tears. Six knives were clutched between her fingers as she pulled them out, "I really regret not simply throwing them out of the ring, but Opal would have had my head if she didn't get to fight… and I didn't want to make Team STON look like cowards… The fact that I'm worried about that stays between you and me, got it?"

"As it always has, shall it always be, Shorla."

"You've got a better way with words than that Wells girl…" Shorla stifled the smile rising to her lips, "My vision is a little cloudy, but I think I can pull something off. I can't teleport another person right now, but I may have something else in mind."

Something big and heavy crashed to the ground behind them in a big flash of light. Another shot from Samhain's rail-gun no doubt.

Namib pushed Shorla along, his blades at the ready. "Go! Do what you have to! I'll hold him off!"

"We need space," Shorla tore open a portal in front of her. Hopping into her pocket dimension by herself took little to no effort, thankfully, "Sandstorm is only good for giving us cover against him. If you get up there, then I can get him from behind," she fell back into the darkness writhing behind her, "Be careful…"

Namib looked up into the brightness of the sun beyond the thick layer of sand as it began to die down. They'd only have one shot at this.

.

 _Annoying little brats. Come out and fight for real instead of hiding in the shadows._ Samhain shifted his weapon back into its shears form. Arcs popped around the blades inside the black haze. Sand settled around the edges of the mesa. The winds seemed to be dying down. His targets abandoned their cover.

"Finally ready to get this over with…?" he snipped his weapon at the air, "What's the point of you two even trying at this point?"

Namib landed on the sandstone on the opposite end of the plateau. Without even dignifying his enemy with a response, he threw the two serrated disc-shaped blades. Their path was perfectly calculated, as if guided by the wind to make their mark.

One blade ground to a stop between the blades of Samhain's shears, but the other managed to slice at his upper arm. While the one that actually got a hit on him flew back into Namib's hand, the one caught in his own weapon stayed still.

He watched carefully as sand softly flowed out of the center handle, "Using your Semblance to guide your weapon…" glass chips glistened between the black scissor blades, "Looks like you're down one…" he pressed his shears together harder, Namib's weapon shuddering under the force.

 _Good thing that's all I need then._ Namib thought to himself as he guided his remaining blade back to his hands.

The metal disk and its binding shears clattered to the stone underfoot. The world went white for a few seconds while blood rushed up to Samhain's head. Shorla followed her kick to the back of his neck through, sending him sliding over to Namib.

"Idiot…" dust puffed up as Shorla landed, the portal overhead fading. She pulled Namib's damaged weapon from Samhain's and tossed it over to him, "Finish him off…" she glared at her enemy from behind the lenses of Namib's tinted goggles.

Namib rushed Samhain, fire from the red tips of his weapon's serrated edge made large burning arcs as he swiped the man in black. Each hit knocked him back a little, and the final kick to his chest sent him sprawling. It finally appeared that Team STON was getting the upper hand against the remaining member of Team FSTV.

"Got too close…"

Namib's weapon struck the ground right where Samhain's head would have been. He started to pull up, but Samhain had a grip on his wrist.

Samhain's eyes darkened, "Same stupid mistake as your teammate…"

As Opal before him, Namib was put under the effects of Samhain's Semblance. Dark thoughts, pain, and memories all flooded to the surface as the furthest reaches of his mind were violated by the reaches of the man holding his wrist in an iron grip. Namib's pupils dilated as he saw his greatest fear materialize before him. Sweat poured from him as his heart rate increased. He was back home. Not just Vacuo, but his _home_ in the village. It lay in ruins as Grimm rampaged around him. A huge shadow towered in front of him, blotting out the burning desert sun.

A wicked smile crept over Samhain's normally inexpressive face, " _Very_ interesting."

"Let… him… go…" Shorla raised Samhain's shears, "Now."

Samhain dropped Namib. The damage was already done, so he wasn't going to be much of a problem anymore. "That's pretty dirty. Using my own weapon against me," he turned, a flurry of black fabric following behind him as he reached his hand out, ready to grab Shorla. "How about you have _your_ turn then!"

She didn't even feel his palm strike her bare hand, nor did she feel him yank away his weapon. What was once the top of a plateau had become a field of inky blackness. Her breath fluttered away from her. The dark consumed her, chilling her to the core. Samhain's Semblance allowed him to tap into people's fears. That little bit of information was made blatantly obvious by the darkness around her.

"Surprise…" Shorla's hand closed around Samhain's.

Samhain's smile faded, "Wh-what?"

"Your Semblance lets you tap into people's fears, doesn't it?" a tear appeared in the field of darkness around Shorla. Through it, she could see the wide-eyed face of Samhain, "My Semblance lets me become my fear," she threw her free hand forwards in a fist. It disappeared into a small tear, then reappeared from another right next to his cheek.

Feet, fists, and knives all flew towards him, bashing into him from every angle.

"Impossible. Nobody can _ever_ fully control their own fears," he raised his shears, the blades straightening and opening up to reveal the rails of the launcher hidden within, "Well… if I can't use your current fears against you…" the arcs of electricity intensified as he charged his weapon, "How about I make a new one for you!"

"I'm not afraid of you," Shorla stood still as he readied his weapon to fire, "I will _never_ be afraid of someone like you."

Samhain was growing more and more aggravated the longer this girl defied his expectations of his own Semblance. With the pull of a trigger, his railgun fired. After releasing all of the pent up power, the heavy metal projectile was sent hurtling right for Shorla's face.

Lightning flashed around her, but it only reflected off of the lenses of Namib's goggles. Without moving from her spot, a miniscule black tear appeared between her eyes. Samhain's shot disappeared inside. The light faded, leaving Shorla and Samhain standing motionless under the artificial sun.

Samhain didn't hear the buzzer he was expecting to ring out. She hadn't moved. She didn't dodge it, but there she was still standing before him. He looked up to the monitors. Both he and Shorla's meters were still near full, "What the… What are you trying to pull?!"

"You want to play with fears, don't you…?" Shorla held out her palm at Samhain, "Well, now it's my turn."

A tear opened ahead of her hand. From the darkness came a silvery streak through the air. A shining steel ball slammed into his gut. His own shot sent him flying back off the plateau, right over the edge of the battlefield, and sliding into the dirt of the outer ring. The buzzer rang throughout the stadium, signifying Team FSTV's loss.

.

" _ **HOLY SMOKES, FOLKS! IN AN INCREDIBLE SHOW OF SKILL, SHORLA TAMIL AND NAMIB SAHARA OF TEAM STON HAVE BROUGHT HOME THE GOLD AND ARE MOVING ON TO THE NEXT ROUND!"**_

"That's not what taking home the gold means, Carmen!" Vivian called from outside of the door. At some point, he just gave up and sat on the ground with his back against it. He was hoping in vain that Carmen would eventually open the door and let him in. While he was glad his students won the match, he was upset he wasn't able to give the audience some _real_ commentary.

.

Shorla walked over to Namib, who was still caught in his thousand-yard stare.

"Hey." she held his goggles out to him, "Thanks for these. Kind of saved our butts out there."

No response.

"Hey!" Shorla waved her hand in front of Namib's face, "Snap out of it!"

Namib shook his head, forcing the vision to fade, "Huh?... Oh… sorry…" he looked around him, arms raised to attack, "Where is he?!"

"I redirected his shot," Shorla nodded towards the other edge of the battlefield, "He tried to use his Semblance on me. It allows him to tap into fears, and you can imagine how well that worked on me."

Namib lowered his arms, but he still seemed tense, "R-right…"

She tried her best to let a smile onto her face, "Hey, it's okay… we won," she pressed her hand against his shoulder, "Thank you…"

.

Pohela slammed Samhain against the wall of their hotel room, "What the _hell_ were you thinking!?" she slammed him against the wall again, "You had _direct orders_ from our Lieutenant!"

"If I took her out, then that Namib kid would have gotten me. It wasn't like I was going to go against orders..." Samhain looked down at the woman holding him up against the wall. The black paint seeping into his middle meant that she was ready to dish out more than a little punishment, "I also thought that she might redirect my shot. That's why I let my weapon charge up so long, Sanguwalker…"

Tinsel scoffed as she flipped through the television channels, "Yeah. Great show, freak, but it sure looked like you were trying to kill them instead of putting on an act. Probably would've been better to make ourselves look weak instead of dangerous. We want people to _underestimate_ us, remember?" she threw the remote at him. It bounced off of his shoulder, making the battery case fall out, "Idiot."

"Well, there is some logic there…" Valentino ran a towel through his sweat-soaked hair on the way out of the bathroom, "We're from Atlas, so it'd be kind of weird if we didn't show _some_ expertise. It's better if the general _public_ is suspicious of us rather than General _Léon_."

Pohela narrowed her gaze at Samhain. After a moment of seriously considering throwing him out of the twentieth-story window, she let him down, "I have to say, you may have a point, Valentino. Necessary sacrifices must be made," she swirled to face Samhain again, "but if you _ever_ go against direct orders or do anything like that again without informing me prior, I _will_ have you reprimanded."

She walked over to the door, "You know what we do to traitors in the Brotherhood, Samhain. It'd be a shame if the Lieutenants and the Commander saw you as such," she slammed the door on her way out. To anyone else in the hall, it would've seemed she was just a sore loser and was storming out on her team.

"Necessary sacrifices… right…" Samhain snatched Valentino's towel away to wipe the paint from his shirt, "They'd leave us all to die if it means that we get the mission done, and we just go with that blindly? What a load of bull…" he sat down on the stark white loveseat in the far corner of the room.

With Pohela gone, Tinsel giggled, "Careful, Samhain, you're starting to sound like you're having second thoughts!" she held out her hand to him, "You might want to be a little careful in case you don't want these lips to sink a few ships… if you catch my drift!" she clasped her hands a few times expectantly in the universal gesture for 'gimme', "Gotta give a little incentive to keep your little secret, traitor."

"No kidding…" Valentino glared daggers at the back of Samhain's head, "With the Lieutenants on this, I don't know if I want to be in the middle of this."

"Without some kind of payment, of course!" Tinsel added cheerfully.

"They'd kill you both without a second thought if it meant achieving those stupid goals of theirs…" the bags under Samhain's eyes darkened, "We'll get _nothing_ from them…"

Tinsel feigned offense, "Well that's no way to talk about our _cause_ , Sammy!" she stood, walking up to him as she counted on her fingers, "To get back at the world that's been unfair and otherwise disgusting towards people like us, we want to learn to control Grimm, put them under our command, _harness their power_ , destroy those pesky Huntsmen factories, and use our Grimm to make the defenseless kingdoms bend to our whim… and that's going to be pretty easy with those new toys they've got going for us. _That's_ gonna be fun… All that's left at this point is getting the chumps on the Commander's list!"

She dropped her arms, waving them back and forth at her sides as she rocked on her toes, "Why would _anyone_ want to go against such a good plan that's coming _so close_ to fruition!?" she leaned up close to him, having to look up to meet his eyes, "I just don't get it."

She bopped his nose with her finger with every word before walking over to the window and looking out to the regular square buildings of the Atlesian quadrant of the island and the bright azure ocean beyond, "Why wouldn't you want this and the rest of the world in the palm of your hand?" she held her hand out in front of her. From her point of view, the miniature city seemed to be resting comfortably in her hand. "If it doesn't follow the demands of their new leaders," she balled her hand into a fist, "all we have to do is send our adorable little minions of darkness in and _crush them_ until they give up or until there's nobody left with the will to oppose us."

"If that's what you really want, then the only way that you're going to get it is with me," he stood from his bed with a hand ready to latch onto Tinsel if needed, "I can keep giving you two money, or I can help you both get the power you actually want. As it stands… it'll only be the Lieutenants and Commander Maelstrom at the top. We're just cannon fodder… even the Captains are. Even Hulud would let Agent Oro die if it meant that she could gain that much power… Or Tursus with her side project... What makes either of you think that Chiman won't do the same for us…?"

Valentino wanted to call him a liar, but something that Samhain was saying had a sliver of undeniable truth in it. There were only a few spots at the top, and he probably wasn't among them, "Chiman is loyal to us, Samhain-"

"Chiman is loyal to Commander Maelstrom," Samhain fired back, "That's not changing. You're deranged if you think that he gives a damn about us."

"So what? Power is power. We show we're loyal and powerful enough and they'll keep us around. That's how it's worked our whole lives," Tinsel paused, "Oh… wait. Little rebel didn't have the world beat him down and take his future before it began. He _willingly_ joined the ranks later on. He wasn't _raised_ within them. So what's the big deal, then, hm?"

"Because what they're doing won't lead to power, it'll only lead to annihilation." he flexed his fingers, "How about I tell you a story that my dear old dad used to tell me…?"


	58. V3Ch5: Shattered

Even in the middle of summer, the frigid waters chilled by the tundra where Atlas sat still waved cool air down to the northern rim of Vytal. Grey rectangular buildings made up the coast, their polished windows not catching even a glimmer of the sun's light. Each pair of windows felt like another dark, disappointed glare from her mother. Every gust of cool air felt like icy disapproval. The frigid silence in this quadrant of the island made her brain feel like it was going to explode.

"I can't fight with just a shield, Mom. I have to shift if I'm going to use Tartarus to its fullest potential. I can't help if it's as unpredictable as it is," Khimera stood with her coat held tightly closed over the white toga underneath. She stood next to a polished white granite wall with names of fallen soldiers and Huntsmen etched into its surface and with gold leaf to make the letters glisten when struck by the light of the setting sun. To avoid her mother's scowl, she kept reading over the names on the wall with her curling brown locks of hair serving as a barrier between them. While the majority were from the Great War, many newer ones had been etched into the granite wall farther down the way. More than one-hundred-fifty-thousand names were memorialized on the monument that could have easily stretched from one end of Amity Colosseums' massive battlefield to the other.

"That's no excuse for putting yourself at risk. You _need_ to stay in this tournament," General Khidna Léon paced along the wall, looking just as sharp in her uniform as always. Not a hair out of pace. Not a nail untrimmed. Not a mark on the pristine whites and greys of the uniform, "The longer you stay in the public eye, the safer you'll be. Fenix, Scott, and Navajo can only take you so far. You only made it through the first round because they were there to help you," she placed one hand on the wall and used the other to tilt her daughter's head up so she could look her in the eyes, "The further you get in this tournament, the more you're on your own."

"Then it will throw my opponents off if they can't even predict what weapon I'll use," Khimera's eyes cycled through red, yellow, and blue for a split second as they always did when she was nervous. The longer this talk with her mother went on, the harder it was to retain her composure, "I'm trying to make the best of my condition… I'm getting better at directing my aura. I just don't know what I'll be using every single time, but I can certainly manage."

"But it also doesn't help if you yourself don't know what weapon you're going to use," Khidna turned on her heel and began walking to a nearby fountain. The large abstract sculpture in the center resembled a pile of square columns. At the peak of the tallest one in the center, water sprayed up and cascaded down the entirety of the piece. "I wanted you to come to Atlas Academy so hopefully you'd learn how to keep your emotions in check. You are… better than you were two years ago, but it still seems to be a real problem for you. You were given those bodyguards in the hopes they'd help you overcome your condition, but… with everything happening… after what happened in Vale… I'm afraid they won't be enough anymore."

"I acted as a Huntress in Vale," Khimera's tail whipped behind her, "Had Arty and I not gone down to Vale, then Roland and Dante Wells would have been taken by Captain Sanguwalker. Sepia Hughes would have been taken by Captain Trex. Timbre Forté would have been taken by Venice," she turned to face her mother, her eyes just barely tinted red, "I would have joined the fight against the Maelstrom without hesitation had you not ordered the rest of my 'team' to hold me down if I tried to leave the hotel…"

Khidna narrowed her eyes back at her daughter, "That was for your own good."

"I can handle myself against a Grimm. Even if it was a gia-"

"I'm perfectly aware of that."

Khimera's nails dug into her palms. It took every ounce of will inside her to keep from shifting, but even that failed. Silvery blue shone in her eyes, " _Then why did you keep me from it? Why keep me from my friends? Why keep me from actually helping others?"_

Khidna whipped a finger at her, "Watch yourself, Khimera," she lowered her arm and took a deep breath, "I wasn't worried about you being hurt by the Maelstrom. It was the Grimm Brotherhood that concerned me," she took a seat at the lip of the fountain and pat the stone next to her, beckoning Khimera to join her.

" _I've dealt with the Grimm Brotherhood before. If Ray can, then I am more than capable of fighting, too!"_ Khimera's fingers tugged at the glowing blue fur around the cuffs of her coat. They shifted back to their bronze base color as she regained her composure. She hesitantly sat beside Khidna, but shrunk away from her almost immediately, "You trust him with so much… You don't keep him on such a tight leash… I don't feel like you love me the same way that you do him, Mom."

Any other mother would have been more visibly shocked upon hearing their child saying such a thing. As the leader of an entire military and a sizable portion of an entire kingdom's government, Khidna Léon didn't allow herself to show any pain, but that didn't mean it wasn't there, "Khimera… that's not true."

Hesitantly, she put a hand on Khimera's. It was a comforting gesture that she wasn't quite used to making, "I love both of you very much. You just have some… issues that your brother doesn't have to deal with. It's _because_ of those issues I'm so protective of you. That's why I had you and Ray's teammates hired on as bodyguards instead of putting you with other newcomers. I got professionals to come in because I want both of you to be safe…"

"If I'm protected all my life, then I won't be ready to fight back if you, Ray, or any of my _bodyguards_ aren't nearby. If I don't fight the Grimm Brotherhood now, then it will only be harder to later. What if every single thing that you fear for me was exactly what happens to me, Mom?!" Khimera clutched the edge of the fountain, "What if it ends up being me instead of Ray!?"

There was a long moment the two of them spent in silence. Khidna mulled over her words carefully. She understood her daughter's anxiety. She had had the same thoughts before and knew that it was all a possibility that one day, one of her children would have to play a role in something much larger than they could ever imagine. With the threat of the Grimm Brotherhood looming over all of Remnant, that day could be closer than they ever imagined, "That's why I want you to gain control over your aura. I don't know why you inherited it in such a state, but I have faith that you can learn to control it. Just look at how far you've come already. Both you and Ray are incredible fighters. Either one of you could fill the role of Pride well. Ray's just more… ready for it as it currently stands, which is why I'm letting him help so much back home. It's also why I want you in the tournament."

"What do you mean..?"

"The tournament might be that little push that makes all the pieces fall into place for you. The rush of battle allowing you to conquer your emotions. To overcome the obstacles not only in front of you but _inside_ you as well," Khidna wanted so desperately for Khimera to understand, but she didn't want to reveal the entire truth or even her own deeply-laden fears, "Does that make sense, Khimera?"

"What if this is just me? What if it's just some strange side effect of my Semblance? You're asking me to change into someone that I am not just because you _think_ that my shifts can be controlled. I can scream at them to stop, but that's about it. I can't completely prevent a shift, and I can't focus hard enough to delay one in a fight. I can direct them sometimes, but not every time. This is my fighting style," Khimera pulled her shield off her back and laid it across her lap, "You don't understand this weapon like I do, Mom. Tartarus was made by Janus, and it only responds to _me_. Not you. Not Ray. Not anyone else in our family related to him. Just me. You say that I _could_ be Pride, but don't lie to yourself and say that there is a chance that I _won't_ be."

Khidna looked over the weapon in her daughter's lap. The bronze contraption was over a hundred years old, and made by Khimera's great-great grandfather shortly after the beginning of the Great War, "It's true… you and Janus Léon do share the same shattered aura, but as our family stories go, he knew how to _control_ the shifts because he was the one to partition his aura in the first place. He made Tartarus to complement that… and you just inherited both."

Khidna looked back to the wall of names, knowing that Janus' was not on it, "Janus made mistakes during the war. It wasn't easy being a Faunus fighting for Mantle, but he fought for what he thought was right in the end. Your brother may use your his claws, you're the only one that can use his greatest creation. Yes, you may… 'fit' the bill a bit better than Ray, but he exemplifies Pride _much_ more than you. Janus had two sides as you know. The one before the war, when he hid his heritage to fight for what he saw as the winning side, and the one that was so blinded by power that he thought he could defy who he was and change the world for himself. What he did was done in blind hubris. He tried so desperately to repent for his sins by fighting for _all_ people. Not just himself. That was the side that eventually became one of the founding fathers of Menagerie."

She tapped Tartarus's shell, "That's where you and your brother differ. As much as I hate to say it, he fights for himself. Not his kingdom. Not even his family. He's selfish, but he's damn good at getting the job done. You on the other hand… you blatantly defied my direct orders and ran off with someone I see as not only a liability, but a threat to our institution… Although, it was all to keep him and countless others safe from a threat you weren't even sure you could do anything against. It was prideful, yes, but it was foolish," she sighed, "That's why I'm trying so hard to keep you both safe. That's why I'm trying to stop the Grimm Brotherhood before either of you are forced into something you're just not ready to do."

"Save the world before it needs saving, then?"

Khidna nodded, "You could say that I suppose…"

"In the case that the day never comes that I'm needed… what then?" Khimera stared at Tartarus's polished bronze plates, "Are you just going to keep me under constant watch for the rest of my life…?"

"I don't think it'd necessarily be that. You would end up being under constant watch, but not by me. Onyx and his group would take all of you in and prepare you for what's to come. If it comes to the point where you or Ray… awaken, then it's all out of my hands. The same goes for Onyx's kids."

As everything always did, it all came back to the fact that Khimera's fate, as well as the fates of a few of her friends, was decided well before they was born. Every decision that she didn't make herself was justified because she had to be what was best for Remnant. No one asked her anything. Every plan she had was made by someone else.

"I hate that, Mom…" Khimera stood and pulled Tartarus back onto her back, "I can't even walk from by bedroom to the bathroom without there being someone to watch me. Sure, I can't always see them, but I know they're there somewhere. I'm about to go for a walk, but I know that I'm going to have a dozen pairs of eyes on me that are constantly telling you of my whereabouts. Do you know how suffocating that is?"

"After the attacks all over Remnant, are you surprised I want to know where you are at all times? Especially after you were involved with the one in Vale?" Khidna stood and grabbed her daughter's arm, "I know you think I only see you as a potential Pride and I'd rather lock you in a box instead of letting you live your life, but I'm your mother and you'll always be my daughter. I'd be protective of you even if we weren't born in Janus's bloodline. Everything I do is for your safety. Do you understand?"

"That's what you call protective? That's not what a normal mom does. A protective mom is one that is cautious of the boys that I bring home, or the places that I go, or the friends I go out with. A protective mom doesn't have cameras installed around Atlas that are specifically made for the purpose of watching me and my brother. I get that we are _very_ different from any other family, but it really makes things hard when I can't even go out without one of my so-called teammates. The only friends I've made are the ones from the attack in Vale," she clenched her fists, "They didn't even know that they were on the Grimm Brotherhood's list until-"

Khidna held up a hand, "Until _what_ , Khimera?"

Khimera winced, "Until I told them. They reasoned out why they are without anything about the real reasons. I couldn't just let them go through this blind. If things are as bad as you like to think, then they deserve to know a heck of a lot more than I told them," her eyes shifted to silvery blue again, " _You know what? I even told Roland a lot about the Grimm Brotherhood's efforts in Atlas, and about that symbol. They killed his mother, but I'm sure you already knew that. I've heard that they've killed a lot of Faunus like us."_

It was Khidna's turn to be angry now. She understood where her daughter was coming from, but conditions were too dangerous to be sharing information so recklessly, "You had no _right_ to share that sort of information with _anybody!_ "

Khimera's eyes flashed red, " **THEY HAD A RIGHT TO KNOW!"**

A hint of concern flashed within the rage, "You never know who's listening, Khimera… What if someone from the Grimm Brotherhood heard you sharing what _we_ knew about them?! Information is _power_. The more we have, the closer we'll be to beating them, but if you go sharing it to anybody who asks for it…"

"They didn't ask for it, Mom."

Khidna had to clench her fists. What her daughter had done fell right under the definition of treason in the Atlesian military handbook. She almost threw Burne Umber in jail for a similar crime.

Blowing a hole in Atlas Academy didn't put all of Remnant in danger.

Khimera couldn't take the silence, "It all started when I let something slip with the other Faunus around. Roland caught onto that, pointed out that _you_ told me things that I shouldn't have known, and then… he put me in a position where I had to give him information. If I didn't, then he would have told the media about what was going on, and that would be even worse."

Treason was one of the worst crimes in General Léon's eyes. Anyone sharing military secrets always faced severe punishment. Khidna's teeth began grinding together as she tried to suppress one of her compulsive snarls. _But she's your daughter_.

While a rage-filled lecture was to be expected, the red stinging pain that filled Khimera's cheek was not. She recoiled from the slap with her hands over her left cheek. Tears welled up in her shifting eyes, "M-Mom, I-I-... I-I'm sorry… I-"

Khidna lowered her hand away from her daughter, "You can't just go around telling people whatever they want because you feel sorry for them! Even a slip up can be covered up easily if you play your cards right!"

She remembered her discussions with the other headmasters. The attacks, the robberies, the strange sense of organization lying under all of the Grimm Brotherhood's madness… it could only mean that there were traitors among them, "You don't know if everyone is who they say they are, Khimera. Anybody… anybody around you could be wearing a mask of innocence. What if someone else came up to you with a sob-story to get you to tell them what you knew? What if they turned out to be in the Grimm Brotherhood, and they used that information to steer us in the wrong direction? What if we go hunting for them in one place while they carry out another attack? People could die! _You_ could die!..." Khidna's shouting dropped to a whisper. She hated how loud and angry she was being towards her daughter, but the gravity of what was happening in the world seemed to be lost on her, "You could be _taken_ from me..."

"I wouldn't have told him if I wasn't certain that he wasn't in the Grimm Brotherhood. He's a Faunus! He is the stepson of a headmistress! His _mother_ was killed by them! That's why I saw no reason not to trust that he or Dante Wells are in the Grimm Brotherhood," Khimera rubbed her still throbbing cheek, "You did a background check on Arty. He isn't in it, and you know that. Timbre was attacked by them, and Sepia is already in the public eye with her films. Rime is under Frost, and Frost told Alabaster that she was okay, and Alabaster trusts Lurida as much as he can a normal student. I don't think any of them could be with the Grimm Brotherhood in the first place."

Khidna crossed her arms, feeling the chill get to her. She still stood strong. She had to keep up the appearance of a strong leader, even for her daughter, "What happens if what you tell them gets passed on further? You have no control of who they talk to or what they say to them. As you said… Roland Wells has information that could destroy the Léon name in Atlas. What if he told that to one of his not-so-tight lipped friends? Or if someone else hears him mention it? What then, Khimera? What then?"

Khimera shook her head, "Do you not know the first thing about trust, Mom? If me or Ray become Pride, then at least a few of them are going to be by our side. I _have_ to trust them."

"Trust doesn't mean anything if you turn out to be wrong."

"It means a lot if I turn out to be right."

Khidna looked to her daughter in yet another moment of silence. The sun had completely set below the horizon and the streetlights had come on, casting the sunken square they were in in a bright orange light. Peoples' voices could be heard as the nightly fun of the festival was about to begin. Khidna knew she wouldn't be able to get through to her daughter, no matter what she said. She had chosen her path and stuck to it.

An old saying she had read in one of her grandfather's old war journals came to the front of her mind. It was one their whole family knew well and had taken to heart for decades, "'When a lion has two heads, they share the same hunger,"

"but if they go after two different prey, they may end up tearing themselves in half.'" Khimera finished, "I know, I know… but that doesn't apply here. We have the same prey. We just have different ways of killing it."

Khidna watched as Khimera climbed the stairs leading out of the square, leaving her alone with the sounds of the fountain's water cascading into its basin. She began to finish their conversation out of her earshot, "That's what I'm worried about. I just hope it doesn't end up tearing us apart anyway."

* * *

Paper lanterns radiated orange light in a criss cross pattern over the streets of Mistral's quadrant of Vytal. Bright neon lights flashed in the windows of restaurants and stores vying for customers. Kids ran around in kimonos and porcelain masks depicting various animals and Grimm. Stalls with cheap carnival games were shoved into each and every alley between the buildings. The smell of freshly fried seafood and sugary cakes permeated the streets.

"This is incredible!" Roland, positively beaming, shouted over the chatter of the crowd filling the streets. While he was supposed to be the guide around Mistral's quadrant for Team ARTS, he got a little caught up with the festivities, "It's just like home! The smells, the sights, the... everything!"

For the rest of his team, it was refreshing to see Roland so happy. It was a side of him they'd rarely ever seen. After playing major parts in defending the island from a giant Grimm, they had made a sort of name for themselves. It made for one of the best moral boosts that Huntsmen-in-training could ask for. Winning the team round was the smallest of victories in their minds, but it only added to their positivity.

As the final day of the first round came to a close, they were pleased to find that most of their friends had also done well for themselves, minus Team SPCE, who they themselves had regretfully taken out of the contest. After a few 'sorrys' and 'you did great!'s, things were back to normal.

"Yeah! I don't think I've ever seen this much… fun happening in one place before except maybe for prom… before the GB attack and all," Arty could barely believe all the color and smiling faces around him, "I'm pretty sure if my dad or General Léon were here, they'd have aneurysms."  
"I guess everyone's still _really_ pumped after Khimera's team's fight," Timbre had to weave her way through the crowd to avoid running into anybody. She wore her old mint green hoodie due to both the chilly night and the habit she had of wearing it in public.

"Yeah… they were the same way after Ray's… only there were less… ambulance airships tonight," Arty pointed out with a cringe.

Timbre winced, "Oooh… yeah. Their opponents all had to leave in stretchers… didn't they?"

"That's Ray Léon for ya." Arty shook his head, trying to push the idea of fighting Ray in the battlefield out of his mind. He couldn't help but imagine all of Remnant either cringing or cheering as they watched him fight Ray, only to have the giant Faunus crack his leg or some other limb over his knee on live television. He shuddered, hearing his own bones snap in his mind.

Before Timbre could respond, she was face to face with the bright yellow and orange eyes of a Grimm. The boney bear face of an Ursa was pressed against her nose, and its black fur flowed down its neck in an inky cascade of shadows.

Considering everything they've been through concerning Grimm invasions and psychos in Grimm masks, Timbre's instinct reaction was to give out a short yell and throw a strong right hook into the side of the monster's face.

Sepia stumbled into a family of four while trying to pull off her mask. The black faux fur hood attached to it covered even her shoulders. The detailing on the mask itself was spot-on. Despite the monstrous appearance of the mask, the kids of the family giggled as she pulled herself off the ground. Their innocence in the face of Grimm was astounding.

She waved to the family and jumped back to Arty and Timbre, still almost shaken by the children's innocence. Her normal smile fell back into place once she caught up with her friends. The side of her face ached, but it was worth scaring the living daylights out of Timbre, ' _Got ya!'_

"Oh my god, Sepia!" Timbre rushed forward and looked at Sepia's face where she had punched her, "Are you okay?! I'm so sorry!"

Sepia just waved her off.

"Wow…" Arty chuckled as he watched the girls, "Kind of weird how the girl out learning to fight Grimm for a living is more frightened by a mask than a bunch of kids were," he picked up the mask and examined its detailing. It was truly a high-quality work of art... despite the large dent in the left side.

"They've never seen them before. If were born here on Vytal, Grimm are just fairy tale monsters to them," Roland still kept his smile at the thought, "That's because of what we do. We make sure that those kids only see those monsters as just boogeymen. Maybe some of them will decide to do the same as u-"

Two kids in white rabbit masks slammed into his legs, only to be followed by a little boy in a Kokonatsu mask waving his hands around. Both kids in the rabbit masks huddled behind him for safety, and the one in the Kokonatsu mask snarled.

"Well, well, well…" Roland tipped his hat at the Kokonatsu-child. He was already in character as a fully trained Huntsman for the kids, and ready to bring one of their fairy tales to life, "A Kokonatsu… and a nine-tails no less."

The kid crouched and snarled again at him.

"Arty, did you ever recover your weapon from that fight with those Beowolves?" Roland held his arms back to shield the two kids behind him.

Arty blinked a few times before he realized what Roland was doing, "Oh… um… unfortunately not. I must have dropped it back in their den!" he put on the showy voice he usually did when playing pretend with his little sister. He always found it a bit embarrassing and hoped he'd never have to do it in front of any of his friends, but, at this point, he was more worried about what would happen to him if he _didn't_ do it at Roland's request.

Roland stepped back with the children still latched onto the legs of his pants, "I see… Timbre and Sepia don't have their weapons either I'm guessing… nor do I…" he took a slow, deep breath. All hope was lost. With the Kokonatsu about to pounce, he knew that his days as a Huntsman were over. He crouched down and turned around to get eye level with the kids behind him.

"There's no need to fear! With or without weapons, we Huntsmen and Huntresses will protect you!" he heard both of them gasp as the Kokonatsu pounced. It was mere inches from landing on his back, but had found itself holding onto his tail like a koala.

He whipped around and picked the masked kid up, "Ah! I've bested you! Once again, a Huntsman protects his people!" he spun them around a few times, then plopped them back down to continue chasing the pair of kids in white rabbit masks down the street.

His mother had put on the same act for him.

"So," Roland straightened his vest, "Sorry about that. I guess festival season gets to me."

Sepia took his hand and looked up at him. Never once did she ever believe that he would be that way with anyone, but there he went whenever kids were around. His mother rubbed off on him in that regard, and she absolutely loved it.

She quickly signed something up to him.

"Yeah…" his cheeks flushed red, "Y-You too…"

"Wow," was all Timbre managed to say. "Never thought you'd be good with kids, Roland."

"Yeah..." he shrugged and continued leading them down the street, "I guess it's how it goes when you're a teacher's kid. Who knows, maybe I'll settle down and be an instructor at Beacon or Haven after a few years of being a Huntsman. Maybe have some kids of my own or something. I dunno."

Even though he knew very well all of that would be hard to do if he actually accomplished his goals, he didn't want to bring down the team's mood on a festival night, "Come on," he waved for his team to continue following him.

"So… where exactly are you taking us?" Arty had noticed that, while Roland was adamant about coming to the Mistrali section, he wasn't giving them nearly enough time to look around the stalls. He'd give them a few seconds but then push them to keep moving. He obviously had a particular location in mind, "Despite the couple of pit stops, you're definitely rushing us a bit."

"You guys have never had Satsuma's Sweets. The best time to go is during festival season. They make special candies for the season, and they sell out quick! Luckily, Satsuma's Sweets is owned by Saffron's mom, Satsuma Sassafras, who just so happens to be in a partnership with MTC. I got with Saffron after she calmed down from us whoopin' her, called up the branch manager, and we ordered a _ton_ of candy. Saffron picked up her bag earlier, but I've still yet to pick up my bags. I got about four times what she did since you guys have never had any before," he pointed at the tail end of a line of people that looped around the corner three blocks ahead, "It's already paid for, so we can hit up the back alley door to pick up the order."

' _How much did you order?'_ Sepia eyed the line. She was beyond thankful that they were going to get to skip it, but the idea of a back alley candy deal seemed sketchy.

"You'll see."

.

"Thank-" the steel door slammed shut and locked in Roland's face. The employees weren't too happy about wrapping each and every individual candy in the four ten pound bags that he ordered, but they still had enough Satsuma's Sweets to last for days to come, "...you. Whelp…"

He threw one cloth sack of candy over his shoulder. The alley stunk of sugar and rotten fruit, and the ground felt sticky from the gallons of syrup that had found its way outside. The dumpster surely had a few twitchy raccoons inside.

"Everyone take a bag."

Timbre and Arty hesitantly took their bags while Sepia snatched hers up giddily.

"Um…" Timbre looked into her bag before returning her gaze to the door, "Was what we just did… legal?"

"I was just thinking the same thing…" Arty added, "Kinda weird we had to come to the grungy back alley to get candy you ordered."

"Better than the line… and tax free…" Roland grinned on his way towards the coastline, "So, candy on the beach? I mean, each of these bags has a dozen of every variety of candy that they offer. We could just chill out, talk, watch the water, and whatever. I could call Cayenne and Epazote for some fireworks. I think they were working on some homemade ones for the festival…"

"That does sound like fun!" After seeing all the fighting and having a busy day with the festival, Timbre thought that a nice relaxing break by the beach sounded great, "Just make sure Arty doesn't get too involved with helping them," she nudged her leader playfully.

"Why does everyone keep pushing the idea that I'm some kind of psycho-bomber?... It was _one time_ … and a forest fire… and another forest fire yesterday, but I put that one out before it got too bad..." he found all of his team looking at him with raised eyebrows, "Okay… shut up. Let's just go…" he trudged off, his boots making light sucking sounds as they caught in the sugary gel coating the cobblestones.

"What? You don't want to talk about the Nova D-" Roland's scroll started vibrating in his breast pocket. The name on the screen wasn't one that he had expected to see anytime soon, but there it was: "Khimera Léon"

"This is Roland. What's going on?"

"W-w-where are you?" Yellow Khimera asked from the other end.

"Uh…" he looked back to his team, "With Arty, Timbre, and Sepia. We're heading down to the beach on the Mistrali section. Please tell me those freaks aren't at it again in the middle of the festival."

" _Don't play coy."_ Blue Khimera snapped.

"Uh…"

" **I WILL MEET YOU ALL AT THE BEACH SOON! I WISH TO SPEAK WITH YOU!"** Red Khimera boomed.

"Um…" Roland stared at his scroll.

"I just want to talk. Just be there soon," Normal Khimera said almost sadly.

"Right… we were already heading that way…" he shouldered his bag of candy, "You okay? You sound a little… broken up."

" _Shut up_ **AND BE ON THY WAY,** i-i-if you d-d-don't mind that… is… We need to talk about a few things."

The line cut out.

"Well Khimera is stressed out pretty bad. You guys catch most of that?" Roland tucked his scroll away.

"Yeah… we did..." Timbre looked to Roland's scroll in confusion.

"She hasn't said a word to us since the attack downtown," Arty observed. It was extremely odd that, even after everything that had happened since then, they hadn't heard anything from her. They knew she was at prom, but it seemed that she was always out of reach, as if she were avoiding them, "Why does she want to talk to us… you… right now of all times?"

"Talk about her team's victory today?" Timbre suggested, knowing that it probably wasn't the case.

' _Or… you know… the whole blackmail thing?'_ Sepia raised an eyebrow at him.

"I guess the beach is the only way to find out," out of the corner his eye, Roland could see a fireball ascending towards the clouds, "and it looks like she's signaling us to a section away from the boardwalk… Hate to say it, but we should be on our guard…"

.

The white sandy beach of the Mistral section of Vytal became rockier as Team ARTS travelled north guided by the occasional fireball. After finally climbing around the rocks that would have made it really difficult and treacherous for anyone other than someone with their training to cross, they all reached an inlet lit only by the shattered moon. Cool, salty water brushed the strip of shoreline hidden by two walls of stone to either side. They had been lucky enough to find a sort of natural pathway to get down to the girl sitting with a bronze cannon in her lap and her bare feet in the wet sand. The fur of her coat radiated a crimson hue against the bits of shimmering sand around her. She stared up at the half-broken moon longingly as the color faded from her eyes and coat leaving only bronze irises and tan fur. Her cannon shifted back into a shield, its moving parts reflecting the moonlight with every twist and turn.

"Hey," Roland slid down the last few rocks and planted his feet down in the sand.

Khimera didn't answer, as if mesmerized by the flecks of white trailing off of the side of the moon.

"Pretty night, huh?..." Arty asked, trying to break the silence. Even after fighting alongside her and sharing similar experiences with the Grimm Brotherhood, it was still awkward talking to the general's daughter. He thought of it like his first meeting with Timbre. He thought of it as a feeling of 'why am I talking to her? I'm not worthy to be in such a celebrity's presence,' he sat down on a large log, brought in presumably from the forests of Mistral by the currents.

She didn't take her eyes off of the sky, "I told my mother about what I told all of you… that I committed treason against Atlas."

"That's… one way to start off a conversation…" Timbre sat down next to Arty on the log. She plopped her bag of candy into her lap with a _whump_ as the morsels of sugar settled on her thighs.

"I told her that Roland blackmailed us both… about the list… about everything that I told all of you that I shouldn't have. She thinks that I'm an idiot for not considering that any of you could be with the Grimm Brotherhood, and I don't know why… but I do know that I trust you all…" Khimera took her eyes away from the moon as Sepia sat on the log beside Timbre, and Roland sat down in the sand between herself and the log, "I committed treason to keep you all, Dante, Rime, and Lurida safe because I don't believe any of you are in the Grimm Brotherhood. I just… Mom makes me feel unsure of my own judgement…"

Arty, Timbre, and Sepia were shocked. None of them had expected their night to take such a turn. A night of festivities had suddenly been interrupted by a sudden and unexpected conversation. They had all tried to forget about anything related to the Grimm Brotherhood since the Maelstrom attack. It was easy, too, as the group had been relatively quiet since then.

Roland mulled over the words popping into his mind until they started to form a sentence, "Then I guess it's pointless in hiding it now…" he dug his heels into the sand and leaned back to get comfortable, "I'm with the Grimm Brotherhood."

Everyone's heads snapped towards him in a collective wave of confusion.

"I told them everything that you told us, Khimera. We know a thousand and one things that could bring down Atlas," he went on, "I joined them last semester on the night after Timbre admitted to finding my binder of letters to Mom."

Khimera shot to her feet, her eyes and clothes blazing blue. The shield in her lap fell to her hand as it shifted into a long curved blade. She felt like screaming. Her mother was right. She was a fool to trust anybody.

The segments of the blade extended until the tip of the blade was against Roland's Adam's apple.

He didn't flinch, just as he hadn't with Ahab during the attack by the Maelstrom, "How do you feel about that, Arty, Timbre, Sepia?"

"Roland… really?" Timbre glared at him.

"That's not exactly… funny?" Arty wasn't sure what exactly Roland was going for, but he certainly got a reaction nonetheless.

' _Not buying it…'_ Sepia rolled her eyes.

"Would you look at that, I just proved that none of us are in the Grimm Brotherhood," Roland pressed his fingertip on the edge of Khimera's blade and moved it away from his throat, "If Arty, Timbre, or Sepia were in the Grimm Brotherhood, then they would have backed me up and grabbed you since our cover was blown. If I was, then it would have been stupid of me to blow my cover without any kind of backup since none of us other than you have our weapons," he tugged open the bag of candy at his side and drew out a small burnt orange sour ball. He popped it into his mouth and went on, "If you were in the Grimm Brotherhood, Khimera, then you would have jumped up to help me grab Arty, Timbre, and Sepia since they were on the list. In each case, I doubt that every solitary member knows all the others. See what I mean?"

Khimera lowered her blade as it returned to its shield form. Utterly useless in harming anyone.

"Besides," Roland continued, "I'm a _Faunus_ , remember?"

"I was about to say…" Timbre eyed Khimera's weapon nervously.

"Not really sure how he could fake this thing," Arty kicked Roland's tail, causing it to twitch out of the way.

"I also doubt that Rime or Lurida would be in the Grimm Brotherhood since they helped with the Maelstrom, and both were wounded by Venice. I don't think that people even that crazy would run the risk of killing their own operatives," he rolled another candy between his fingers, "I can tell you that Dante isn't. Do I need to give the full explanation, or will the fact that she's my sister and we've been through enough for me to say that I don't think there is a way that she _could_ be in the Grimm Brotherhood suffice?"

Khimera slowly reached her arm over her shoulder and locked her weapon in its place on her back, "I… I'm sorry for snapping at you like that. I'm just… very torn up over all of this. Blue tends to get… violent pretty easily."

"No, you reacted the way that any of us should to a traitor. It doesn't matter if we thought that they were friends or family before… anyone who's Grimm Brotherhood is better off…" Roland didn't quite want to go as far as saying 'dead', "being taken out."

He glanced over to Arty, then Timbre, then Sepia… who was chipmunking about thirty candies between her cheeks. At least she liked Satsuma Sweets, and she wasn't a traitor. None of Team ARTS was with those psychos, he knew that much, but testing the alarm system himself was never a bad idea.

"Right. My sentiments exactly…" she thought back to her encounters with Captain Sanguwalker. Even the thought of that foul bird-masked woman brought Khimera's blood to a boil.

' _You mentioned the list separately from the blackmail and everything a bit…'_ Sepia paused to wipe a stream of multicolored drool leaking out of the corner of her mouth. She was was thankful she didn't need her mouth to talk, as she could no longer move her jaw, ' _...ago. What's up with that?'_

Timbre watched for Roland to chime in, but he kept quiet, "Um…" she looked nervously to Khimera, "Sepia wants to know why you mentioned the list separately from everything else. You know, the one with all… our names on it…"

Khimera was hoping they wouldn't want to go into specifics about the list. She hadn't even realized she had singled the list out. She couldn't reveal the truth. Not yet. Who would believe her?

 _You can't just go around telling people whatever they want because you feel sorry for them! Even a slip up can be covered up easily if you play your cards right!_ Her mother's words replayed themselves in her head.

Her aura flashed yellow, "I-I-I guess it just freaked me out… I-I-I was on the list, too, remember? Th-that makes it a b-b-bit more personal…"

Deciding it best to take out the middleman, Sepia held up her scroll with a message typed out to Khimera, ' _Your friends were on that list, Khi. We're with you on this. You're not alone, you know? You can even have some of our candy if you want,'_ she put her scroll down and rummaged through her candy sack, producing a full armful of individually wrapped confectioneries.

Khimera's eyes widened in surprise. It wasn't often someone was outright nice to her because they wanted to or because they didn't want her to flip out on them. Sepia, and the rest of her team for that matter, were crazy, each in their own way, but they were being _real_ with her.

 _Have Scott, Navajo or Fenix ever done anything like this without any ulterior motive? Fenix has. He loves me… I think._

"Wow…" Khimera reached out and took a single candy from Sepia's arms, a ball of what could only be black licorice, "Thanks. You don't have to give me… _all_ of that, you know?"

"I ordered forty pounds, so… that's not much of a dent…" Roland chucked as Sepia proceeded to dump a couple hundred candies into Khimera's lap.

"Look…" he picked up one of the stray candies and tossed it back to her, "If you don't want to talk about the list right now, it's cool. Believe me, we all know what it's like to have something that we just aren't ready to talk about quite yet. Just don't keep being a stranger. Blackmail and psychos aside, you've fought by us and risked your life for us. Pretty sure that Arty would have been nabbed by Sanguwalker had you not been there."

"Wasn't… wasn't it Vincentas and Team RYAL who saved u-" Arty felt Roland's elbow jab him in the side so he'd get the hint, "Oh!... I mean… yeah! There were definitely some points where I probably would've been a goner had you not gone all snake-sword or fireball on her!"

Roland lowered his elbow, "And I'd probably still be twitchy and obsessed…"

' _I came so close to dumping your a-'_

"We're past that and we're caught up on our show. Aubrey also asked when I was proposing, so I don't think she's going to allow us to break up. She likes me."

Sepia rolled her eyes, ' _Your dad said that he couldn't wait to have me as his daughter-in-law since Ahab sure isn't finding anyone.'_

"Are you trying to one-up me?"

' _It's not trying, babe. Your dad just likes me more than Auntie-mom likes you.'_

"Don't," he held up his hands to sign, ' _babe,'_ he went on, "me."

' _Nice come back.'_

"Oh shut up," they both went on bickering with grins on their faces the whole time.

"Well then…" Timbre snorted as she watched her teammates get up and take the 'argument' a few feet away, "Sorry, Khimera. This is what you've got to deal with when you get to know us. Faux arguments, jokes about Arty being a terrorist, and the occasional heart-to-heart."

Khimera pushed another candy between her lips, "I don't really get to see much joking in Team FNKS…"

"What, they lack senses of humor?" Arty asked as he tossed a stone into the ocean.

Khimera sighed, "Bodyguards never really do."

"Bodyguards?" Timbre raised an eyebrow. She wasn't a stranger having to a few muscle bound guys on standby if anything went wrong at a concert, but she had never heard of bodyguards in a team, "What do you mean by bodyguards? Like, they've got your back, or…?"

"Protection for hire. I'm the General's daughter after all."

"Your mom _hired_ a team for you?"

"Yeah. Two to be exact. One for me, and one for my brother," After spilling so much about the Grimm Brotherhood and having it out with her mom, she felt like complaining about _something_ , "Ray and I are the only members between our teams that are actually not already fully trained."

"Is that just like an Atlas thing, or…" Timbre looked to Arty for an answer.

"Team formations may be different, but everyone's in the same boat as soon as they get accepted," Arty threw another stone, "We all start as first years. Skill levels may vary, but I've never heard of someone being hired to be put on a team. With Atlas's written test, I doubt you could do that easily unless someone _made_ it happen."

"But you're really good on your own… Why do you need bodyguards…?" Timbre slowly brought a dark blue candy to her lips.

"Because I'm important, to put it frankly."

"Because you're the general's daughter, or something else?" Roland looked back over his shoulder. Both he and Sepia stood out ankle deep in the water. He was drenched in salt water from head to toe much like Sepia, who was most certainly the instigator of their splash war that rose from their 'argument'.

While she knew the 'something else' would probably be a more accurate answer, it was _because_ she was the general's daughter that she was also that 'something else', "Because I'm Khidna Léon's child. Same goes for Ray."

He thought for a moment, then looked at Sepia's hands, "Hmmm…" he crouched down to splash Sepia again, "I think it's best if we don't push that, Moviemaker, but…" he threw his hand up to send a frothy splash of ocean water up into her sequin shirt, "Nah."

"You two…" Timbre giggled and stood from her seat on the piece of driftwood, "Well, you're always welcome with us if you ever need an escape from your teammates-slash-bodyguards. That is, if Arty's okay with that."

Arty felt everyone's eyes drilling into him. Yeah, Team ARTS was cool with Khimera now considering what they'd been through in downtown Vale, but at the end of the day, she was still General Léon's daughter. His dad's boss's daughter. Though it had been almost a year since the incident outside Atlas Academy, there was still a lot of animosity, and Arty imagined a few of the things Khimera's 'bodyguards' were meant to protect her from were criminals. Had his father not pulled a few strings and taken a demotion, then that's exactly what Arty would've become. He'd sensed the pure hatred Khidna Léon had for him, and he knew she wouldn't be happy with her daughter hanging out with him.

 _Why should you care? If she's willing to be friends, then why shouldn't you?_

 _Because her mom hates me?..._

 _So? A lot of people seem to hate you._

 _Gee, thanks._

 _It's true. Didn't stop you from getting on good terms with Alice, though._

 _You have a point… me_

"God, I have to stop doing that…" Arty mumbled to himself.

"Stop doing what?" Khimera asked, eyebrow raised.

Arty scrambled about on his seat. He didn't even realize he was speaking aloud, and Khimera was the last person he wanted thinking he was _actually_ crazy. Despite flailing his arms and making an attempt to keep his balance, he fell off of the large piece of driftwood, landing hard on his back in the rocks, "Ow…"

"Arty!" Timbre jumped down and ran to his side, "Are you okay?!"

"Yeah… just… lost my balance?"

"That'd kind of suck if you made it this far in life just to be taken out by a couple of rocks…" Khimera muttered as she pushed the candy out of her lap and walked up to his other side.

"Yeah… it would be, huh?"

She reached a hand down to him. But he didn't take it immediately, "Well? Are you just going to lay there on the ground all night? It's going to be kind of hard to see the fireworks from down there."

He slowly reached out his hand to hers. She lunged forward, snatching it and yanking him to his feet.

"Thanks…" Arty looked to his team before turning back and, this time, holding his hand out to her, "and… welcome to the club."

Khimera looked on in surprise, "I… really…?" Sure, she imagined that she would actually become friends with people from the other schools, but Arty and his team certainly were not who she expected. Hesitantly, she took his hand, "Alright, I'm… flattered, really-"

A wave of saltwater crashed over her and Arty. As the foamy bubbles began to fade from the water soaking into her scalp, Khimera looked over to both Roland and Sepia. Both were crouched down, hands out, and sopping wet.

Roland grinned, "Sepia wanted to see if a Lion Faunus was scared of water, so we thought the best way to test that was on a friend."

"Oh?" Khimera retained her inherited stoic glare as she hiked up her sleeves just above her wrists. Her eyes and the faux fur on her coat blazed red, " **I THINK THAT YOU WILL FIND THAT I AM QUITE ADEPT AT MARITIME ANTICS,"** she ran into the water, the ocean soaking into the hem of her toga and pants, and whipped around. Her tail slapped water into the faces of both Roland and Sepia, " **AND DO NOT THINK THAT THIS IS DONE! YOUR LEADER AND TEAMMATE ARE GUILTY BY ASSOCIATION!"** she sent more water splashing into Arty and Timbre with her hands.

Timbre laughed as she tried to block the spray with her sleeves. "Hey!"

"Not cool!" Arty joined in as he ran for the water's edge, "I was trying to play things civil, guys!" he looked to Roland and Sepia.

"Hey, we're Huntsmen and Huntresses in training. We've still got a lot in common with those kids up at the festival," he scooped up water with his hat and slung it at Arty, "We'll be out of the fairytale and into the world sooner than we know."

" _That means I can get back at you without feeling too bad, doesn't it?"_ Khimera's blue eyes blurred as she sent another splash Roland and Sepia's way.

Their bout of splashes and laughter was interrupted by a sudden loud _boom_ from overhead. Turning their heads, the five of them found a huge colorful explosion in the sky above them.

"Wow…" Timbre watched, mesmerized by the radial patterns of sparks and color.

Two more explosions lit up in the black expanse above them.

"It's like they're painting the sky…" Arty had only ever read about Mistrali fireworks. The ancient art was world-renowned, but he had never dreamed he'd see any in person. Like so many other things he'd seen since leaving Atlas, the pictures didn't do the real thing any justice.

Then an orange fireball exploded overhead like a new sun in the night. Golden light bathed the beach as the ball broke up into hundreds of bronze sparkles across the night sky.

Sepia signed with her hands over her eyes, _Gonna go ahead and guess that that was one of Epazote and Cayenne's homemade ones you mentioned earlier?'_

"Yeah, I'm surprised they haven't made a rule against making your own…" Roland plopped his hat back on, "Guess that'd ruin the spirit of festival season," he shielded his eyes from another explosion, this one bright blue, "Glad we're all getting to share a Mistrali festival. It's… a nice change."

"Yeah…" Khimera watched as the golden sparkles rained down towards the ocean. The water's surface mirrored each and every one. If she ignored the sand and rocks, everything in front of her looked like an ever-changing night sky, "Yeah… it is a nice change."

* * *

Taiyaki, a fish-shaped cake usually filled with red bean paste, though in this case sweet cream cheese, was a favorite for many Mistrali festival goers. Having grown up being dazzled by fireworks and taking part in every bit of the celebration that she could, Agent Venice thought that she would treat herself to the cherished snack. She sat on a bench overlooking the beach, the fireworks glistening off of the porcelain deer mask that she wore. The mask was far less sinister than the one that she wore on missions, and resembled an actual deer more than the skull of its Grimm counterpart.

She was just about to lift up her mask a little to take a bite from the cake when she heard the sobbing cries of a child huddled on the bench beside hers. She glanced over to the little girl, one with a pair of antenna sticking out of her head and an empty napkin in her hands. Resting in the sandy cobblestone of the path leading to the beach was an identical cake to the one in Agent Venice's hands.

"Here…" Agent Venice held out her own cake to the child without even a moment's hesitation, "Just be more careful with this one."

The child, having not the slightest clue who the woman was under the festival mask, looked up to her in surprise, "R-really?!" she gingerly took the cake, "Thanks, miss!"

"You're very welcome," Agent Venice waved her off, then went back to watching the fireworks.

"Since when did you actually start showing kindness towards Faunus?"

"She's a child… what does it matter?" Agent Venice scooted to the side of her bench.

Pohela Falgun took a seat beside her, "Just a question." The girl's layered black and rainbow hair seemed to shimmer in the glow of the fireworks, "So how about another question? What are you doing over here? And in a mask no less? You're playing an act you know. The only mask you need right now is your own face."

"I enjoy taking part in festivals. You may be a part of 'Team Festive,' but I doubt that an Atlesian like you could truly understand," Agent Venice smoothed out the black and red kimono that she wore beneath the strands of white cloth coming off of her mask. Despite the Grimm-esque colors of her outfit, she opted for an animal mask over a Grimm mask this year, "Dressing up like this and eating good food takes the mind away from the awful things that we do…"

Pohela narrowed her eyes at her lifelong friend, "Don't go saying things like that. You don't want the Lieutenants and Commander Maelstrom thinking you're a traitor," she paused as she recalled the message from Lieutenant Chiman and her following spat with Agent Geist, known to the rest of the world as Samhain Hollantide.

 **It is imperative that you allow Team STON to move on. We cannot have traitorous scum in the latter phase of this operation. See to it that this is taken care of.**

"They're already concerned with a splinter cell." Pohela could tell that Venice was a bit unnerved, "That's why I came down here to meet with you."

"It doesn't help that I've been more vocal about my distaste with our methods recently, doesn't it…?" Agent Venice kept staring at the fireworks, "Though I don't think that it is completely insane that I don't feel comfortable with us taking any more lives. It doesn't help that I outright refuse to kill people on missions, does it?"

Pohela didn't feel like sugarcoating anything. It was never her style, "You know as well as I do that we're too much a part of this to turn back now. With your relation to Lieutenant Tursas, you should be safe… at least for a little bit, but I wouldn't count on it forever. Gnile tried, but after his failure at Koruss Stadium last summer, I don't think you have too much wiggle room. More is to be expected of you, and you have _his_ mistakes to make up for. Because of him, you're under _much_ more scrutiny and are being watched closer than you may realize."

Pohela decided to change the subject, hopefully to veer Venice away from her doubts, "Now back to my issue. Before my match yesterday, I got a message. It was a command from my Lieutenant."

"Then you can tell me about it tomorrow morning," Venice clenched her fists against her knees, "I am enjoying my time tonight. I am not part of a group of murderers, thieves, hooligans, and terrorists right now. I am a Mistrali taking part in the festivities."

"It can't _wait_ until tomorrow morning." Pohela tried to keep her composure as to not drag any attention to herself. This wasn't exactly a conversation she wanted anybody hearing, "I fear the splinter cell is growing. What's even worse, they may actually be planning something," she tried to look into the eyes hiding behind the deer mask, "They may be planning to interfere with our mission here on Vytal. If they are, I want to snuff them out before they get the chance to ruin everything we've prepared for."

"Stop."

"I was warned of a traitor being under my command. After my fight yesterday afternoon, I left for a walk to collect my thoughts and run ideas by Trex. When I came back, all _three_ of them were acting strange," Pohela held her hands together in front of her face as she took a deep breath. She turned, staring off into the crowd of festival-goers, "I'm starting to think the traitor in my unit has convinced the others that our cause isn't worth fighting for, maybe even convinced them to fighting _against_ it from within, and… I don't know what to do."

"I said _stop_ ," Venice stood, "Perhaps they have a reason to think that our cause isn't worth fighting for. Perhaps this has gone way too far. Perhaps I can see where they are coming from when the girl I grew up with will not even let me take part in a festival that she knows I actually enjoy. Perhaps-" she grabbed the silky seams of her kimono over her heart and took a deep breath, "Perhaps you need to step back and collect yourself as well before you become paranoid."

Pohela was done with this nonsense. She reached over and grabbed Venice's hand, yanking it away from her chest, "Will you _listen_ to me?! This isn't a vacation. We're here to actually make _progress_ for what the Gri-" she looked around, realizing there were too many people nearby to say 'Grimm Brotherhood' too loudly, "for what _we've_ been fighting for for _decades_."

She couldn't help but let a slight smile break through her stone-cold demeanor, "If everything goes as planned, Vytal can be the beginning of the end of the kingdoms. Of the _Academies_. We'll have all of Remnant in our hands," her smile faded, "but all of that will be in jeopardy if we have some broken pieces actively working against us. So I need you to forget about your little festival and talk to me."

Venice yanked her hand away, "How many times must I tell you to stop?" she stepped back and away, "Do not give me more reasons to doubt all of this. I told you about how much I hated the mission in Vale, and when we released all those Grimm at Beacon, and when we attacked this island. It _scares_ me. Do not take my only time to enjoy myself away from me, or else I might change my outlook on _all_ of this."

"You were born into this, and you are too much a part of it to give up now. Trex and Oro are barely being any help to me. They didn't get a message from Lieutenant Hulud about traitors, so they're convinced it's not their problem. _I_ did. Echo's too thick-headed about kingdom branch jurisdiction that I doubt he'd even listen to what I have to say. You, Trex, Echo, and I may have grown up together, but those two are still as thick-headed as the day we all met… but you… _you_ should be able to understand the gravity of this situation. _You_ could help me flush out these traitors and turn them in to the Commander."

Pohela put a hand on the large satchel hanging from her shoulder. Lying inside was her paint canister and mask. It was dangerous to carry them around, but with the rest of Team FSTV acting abnormal, she wasn't taking any chances with them tampering with her gear, "We could even take them out... together. We could be _heroes_ to the Brotherhood. Make them into the necessary sacrifices we need to keep pushing onward."

There it was. Every time they talked about an objective, the idea of killing someone was bound to come up. To Pohela, they weren't deaths, or losses, or even people. They were always 'necessary sacrifices'. Not this time. Not during the festival. Not during _her_ festival, "At least they have stayed the same. I can't say that I like the ways that you've changed, Pohela," she bit her lip underneath her mask, "I will be a lot of things for this. A thief. A deceiver. A spy. The one thing that I will not be is a killer. If you have any intention of killing these so-called traitors, then you will not bring me into it. If you value our friendship, then you will respect that."

Pohela scowled and stood, "Fine. I'll solve this myself then. But if anything goes wrong during this operation… just know that I warned you."

As she began to walk down the relatively empty path back inland, she stopped and turned around.

 _Why does it have to be so hard to separate our friendship and our professional relationship?_

"I can be all those things, too. But if you ask me… you were the one that changed. You used to follow your orders without question and would do anything within your power to help push our goals… I just want to know what happened to you…"

"I decided that I wasn't ready to stop being a little girl entirely," Venice straightened her mask, "I didn't let go of the fear that the things that I love, like this festival, might disappear if we keep going. I fostered my doubts instead of brushing them off."

Pohela shook her head, "Necessary sacrifices must be made, Venice. You have to learn that your childhood pleasures won't last forever."

Venice began walking down the cobblestone path away from Pohela. Her heart beat fast in her ears with each brisk step. She had to hold onto the one thought that was keeping her together.

 _My childhood pleasures won't last forever, but maybe that little Faunus girl's could._


	59. V3Ch6: Toxic

"Queen of Hearts."

Lurida shuffled through a deck of playing cards. She stopped at random, then drew the top card, "Correct," she pushed it back in and continued shuffling.

Xannie sat on a bench beside her sister with her hands over her eyes. Gavin and Yamuna stood behind her, watching her anxiously from the other side of the locker room. The crystalline smell of Dust tickled their noses, the bright fluorescent lights overhead buzzed, but everyone kept their full attention on Xannie.

"Three of Spades."

"Got that one too," Lurida allowed a smile to float across her lips as she kept shuffling.

"Okay, then try this on for size…" Xannie grinned as she listened to Lurida's fingers shift the cards, "Next five cards that you'll draw are more than likely going to be… the Jack of Clubs, the Ace of Diamonds, the Five of Hearts, the Nine of Clubs, and… the Ace of Diamonds again."

Lurida stopped and drew a card, "Jack of Clubs is correct," she cut the deck and drew a card, "Ace of Diamonds is correct," another cut, "Five of Hearts," a third, "Nine of Clubs," she collected the cards back up for the final test. Instead of drawing one out, she threw the deck of cards overhead to scatter them in a cloud of red, black, and white. She snatched a card out of the air before they all clattered to the white tile floor around them, "and the Ace of Diamonds… looks like your Semblance is definitely working on me again."

" _ **WOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOO!"**_ Yamuna practically howled up at the ceiling with the ears perked on top of her head at attention. After nearly a month and a half of Xannie's Semblance only working on half of Team GLXY, it seemed that things were getting back to normal just in time for the doubles round.

Gavin placed a hand on Xannie's shoulder, "Looks like the Twinkle Twins are back in business! Just in the nick of time, too!" he looked at his scroll, "Only ten minutes to showtime!"

"Don't remind me…" Lurida clasped the paper coffee cup sitting beside her on the bench, "You were right to send us to the doubles round…" she tilted the cup up for a long swig of her own super-concentrated concoction of pure espresso, then shivered and lowered the cup, "Who are we probably going to be facing from… Team TCSC?"

"That Willows guy kinda stretched the whole naming thing by pronouncing T, C, S, and C as 'Toxic'... but, whatever…" Yamuna glanced through her scroll.

"I dunno… I can see it." Xannie shrugged.

Lurida sighed, "Anyway… back to what I asked…"

"From what I heard…" Gavin looked through notes on his scroll. Apparently, he was the one to suggest to Alice that notes on opposing teams was a good idea, "They're sending in Scorpio Valeno and Cyan Azure. Team TCSC has been named one of the most skilled and brutal teams in this tournament along with Team RYAL from Atlas, but they have the General's son… TCSC has… frankly, nobodies. They're only first years, too."

"So what are these guys capable of? Maybe I can go ahead and get a read if I have an inkling of what they're like," Xannie pulled up a holographic screen with her gloves and waited for Gavin to read from his notes.

"Scorpio seems to be the most methodical of the two," He held out his scroll, showing a screenshot from the broadcast of Team TCSC's team fight. It showed a boy with darkly tanned skin and dark brown hair tied back in a loose ponytail. His clothes were dyed muted earth tones. Golden bracelets covering his lower forearms had places for large scorpion-stinger shaped blades. One was extended, whipping around him by a gold chain, "He hasn't used his Semblance in a fight yet, and I haven't exactly asked enough people from Vacuo to figure out what it is. Apparently TCSC are pretty much outcasts at Shade."

"And the other one?" Lurida asked, not sounding too threatened. She'd sparred with Frost Aurora before, and Scorpio's weapons looked similar to hers. After the attack on Vale and the possibility of there being a Grimm Brotherhood infiltrator coming to light, Lurida had gone all out against her and won on most occasions.

"Cyan Azure and her brother, Cobalt, are apparently the brute force of Team TCSC. It's funny, they're twins like you guys. It would've been cool if both of them were going i-"

"The point, Gavin? Please?..." Xannie looked anxious as she typed out numbers and keywords into her screen.

"Right, sorry… Um, they both have these battery packs on their backs. Charges their weapons and their boots."

"Boots?..." Lurida cocked an eyebrow. Having not seen most of the team fights, she hadn't even heard of the Azure twins, much less seen them fight.

"Their boots are more like pieces of an exoskeleton. Running off the charge, they can use electromagnetic propulsion to move _much_ faster than the average person. Their weapons run off and can discharge the same force from the batteries," he held out his scroll again, this time showing a tattooed girl with bright neon blue hair in a tank top and baggy black pants. Just as Gavin said, a bright silver and neon blue backpack was strapped over her back and a matching set of clunky boots took up the lower halves of her legs. On her arms were two massive gauntlets resembling spiked fists. Arcs of electricity jumped from them as she swung at her opponent, "Then… there's the weapons themselves."

Lurida nearly spit out her coffee, "Those gauntlets are _massive!_ "

"Her brother has a sword. Think you can see why they picked _her_ to go over him…" Gavin winced as he put his scroll away, "Unlike Scorpio, the Azures use their Semblances fairly often. Cyan can make force _waves_ , similar to what some people can do with Force Dust. Cobalt can make force _fields_. Guess you can say they're a bit more… similar to each other than you two are."

"They're still fraternal twins, though… That means," Lurida glanced over to Xannie.

"That their Twin Dynamic isn't as strong. It's easier for us to work off of each other, but it's harder for them. That's probably why...," Xannie looked back to her sister with a grin.

"they didn't send Cyan and Cobalt in together. Better to send in their strongest fighters rather than the twins. Power over synergy. It's not bad thinking on their part, but it's risky if they get someone like us who puts planning first." Lurida took a sip of coffee. Something felt fishy, but she couldn't quite put her finger on it, "If we get the field advantage, they're done… all because they wanted to rely on their brute strength alone... What are they planning…?"

Gavin shrugged his shoulders, "No telling. Maybe they're planning more for the singles. I heard from Oceana that her team's doing something like that."

Lurida rolled her eyes, "Thought you didn't talk to her and her team anymore-"

"Considering what happened at prom." Xannie finished for her.

"Hey, we're team leaders. We kind of _have_ to talk occasionally, even if our teams don't exactly… get along," he scoffed, "Thanks, Alabaster."

"And you think she's hot…" Yamuna giggled.

"But that's besides the point. It's a viable strategy to send the person you want in the singles into the doubles, even if they're not the best in a two-on-two scenario. She works great with her partner, but _neither_ of them are going into the doubles in favor of Chris and his partner."

Lurida cringed at the mention of Coral 'Chris' Matte.

"Despite him being a total jerk, he works best on his own. He may not be best in the doubles, but if his partner can carry him on to the singles, Team OCEN has a much better chance of winning the whole deal!"

"And you think that's what TCSC is doing?" Xannie moved a few words and boxes around on her screen, "Having _one_ of the powerhouses with Scorpio to carry him to the singles round?"

Gavin nodded.

"Alright… Then let's get out there," Lurida finished off her coffee and tossed the cup over to Yamuna. She stood with her hand out to Xannie, "Let's go kick some ass."

Xannie closed her panel and, with a smile crossing her face, locked hands with her sister. "Right!"

.

" _ **WHOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOO'S READY TO SEE SOME HUNTSMEN AND HUNTRESSES IN TRAINING KICK SOME BUTT?!"**_ Carmen screamed inside the announcer's booth. The toe of her shoe was holding down the button on the microphone while she leaned against the glass, " _ **TODAY WE HAVE MY LOVELY TWIN GIRLS, LURIDA AND XANNIE RHEA! THE TWINKLE TWINS HAVE TAKEN THE STAGE! VIVIAN! TELL US ABOUT YOUR KIDS!"**_

Carmen's co-host held his mic close to his face as he eyed the eccentric combat instructor, "Going up against Lurida and Xannie from Beacon Academy, we have Cyan Azure and Scorpio Valeno of Shade. Team GLXY and Team TCSC have proven that they're strong competitors in this tournament, so now let's see how they fare _against_ one another, shall we…?" Vivian turned off his mic, "Um… Carmen?"

"Uh-huuuuuh? Yes, V?"

"Where are the fighters from Team TCSC?"

.

"Hey… Lurida?" Xannie shifted uncomfortably.

"Yeah?"

"Where are-"

"The people we're supposed to be fighting?"

They stood alone in the central platform. Even from so far away, they could hear the collective confused murmurs of the crowd.

"No clue…" Lurida responded.

"Okay, just glad I'm not the only one."

"Shut up, you already knew that."

Xannied nodded with a smile, "Yeeeeeaah… I guess I did."

.

"I said that I'm taking your place, Scorpio," said the person strapping a gas mask to their face. Their neon green hair was spiked out to keep it off their face for a good seal on the mask. Air whistled through the vent on the front with each breath. Black and yellow strands of hair littered their head, mingling with the neon green.

Scorpio stomped his foot, "We have our orders, Tox! This was _not_ part of the plan!"

Tox pulled on a hazmat yellow raincoat over his black turtleneck, "I heard that both the twins have interesting Semblances. I want to see them with my own eyes," he tapped the tinted glass ports on the mask.

"First off, the Rheas are none of _your_ concern, and secondly, Lieutenant Hulud _explicitly_ said that I was to get to the finals. She only teamed me up with you three to help me get there."

Tox reached for a sickly green sledgehammer.

Scorpio latched onto his wrist, "We have our targets, and _you_ aren't going to ruin this for us because of your reckless behavior," he tightened his grip as he looked at his reflection in the gas mask's lenses, "You wouldn't want me to report to Hulud that you disobeyed orders, would you?"

"You might be the actual leader here, but you _aren't_ the leader of this team," Tox kicked him in the ankle and grabbed the sledge hammer. Scorpio fell to his knees and watched Tox ready his weapon. The hulking mass of metal was leveled at Scorpio's head, the barrel embedded into the center of the hammer head even with his eye, " _I_ am the face of Team TCSC. _I_ am going to the finals round. _I_ am your superior here, and _you_ are nothing to me."

"I am the leader of our mission!" his head was pushed farther back as the weapon was pushed against his face.

"I. Don't. Give. A. Damn." Tox pressed his weapon harder against Scorpio's head, "Back down, or your plan is going to kick into action a lot earlier than intended."

The repetitive sounds of metal on tile echoed from around the corner. The Azure twins appeared from behind the row of lockers to Tox's left. Cobalt appeared much like his sister, only his hair was cut shorter and the shades of blue on his body were more like his namesake.

"You should probably listen to the boss, Scorpio," Cobalt snickered, "As far as those idiots out there are concerned, _Tox_ is the leader. You wanna keep up appearances, don'tcha?"

Cyan smacked the gum she was chewing loudly before blowing a large blue bubble. It popped loudly. "Yeah, Scorp," she nudged him with one of her giant boots, "Tox has the right idea. Everything'll get done one way or another," she knelt down next to him, still with the shotgun barrel of Tox's weapon aimed at his face. She began to pat his head, "So don't you worry your pretty little head, okay, sweetheart?"

Scorpio knew that she could easily crush his head with her weapons if she wanted to. He glared back at her.

Cyan began to cackle as she walked past Tox, "Come on, 'Hazmatte'," she made air-quotes with her gauntlets' giant fingers, "We're late. You wanted to meet the silver-medal twins, didn'tcha?" Sparks were sent up from her boots as she skipped along the hall to the arena.

Tox pulled his weapon away and followed Cyan, "Next time you question me, I'll smash your skull open like a melon. Understand, Scorpio?"

Scorpio scrambled in his pockets for his scroll. The buzzing of electricity filled the air next to him. He turned to find Cobalt pointing his blade at him. For the second time in mere minutes, one of his subordinates was aiming their weapon at him in a sign of defiance and treachery.

"Really, Scorp? I'd keep that in my pocket if I were you. Unless you want someone to slip the word to Hulud and the other higher-ups that one of their precious _Captains_ was part of that pesky little splinter cell?"

Scorpio nearly dropped his scroll, "You and your 'leader' are the only traitors here!" He went to dial Lieutenant Hulud, but found the device smacked out of his hand. It shattered to pieces on the floor.

"Damn, Scorp! Those things are expensive, y'know!?" Cobalt sneered, "We'll get the job done as intended… as long as you stay out of our way and let Tox go on, capiche?"

"I swear, you'll regret this…" Scorpio looked up to Cobalt. The plan was too far along, and it was three against one if the rest of Team TCSC decided to accuse him of being a traitor. Being unable to report their treachery before Tox took his place, it would be easier to pin it all on him. He wasn't in a good position, "How are you going to explain this sudden switch…?"

"I was thinking something along the lines of…" Cobalt moved his sword to where it was aiming at Scorpio's feet, "Sprained ankle? Unless you _want_ to go through with that, I suggest you just play the part."

.

"Vivian, I don't like this…" Carmen stared at the notification on her scroll, "A switch so late…?" she double checked to make sure that their microphones were off, "Something isn't right…"

Vivian shook his head, "It's happened before," he looked at the same message on his own scroll, "Normally it'd be against the rules of the Vytal Tournament to make a switch after the opponents were announced in the doubles round… but seeing as there's been an actual injury to one of the competitors… I guess the change is allowed."

"You're not just playing favorites… are you?"  
"And disrespect what this festival stands for? Never. If the other headmasters and the Vytal boards approve it… then let's get on with the show."

"Right…" Carmen watched the two representatives of Team TCSC take to the stage. In her eyes, their auras were whipping around like tempests, while Lurida and Xannie's auras floated around them like falling leaves, "I'm still going to have a chat with Onyx about this… I don't like what I'm seeing out there."

.

"Who the heck is that?..." Xannie's eyes widened as a large chunk of her mental bank of probabilities concerning the known information of Team TCSC suddenly became useless.

Lurida looked up at the screens overhead. They still displayed pictures of Scorpio and Cyan, but it seemed that Scorpio had been replaced without much notice, "I don't-"

Vivian's voice crackled over the speakers, "Due to some unforeseen circumstances, Scorpio Valeno will be replaced by Team TCSC's leader, Tox Hazmatte in this match. Sorry for the wait, everybody, but now we can get this match underway and hopefully get back on our schedule for today!"

"Great…" Lurida felt like this quick change was a bit too convenient for her taste. Then again, hardly anyone knew about Xannie's Semblance. The only information that most people had on their opponents were from fights previous, or from personal experience. Team GLXY barely knew who Team TCSC was, and Xannie's Semblance wasn't one that could be seen, "You focus on Cyan, and I'll focus on Tox. Stay as close to me as you can. Think you'll be able to manage that, sis?"

"Well… the info I have on Cyan hasn't changed… so yeah, I think so."

Across the middle platform, Cyan scoffed, "What's with the getups? You going scuba-diving later or something? _Oooh_ , or the neon means you're going to a rave!"

Lurida held her fingers over her right eye like a box. Four concentric holographic circles with tick marks inside of each burned to life in the air in front of her eye, "Targeting systems online. Aim assist calibrating. Twenty-five percent… sixty-four percent… ninety percent… Targeting systems optimized," her hands fell away, "The material helps insulate the circuits inside, if you must know."

"Good to know…" Tox shouldered his sledgehammer, "Is that why it's skin tight, too? Doesn't leave much to the imagination…"

Xannie blushed and held her hands over herself, "Pervert…" she moved one hand away from her chest and swiped a finger downwards, opening a yellow holographic panel.

"What? I thought it was obvious." Tox shrugged.

Holographic hexagons appeared on the rim of the center platform. For the doubles round, there would be a total of four biomes to fight in. The first symbol to appear was a cluster of arrows pointing outwards, the Anti-Gravity biome. The second was a sandy beach with a sun overhead, the fan-favorite Ocean biome. The third was a rock with a black crystal on its bottom, the Floating Islands biome. The last was a lightning bolt, indicating the Electric biome.

"Two for four isn't bad. Go ahead and optimize for surge protection and resistance to water, sis. You know where we need to set up," Lurida slung the tube off her back and released her orbiters. The blades attached spun like buzzsaws, and their lenses caught the bright light of the artificial sun over the Ocean biome.

"Got it! Deploying rings now!" Xannie whipped her arms out, sending the metal bands on her arms to go shooting off. They expanded and defied gravity around her, their blades glistening around their neon centers.

"Great…" a violet holographic panel divided into six sections appeared on her left forearm, "Then we're perfect."

Carmen's voice broke through the intercom, " _ **ALRIGHT! IT'S TIME TO GET ON WITH THE FIGHT! HAVE AT IT!"**_

Tox made the first move by darting towards Xannie. He reared his sledgehammer back behind his head, "I'm going to make this quick!" he yelled while throwing it down in an arc.

Xannie jumped, kicking herself up off the ground. In the limited time she had in the air, she threw her arms in an arc towards Tox to send a couple of her rings shooting towards him.

One ring slashed right through the shoulder of Tox's raincoat, and the other clanged off the head of his weapon. The weapon slammed into the tiles at their feet. Bits of metal flew outwards, and the circuits below the floor were exposed in the impact crater made by Tox.

Lurida activated her Semblance right as Cyan was about to slam her gauntlet into her face, but Cyan still had enough momentum to get a solid hit in on her jaw. As she drifted backwards, she aimed an orbiter at Cyan and fired.

As Xannie deflected shots and returned slices with her rings against Tox, numbers and scenarios played out in her head. Each hit and every movement Tox made gave Xannie more to work with. Taking quick glances at the biomes surrounding them, she had an idea of what to do to have the best chance at winning. "Lurida!" she bolted backwards, heading for the electric biome, "Quadrant 3! Enhance your orbiters with a bit of overcharge! I'm going to do the same!"

They hadn't verbally designated quadrants for the battlefield, but Lurida knew exactly which part of the arena her sister was referring to, "Got it! I'll get myself over there if you need me! We'll have to manage outside of the plan!"

With Cyan distracted by her lasers, Lurida deactivated her Semblance. While amidst the struggle of getting to the Maelstrom and killing it just weeks ago, she learned something new about her Semblance. Her ability to turn off gravity was much more than that.

 _It's dangerous, but I need to move quick,_ she crouched, her legs feeling heavier than before. Gravity pulled at her legs, then released in a burst as gravity was shifted upwards. Lurida soared towards the Floating Islands biome as Xannie had instructed. Her orbiters followed in a trail behind her while spinning and firing to keep Cyan at bay for a few moments. The muscles in her legs already ached, but the tension eased when her feet hit the solid ground on top of one of the islands.

A loud explosion and buzz of discharging electricity filled the air. Mere moments later, a shadow crossed over Lurida.

She just barely managed to dodge a falling punch from Cyan. The whole island crumbled beneath her as a result of the impact.

"Hey! That's no fun runnin' away!" Cyan chided with a cold seriousness in her voice as she jumped from falling rock to falling rock, "What are ya?" a gum bubble formed in front of her mouth and popped, "Chicken?" she threw another punch into the rocks falling around her, launching a large chunk of black crystal towards Lurida.

 _Another new trick…_ Lurida's pupils constricted as she locked onto the black crystal. The holographic circles around her eyes spun, then froze in place. She stopped falling suddenly, then the black Dust crystal froze in place as well. Her head felt like it was going to pop, but she managed to hold the gravitational field. From somewhere in the front row of the crowd, she heard Yamuna howling in excitement.

"You've got no idea what you're up against…" Lurida looked down at Cyan as stone and shards of Gravity Dust crystals fell towards the water below. She slammed her heel into the crystal in front of her, shattering it in a starburst of black Dust. Violet light shone through as it was activated, "You gave the Gravity Queen a huge Gravity Dust crystal…"

"Well aren't you just full of surprises?" Cyan landed on another floating island and began to slide across its grassy surface. Her boots left trails of static on the ground behind her as she sped towards the edge. In one large burst of sparks, she launched herself off the island and directly into Lurida's Dust shower.

Lurida's orbiters flew around her and shot lasers at Cyan as she drew closer. A wave of force shot her target upwards through the glowing violet cloud. She released her hold on the remains of the crystal and crossed her arms. Like a flash of lightning, Cyan drove her gauntlet into Lurida's forearms, but both stayed perfectly still in the air.

"That all you've got…?" Lurida coughed. Although she blocked the strike, the wind was still knocked out of her, "You've got to be holding back on me…"

Cyan blew another bubble, "And what if I am?"

She kicked off of another island and latched onto Lurida's ankles. They rotated around each other as she pulled Lurida downwards. After whipping her below her feet, Cyan launched Lurida towards the water below.

.

"You don't seem so confident now that your sister isn't around," Tox swung his sledgehammer at Xannie's head once again. The smell of ozone trickled through his gasmask as one of Xannie's rings batted the weapon away. The flat stoney area of the Electric biome was perfect for Tox, but the giant yellow crystals brimming with bolts of electricity scattered about weren't so comforting.

Xannie stepped back, allowing her rings to keep Tox at bay as she ran her hand over her panel. Moving her finger in a circular motion around an image of one of her rings, she made them spin faster and faster. Each collision between the rings and Tox's sledgehammer caused the latter to be knocked away harder and harder each time, _If I can disarm him…_ Numbers spun and rattled around in her head as new scenarios came to mind, _That's a whole five percent… it's not much, but it's the best I got going for me right now_.

Tox, tired of dealing with the rings, slid underneath to get to Xannie faster, _You're not making any real attempt to fight back or get away… Interesting, Rhea._ The sledgehammer shot out flames as it rocketed towards Xannie.

In response, Xannie held her arms out straight before bringing them together, clapping her gloved hands loudly.

Tox fell forward as their weapon stopped moving. Looking back, he could see that it was being held in midair by a few of the girl's rings.

Xannie swiped an arm to the side, launching the blunt weapon out of sight into the field of giant yellow crystals.

"Huh…" Tox kicked back up to his feet, "What are the odds?"

Xannie faltered, stunned by the comment. In any other circumstance, it would have been normal, but to her… _Does Tox know about Probability?_ "Slim to none, but they're the best chance I've got!" Xannie ran towards Tox, rings at her sides, ready to strike.

"Weird that you'd say that…" Tox watched Xannie carefully. The longer the fight went on, the better Xannie became on the defensive end. However, her offense was staying the same for the most part.

 _Let's play with the odds…_ Tox threw a fist forwards instead of jumping to the side, ducking, or going over their opponent. His knuckles slammed into the bridge of Xannie's nose with a _pop_.

"Ah!" Xannie stumbled back, grabbing her nose. While she was stunned, she still had the mind to control her rings to keep Tox from reaching her, _How did he do that? Either he's just stupid and reckless… or he knows that_ , her eyes widened as a chill went down her spine, _the least probable scenario is the one I'm not going to expect… If I start expecting the unexpected, then anything can happen and… I'm fighting against someone that's purposely defying probability and making every scenario equal to 1._

"T-T-Two can play at that game!" Xannie kicked her legs out, releasing the rest of her rings from her ankles into the air around her. As Tox fended off the original two, Xannie sent the rest flying into the yellow crystals around her. Embedded into the large rocks, the rings began to spin at Xannie's command. Powered by her aura, the Dust coming into contact with her rings began to send off sparks and coated the surface of the blades. Xannie ducked back as she watched the power lining her weapons reach their breaking point.

Tox ducked and dodged the two rings that seemed hell-bent on hitting him, the whole time keeping his eyes on Xannie, who stood perfectly still not thirty feet away. _What are you doing, Rhea?_

Tox looked around, noting the position of the rings embedded in the crystals in the biome. The realization hit him, _She's making a cage… no, more like a big bug zapper_ … he turned back to Xannie just in time to see her backflip away, out of the boundaries created by the spinning rings, now acting more like conduits than weapons.

"Oh, shi-"

Bolts of lightning surged through Tox's body from all ten deployed rings. Branching paths of ash appeared along his bright yellow raincoat. The scent of burning rubber wafted off of him as his surprisingly piercing screams echoed across the Electric biome. After the current was cut from his body, he collapsed to his knees. The aura meters overhead showed that his aura was at a painfully low 19%.

"That… that _really_ hurt…" Tox swayed as he get up to his feet. Through the tinted glass on the gasmask, he could see that Xannie's rings were glowing red hot. The girl hadn't stopped the current just to finished him off herself. Xannie stopped the current because her weapons couldn't take much more.

Tox looked back to see that the sledgehammer was only about ten feet back. That was at least manageable, "I didn't expect that move… didn't know that those rings could pick up Dust like that. What were the chances of you actually pulling that off…?"

There was the concept of probability again. _First odds now chances_. _Who is this guy?_

Xannie tried to run the probability of a sort of mind-reading Semblance, but considering the fact that Tox made no comment in response to her train of thought only muddled things up more. _Would he say something if he could hear me right now?_ Xannie willed her rings back to her. They floated aimlessly around her as she held her stance.

"What's wrong…?" Tox stepped back towards his weapon, "Where's that confidence from earlier?"

Xannie tried to steel herself. She just tried one of the best tactics she could think of. In her mind, fighting Tox head on and teaming back up with Lurida both came out to be equally effective. Earlier, dividing Tox and Cyan was the best course of action, but after seeing what else Tox could do and how much damage he could take, Xannie knew what she wanted to do. _I need to find Lurida_.

"Right… nothing to say… figured…" Tox lunged back and snatched the sledgehammer off the ground, "Listen… I know it looks bad for me and all, but I'm honestly _thrilled_ to see that you have a little glimmer of hope inside that head of yours. Bet you think victory is assured, huh? Seems pretty likely."

.

Blurry light shone down from the water's surface as Lurida sank. She blinked, trying to see something other than white light. Her aura was weakening from her skirmish with Cyan, overusing her Semblance was making her muscles ache, and her caffeine binge was wearing off. Things weren't looking good for her.

Twinkling violet stars floated past her head. Their light spotted across the field of white light above. Gravity Dust shards still glowed with the radiant energy of her aura.

 _That'll work…_

Far above on another floating island, Cyan Azure looked down at her opponent. She blew another bubble with her gum. The loud _pop_ caught Lurida's attention, just as Cyan hoped it would. With the Rhea sister looking up at her, Cyan held out one of her gauntlets. With one of the weapon's giant silver fingers, she beckoned Lurida to rejoin her and continue their fight.

Violet light exploded out from the water. Waves crashed across the sea below the floating islands. White water crashed into Cyan. As the foamy haze cleared, she looked down at the source.

"Hey!" Lurida shouted down from below. Water rushed down the wall of an invisible sphere around her. While she normally would have been completely submerged eight feet under the surface, she floated in the center of a chunk of space that seemed to have been completely removed. With the help of Gravity Dust, her Semblance kicked into overdrive, "Is that all you've got?!"

Cyan casually blew another bubble, "Well then… that's certainly different," she held up her gauntlets, flipping switches around the cuffs. The battery pack on her back beeped loudly as the neon blue glow from within intensified. She punched her fists together, sending out sparks and waves of blue energy, "Two can play that game, sister."

Cyan shot herself down off of the island, the blue glow from her pack following after her as she descended upon Lurida. As she fell, she punched at the air, sending waves of force towards her opponent.

The Gravity Dust fragments glowed brighter around Lurida. The invisible field of gravity took on a more violet haze as Cyan neared. The waves of force clashed with the gravitational field, turning the epicenter of the impact a light shade of indigo. For a moment, neither of them moved.

"Lasers fully primed. Noise reduced to zero percent. Target locked on," six different camera angles appeared on the holographic panel on Lurida's arm. Each one of the shots had Cyan's back dead center. Having seen the way that Sepia's orbs worked, she thought cameras would do nicely on her weapons, "Overclocking beams. Weapons working at 113% capacity. Fire."

Cyan grinned as she neared Lurida, but it quickly faded as she felt a strong burning beam of energy hit her in the back. The force of the lasers hitting her battery pack discharged a large amount of Force Dust, launching Cyan to the side away from the floating islands and towards the levitating blocks of the Anti-Gravity biome.

Cyan slammed into flat floating metal platforms littering the biome. She reached a hand up to her mouth, wiping away a small drip of blood from her lip, "Not… cool…" her pack beeped loudly as it managed to refill its chambers. Her boots and gauntlets flashed back to life as she pushed herself to her feet, "You made me swallow my gum…" she punched her gauntlets together again before rearing her right fist back. A blue glow intensified around her gauntlet as she prepared a charged shot.

Lurida floated aimlessly into the Anti-Gravity biome. The cool colored neon on shiny black metal blocks that floated inside the area resembled her own attire. Her boots clunked down on the metallic surface of the block that Cyan stood on. Violet crystals still clung to her outfit. With so much Gravity Dust available, her Semblance was going way beyond what it was normally capable of, "That's the least of your worries. I've got you right where I want you…"

"Think you got that backwards there, Purps! I'm not goin' easy on you anymore!" With a strong punch forward, Cyan released the pent up force in her weapon. A huge glowing projectile of pure energy surged towards Lurida.

"Yeah… same here," Lurida's feet left the ground, as did Cyan's. The wave of force ripped by as they both floated up to the bottom surface of the block above them. She kicked off towards Cyan with her orbiters spinning around her, completely unaffected by the sudden flip in gravity.

 _Well this wasn't in the notes sent over by the Vale branch..._ Cyan slid on the energy expelled by her boots, ready to meet Lurida head on. She reared her fist back again, ready to bash the other girl off of the platform.

Lurida flung her feet up over Cyan's head. The violet tube that she normal had on her back was clenched in her fists like a bat. It whizzed through the air and smashed into the back of Cyan's head with a _**thwop**_.

Cyan hit the ground, but using quick pulses through her hands, kicked herself back up, driving her boots directly into Lurida's leg. "You may be able to play with gravity, but that doesn't mean a thing against m-"

"Weapons charged to 59%. Fire." Lurida smiled as she floated around in a circle. Violet light flashed across the bottom of the platform. Six lasers struck the side of Cyan's face to send her rocketing off the platform.

Falling towards the sky was the last thing that Cyan expected to go through during the fight. She expected to leave Lurida's reversed gravitational field and feel gravity return to normal, but it never did. Apparently being caught in a switch made it permanent. Whether or not it'd change back without Lurida's influence, Cyan wasn't sure. From what Agent Speeder and Captain Echo had put into the Grimm Brotherhood database following their information gathering mission during Beacon's prom, Lurida Rhea was only able to weaken and turn off gravity, not intensify it or change its direction, and that it only had a small field of effect. _Mental note, add those to the file… or should I?... I'll have to ask the boss later_. Being stuck falling and not being able to do a thing about it gave her time to think things over.

Cyan was snapped back to the matter at hand as she slammed into the invisible dome covering the stadium. A light shimmer radiated outwards away from her.

"What the…?" Cyan pushed her hands against the surface. She was stuck upside down, looking down at the sky, "Now this is just trippy." The lights and meters on her gauntlets began to beep, reacting with the Force Dust of the field.

A wicked smile spread across her face, "Well then," she looked up at the ground, hundreds of feet above her, "Looks like it's my lucky day, Purps!" She shouted gleefully as glowing blue energy began to drain from the force field and into her tech. Her battery pack began to hum loudly.

.

"Man, your sister's pretty good, huh? How'd she manage to get that strong? She been working out, or what? I mean, you obviously haven't, but," Tox swung his hammer at Xannie's head on the way towards the Anti-Gravity biome, "some guys like thicker girls. You're not totally out of luck."

"Can you _stop_ commenting about my figure, you creep?!" Xannie slung rings back as she ran full-force towards the Anti-Gravity biome. She hadn't seen the fight between Lurida and Cyan, but she could just tell that her sister was there.

"There's a lot to comment on," Tox took another swing, " _A lot."_

"Eeeeeeeewwwwwwww!" Xannie immediately began to picture multiple scenarios involving her beating Tox to a pulp, but knew that they weren't actually feasible at this particular moment.

"Is that cellulite that I see peeking out of that suit?" Tox threw down his hammer, but it only struck the ground. After yanking it back out, he continued giving chase to Xannie. They were closing in on the Anti-Gravity biome fast.

Xannie threw her arms back. Two rings slid across the ground towards Tox. She hoped they'd knock him off his feet, " _Lurida!_ "

"You want your sister, huh?" Tox seemingly appeared beside Xannie. He talked big, but moved with such unsettling ease. The chase was only going on because that was what he wanted. Xannie had only been ahead because he allowed her to be.

The metal head of Tox's sledgehammer sunk into Xannie's lower back, "Let me give you a one way ticket to her."

.

Lurida heard her sister calling for her, "Xannie!" she flipped back to the ground, landing softly on the tile beneath the floating black box.

A flash of neon yellow zoomed towards her. Rings flew behind the yellow and black mass like a comet tail of razor blades. It slammed into her and sent her sprawling to the ground.

Lurida looked down to see that the mass was in actuality her sister. "X-Xannie?! Are you okay?!" Lurida had her arms instinctively wrapped around her twin's shoulders to protect her. They laid on a massive metal tile overlooking the other biomes, "What happened?!"

"Sledgehammer…" Xannie coughed, "Sledgehammer happened," her neon yellow eyes widened as she slowly raised a hand to point at the sky, "L-L-L-Lurida…?"

"What is…" Lurida looked up to the sky. Her Semblance's effects were waning, and the bright blue star above them was about to come shooting down like a meteor. Cyan was making a move that was a first for the Vytal Festival tournament. Since hitting the top of the force field wasn't technically a ring out, absorbing the Force Dust from the top of the dome had never been deemed illegal.

" _YOU'RE IN FOR IT NOW, PURPS!"_ Cyan screeched as she shot down from the sky. Her gauntlet buckled around her arm from the waves of force rippling through it.

"I-I can't…" Lurida put up a futile effort to activate her Semblance, but she was completely exhausted as the Gravity Dust wore off. All she could do was shut her eyes and hug her sister as Cyan's fist crashed into them. The force shattered the platform that they sat on and sent them both slamming into the ground below. Twin buzzers blared in unison.

.

"I…" Carmen murmured from the announcer's booth, "Take this one for me, V. We gonna call that move legal, or…?"

"I've… never heard of anyone doing that, but…" Vivian ran his hands through his hair as he watched medical staff running across the decimated battlefield, "I don't think it's against any of the tournament rules."

Carmen shut off her microphone and stood, "I'm going to speak with Alabaster. Something isn't… right…" she held the side of her head. Seeing the erratic movements of Tox and Cyan's auras was giving her a migraine, "Could you tell Orchid to come find me, too?"

"Y-Yeah. Where do you want me to tell her to meet you?" Vivian looked concerned. He expected a lot from his students, but never anything like what he just witnessed.

"That little park in the Atlas quadrant. The one with the war memorial. With so many soldiers around, we won't have to worry about people eavesdropping," the eight laser swords in her pockets felt like hundred-pound weights. If the Grimm Brotherhood made a move, at least she was armed, "If you want to sit in on this little meeting, then you can. It's about your students, after all. I would want to be involved if I were in your position."

"We have another fight in an hour…" He looked back and watched as the Rheas were carried off the field while Tox and Cyan raised their arms and waved at the crowd in triumph, "I can cover for you. We can't go without any announcers."

"I'm sure Khidna wouldn't mind stepping in. She owes me one, so just tell her I'm cashing in a favor," Carmen opened the door to leave.

"V…" she looked back. She couldn't help but remember in full detail what Vincentas had said to her about the world telling her kids the truth. It made her chest tighten every time, "I'm sorry for what these kids might end up going through. I… really wish that it didn't have to be this way."

Vivian stared back at the microphone, making sure the small red light was off before they continued talking, "I know I'm not as… active in the group as I should be, but for the good of everyone around you… I'm glad you are the way you are. Let me hold down the fort here. You go talk to Onyx. As much as I know your judgment's helped you in the past, I hope against hope that there's nothing to worry about here and that we just have some… very violent participants in this year's contest."

* * *

The frigid sea breeze poured through the Atlesian park with the sound of rustling evergreens. Carmen sat alone on the edge of the fountain, its square columns piled up in the center casting their shadow over her. Not too far away was the white granite war memorial with names etched in gold. Each name that her eyes passed over sent shivers down her spine. All she could think of were the names of her students appearing on there someday.

"Impressive memorial, is it not?"

" _ **AH!"**_ Carmen jumped and put her hands over her heart, "Damnit, Alabaster! What's with you with appearing out of nowhere?! Can't you just walk up and say hi like a normal person?! Tap your cane on the ground, maybe?! Anything but give me a heart attack?!"

Onyx shrugged as a slight smile curved at the edge of his wrinkled face, "Where's the fun in that?" he walked towards the large fountain and took a seat on one of the benches, "So. What did you want to talk to me about? Vivian sounded quite panicked when he called."

Carmen sat back down, "Right," she took a deep breath, "Tox and Cyan… their auras were… wrong. So much malice in two souls. I've only seen that in a few people, Onyx… most of those being killers that my team was sent to take care of. I'm scared that they might be much more than troubled teenagers." She looked to him to see if he caught on to what she was saying, "More as in… _infiltrator_ more.

Onyx's prior playfulness disappeared, "I know you believe what you saw, but an unstable aura does not an infiltrator make. People with ill-will are accepted into the academies all the time. While we exist to help guide young warriors in their skills, what they do with said skills is out of our control," he began to tap his cane nervously, "I believe without a doubt that there are Grimm Brotherhood operatives among our students, maybe even across all four schools, but we can't be throwing around accusations willy-nilly," he gave a sympathetic gaze to Carmen, "If we're to do anything about them, I want to be one-hundred percent sure. I know how much you care for young Lurida and Xannie Rhe-"

"I love my students more than anyone else, but that does not keep me from performing my role in the Nexus to the best of my abilities. I wouldn't talk to you about this if I thought that my attachment to my kids was clouding my judgement," Carmen ran her fingers through her hair, "After what happened with the last attack, I can't help but think that this is about to go downhill fast. Tox and Cyan are connected to that, maybe even their whole team. I'll be damned if those two aren't."

"So what do you want to do about it? Confront them? If they are just underlings then they'll be no real use to us."

Onyx and Carmen turned to see two familiar faces entering the courtyard.

Vincentas sneered as he and his wife descended the staircase into the mostly empty square, "We've interrogated grunts before, and it gets us nowhere. No matter where they're from or what they were doing when we caught them, they never know a thing. Even the ones with the fancy masks we caught after half of Vale got blown to smithereens didn't seem to know what the ultimate goals are."

"Obviously no one told you that Sanguwalker was seen around Vytal, Vincentas…" Carmen growled as she looked to the happy little couple. Orchid, she loved to death. Vincentas, she still despised, but now she had a reason to be actively angry with him, "I'd be willing to bet that the ones that got captured were just decoys."

Vincentas narrowed his gaze at her, his brow creasing heavily, "Sorry. I must've been too busy dealing with the rampaging rainbow calamari to hear that," he looked to Onyx, "Not like I get filled in on much of anything since I turned down your offer."

"I'm sorry if the Nexus doesn't want to share information with somebody so… adamant about not being a part of it." Onyx replied tersely.

"The offer is always open, honey," Orchid straightened the mint green beret on her head. She gave Carmen and Onyx a warm smile, "I'm sorry about him. He didn't seem to be too thrilled about seeing you both again."

"He rarely ever is unless money's involved..." Carmen grumbled under her breath.

"I mean, she's not wrong…" Vincentas shrugged, "I'm not in this line of work for free." He furrowed his brow at Carmen and went on with the problem at hand, "We overheard what you said about those Shade kids. It isn't the first time you've seen that in students. You've mentioned seeing it in that wolf girl, the otter jerk, and in that redheaded bit-"

Carmen stomped her foot, "Don't even start with me, Vince," she looked to Alabaster, "This time is different. He's talking about my feeling anger and frustration from them. With Tox and Cyan, I'm talking about complete malice. It's similar, but different."

"But as I told Carmen before you arrived, Vincentas, anger and malice doesn't mean they're part of the Grimm Brotherhood," Onyx explained, "The academies attract people from all walks of life. Something out of place as this shouldn't be unexpected. I suggest we keep an eye on them for the time being, and by 'we' I'm referring to the Shade faculty."

"Believe me, Yialli, Dorimizu, and I have been watching Team TCSC closely…" Orchid sighed as she gave into the call to her less than desirable line of work, "They are ruthless, cold-blooded, and hateful, but… I can't say for sure that they're infiltrators. If they are, then they are good at hiding it."

"You think that they could have gotten through Vivian's extensive background check without a hitch? I can barely take a job from him, and I've only got a few public property damage charges under my belt…" Vincentas shook his head, "If anyone has things locked down tight, it's Vivian, despite the laid-back reputation that Shade carries. Then again, what do I know? I don't deal with the end of the world like some self-righteous bastards I know."

"I'm going to pretend that I didn't hear that," Onyx tapped his cane on the ground. The repetitive sound of wood against stone echoed off the walls. The square suddenly went dead quiet as the tiles began changing and shifting. By the time the color stopped shifting, the sunken courtyard was transformed into a huge checkerboard and its occupants had completely lost their color. "Let's see how things stand, shall we?"

Above the monochrome Carmen's head was a black symbol representing a bishop chess piece. Looking at her jacket, it had turned a deep black, "Do you always have to use your board game to see what everyone's thinking?" Though her question seemed accusatory, her tone showed no annoyance. In fact, she sounded thankful for Onyx's Semblance for once.

Onyx, a black king piece floating above his head, smiled wearily, "Only in serious situations such as these. You can never be too sure."

Orchid and Vincentas both had black knight pieces above them.

"Looks like we're all in agreement," Vincentas scoffed as he glared down at Carmen from his place on the stairs, "For once."

"We have no choice but to stay put, keep an eye on the suspicious ones, and wait for them to potentially screw up," Orchid sighed, "Like we've been doing for years now."

"We've made our move." Onyx tapped his cane on the floor again, dissipating the illusion around them, "Now we just have to wait and see if their next one is a poor one or not."


	60. V3Ch7: Kings and Queens

"We're screwed, Alice," Ebon adjusted the ski goggles over his eyes with his back to his team leader. They stood in the locker room after watching their faces appear on the screens after being randomly selected for the last fight of the day. Nervous sweat formed spots on the shirt crammed inside of his puffy down jacket. All he could think about was the sight of four injured students being carted out on stretchers from Team RYAL's first round. Now, they were the ones going up against them. The first day of the second round was finishing on a strong note.

"Will you quit your blubberin', Ebon?" Though Alice was just as nervous, she refused to let it show as she shoved spare decks of cards into the hidden pockets of her dress, "There's nothin' we can do about it now, so get yourself out of ya funk before I do it for ya."

"Go right ahead, because I sure can't," Ebon groaned. He picked up his guns and hooked them to his belt, "Like, can we just step out of the ring when we get in there? Just forfeit? I don't want to fight those guys."

"You do that and I _end_ you, undastand? Now come on, it's almost show time."

"I mean, you ending me would be better than Ray ending me. I'm tempted to take my chances…"

As they began to traverse the dirt ring leading to the arena, Alice waggled her finger at him, "Actually _try_ , okay? We've got this. We can do this. If we _can't_ , then we'll go down with a fight. Got it?"

"Fine…" he pointed to his boots, "If things go bad and I have to get around a bit faster, you know what to do."

"Hitch a ride and snipe from a distance as always." she smirked to him, "It's a bit more fun ta shoot at people when they can't get a good aim atcha."

"Isn't that why you came up with Royal Flush in the first place?"

She sighed, "Ya know me too well, Carbonado. Ya know me too well."

.

"Alright, sorry about that, V," Carmen stepped into the announcer's booth, "Did you get a replacement for the last match, or did you go it alone?"

Vivian turned around, "I actually did find someone last minute, but she stepped out for a moment. She was very excited to-"

"I see you have returned, Carmen," Khidna Léon said from over Carmen's shoulder. Instead of her normal military uniform, she was dressed down in a pair of black capris and a white camo tank top. The sight of her in near mom-clothes was a rare one, and certainly entertaining.

"Oh, hey, Khidna!" Carmen bit her lip to keep from laughing, "W-What's up?"

Khidna's golden-brown eyes seared into Carmen, "Keep your giggling in check, Maple. You're an instructor, not a school-girl," she crossed her arms and turned her nose up to the other woman, "I was expecting a thank you for doing your job for you on such short notice."

"Geez, who pissed in your coffee?" Carmen forced herself to smile at General Léon. She could only hope that the crowd didn't fall asleep from the combined commentary of Vivian and Khidna, "Sorry if we pulled you away from time with your family or anything. I had to speak with Alabaster about some… you-know-what business."

If there was one thing Khidna absolutely didn't want to hear about at that moment, it was the Nexus and the Grimm Brotherhood. With things being silent since the Maelstrom incident, it was nice to just be vigilant rather than actively combating the threat. "Right. Well, I had fun for the time I was up here. I'll let you get back to it. I know how adamant you are about watching your students fight… that, and it may be a bit unprofessional for me to stay here for my son's fight."

"It's the best seat in the house. How about you stick around and watch it up here at least?" Carmen took her seat at her microphone, "You don't have to act like a stranger, you know."

"Again, thank you for the offer, but I don't think I'd feel comfortable seeing your reaction to what transpires." Khidna opened the door to the booth, "You saw RYAL's team fight. I think it's best we not be in the same room."

"Right…" Carmen waved goodbye, "Well, we'll just see how this all plays out. Alice and Ebon have a few tricks up their sleeves. Maybe a few aces in the holes. They are _really_ good at _counting cards._ Even-"

Vivian rubbed at his temples, "Please. Stop. No more."

"What? Not… _punny_ , enough for ya?"

"Not _two hours_ ago you were all serious and freaking out over some of my students, and now you're making jokes. _Puns_. The _lowest_ form of humor..." he looked her over, "I don't get it. How do you just flip on a dime like that?"

"Part of the job. It comes with _years_ of teaching and severe trauma," Carmen flicked on her microphone without waiting for a response, " _ **HEEEEELLOOOOOOOO VYTAL! CARMEN MAPLE IS BACK IN THE BOOTH AND READY TO GET THIS FIGHT GOING! FOR OUR LAST FIGHT OF THE DAY,"**_ she paused and leaned down to Vivian, "Also, farts are the lowest form of humor, but they're still _hilarious_. Get it right," she leaned back into her mic, " _ **WE'VE GOT TEAM ANTE OF VALE AND TEAM RYAL OF ATLAS GOING HEAD TO HEAD IN A SPECTACULAR DEATH MATCH!"**_

Vivian Willows could only watch as Carmen bounced in her seat, smiling wide as she rattled on in her usual introductions before each fight. He couldn't even find the words to cut in and help her announce the current match's participants, "Good to have you back, Maple..."

.

"Oooooooooo, this is gonna _bee_ fun!" chimed a woman clad in a tight pale yellow bodysuit. Black stripes came up to the middle of her thigh, and a hexagonal pattern covered the suit with the luminous hue of fresh honey. Her eyes were obscured by goggles with the same hexagonal pattern, though in a matte black color. On her back was a set of robotic insect wings affixed to a pale yellow backpack. Leather straps came from the backpack's base and weaved around her legs for controlling the device.

"Seriously, Yaara, you gotta stop with the bee puns," The other fighter from Team RYAL was General Khidna Léon's oldest child, Ray Léon. He shined like a beacon of pride in the center of Amity Colosseum in his full suit of gold armor. Flowing down behind him was a cloak of dark gold that ended in puffed lining. From first sight, one would say he was some sort of royalty, not a fighter, "and I don't think crushing runts like these two is going to be 'fun'."

He smirked towards Alice and Ebon, "It's only fun if it's an actual _challenge_ ," he began to laugh loudly, not caring if Alice and Ebon heard him, though in reality, he probably wanted them to. He undid the clasp of his cloak and threw the cloth to the side, "but whatever. Let's give our people a show, shall we?"

Ebon looked on at Ray with disbelief. Sure, he had watched the first fight that Team RYAL was involved in, but hearing this guy talk to him and Alice like dirt set off some primal trigger in the back of his mind. The air of arrogance around the man brought a half-snarl to his lips, "Yo… Alice…"

"I know, Ebon." Alice held her fists clenched to her sides. Her brow furrowed deeply towards her nose as she glared at the two Atlesian students in front of her.

"What's wrong?! Are you two _honeys_ mad or something? How about you both just _buzz_ off?" the woman in the bee getup, Yaara, smirked at the pair from Team ANTE, "You better _bee_ lieve we're gonna kick you two down a notch."

" _Alice…_ " Ebon seethed.

"Why are _you_ gettin' so angry? _You're_ supposed ta be tha level-headed one keepin' _me_ in check right now!"

"Oh, come on! Just _bee_ happy!" Yaara chimed in.

"It's not just the lug, huh? It's tha bloody puns, isn't it?"

"It's the bloody puns, yes," Ebon parroted back to his partner, "It's reminding me of when Turf spent too much time with Team ARTS and couldn't stop making dog puns for a week."

Alice scrunched up her nose, "I don't mean to sound crass… but… is that a _Faunus_ thing or somethin'?" It was a nice break from listening to Ray berate them.

"He's the Faunus, not _bee_ ," Yaara giggled, "I just really like being the _Queen Bee, honey_."

"Now you're just stretching it…" Ray afforded a glance to his partner before returning to Alice and Ebon, "So, word is around Beacon, you two are known as a king and queen too? Bet you don't come even _close_ to the standards we hold back home. You're probably just a bunch of worthless posers."

Alice was done, "At least I don't need ta rely on my bloodline to backup my talk like you have to. Must be nice talkin' down on people knowin' they won't fight back considerin' who your mum is."

Ray glared down at Alice, "I think you're the _last_ person that should be talking about bloodlines, Crims."

Ebon looked around at the four biomes forming around them. A lava field appeared behind him and to his right, ice formations to his back left, a mesa with an artificial sun to his left and behind their opponents, and a bunch of floating islands over water to his right just ahead. He hadn't even noticed them form in the midst of their conversation.

"Uh… Alice? I think…"

"Not now, Ebon!" she snapped at her teammate before returning to Ray, "What exactly is _that_ supposed ta mean?"

Through his bared teeth, a light snarl rumbled from his throat, "You know full well what I mean, _princess_. That poker face may work at your dad's casinos, but they won't work on me."

Before Alice could retort, the blare of the starting buzzer went off. All she could see was a blur of gold as Ray was suddenly in front of her. The towering Faunus reared his arm back, ready to bring it down on her. She felt someone grab her before she shot off to the side, moving out of Ray's path right before he could hit her.

"You've got to pay closer attention!" Ebon bolted towards the ice formations with a solid grasp on Alice's arm. Two beams extended out from his snow boots and slid underneath Alice's feet. Snow poured out of the skis behind them, and his guns shifted into ski poles to keep them on the move, "That could have been over before we had a chance to get a shot in! Hold on!"

Alice turned back to see Ray glaring at her. Even from far off, she could sense the intense anger and bravado coming from him, "Thanks for that, Ebon-SWERVE!"

Following her direction, Ebon swerved to the right, sending snow up from his boots, "What's going on!?"

Behind them, Yaara was catching up to them. The mechanical wings on her back fluttering rapidly as she gave chase. She had the long barrel of her gun aimed towards them. Another string of black needle-like projectiles shot towards Ebon and Alice.

"Left! We've got a bit of a pest problem!"

Ebon groaned, "As long as she's not making puns, I think we'll be fine."

They sped through the blue crystalline formations in the Ice biome. A perfect area for them to set up and catch their breath. They sped through, winding through the caverns made by the frozen waves in hopes of losing their pursuer.

Alice looked back, seeing no sign of Yaara, "She's separated from Ray. If we can take her down before he catches up, we ca-"

A shadow was cast over them as something appeared from on top of the frigid canyon.

Alice and Ebon tumbled as something big and heavy slammed into them.

Claws ripped tears in Ebon's jacket, sending down feathers puffing out like a cloud. With his arms around Alice, he retracted his skis and rolled to a stop against one of the hulking pillars of ice. He looked up just in time to see Ray sprinting towards them.

"We've got to think of something quick, Queenie!" Ebon held up his ski poles. They shifted into a pair of pistols and fired frosty projectiles against the golden plates of Ray's armor. Ice spikes grew against the metal, but they did little to slow him down.

Alice looked over their foe. Yaara hadn't caught up, so the 'divide and conquer' idea could still theoretically work. That's when Alice noticed something about Ray, "He doesn't have a weapon?"

Ray splayed out his hands. Sprouting from the tips of his armored fingers were sharp black claws, "That's right, princess." he raked his claws together, sending out an unsettling slashing noise as they cut through the air, "Unlike you, Crims, I see my Faunus trait as a gift rather than a _defect_!"

He sprinted towards Alice, ready to slice her to ribbons. He growled as she jumped to the side. A razor-sharp card bounced off his shoulder plate, "Unlike you, the Léons actually have something worth standing for!"

No matter what Alice or Ebon did, Ray was hell-bent on coming for her. Card after card left her hands, but they didn't seem to do much. The clubs merely glanced off. He powered through the hearts' explosions. The diamonds would start to form crystals, but all he'd have to do was throw his arm to the side to shatter them. Not even her tried and trusted spades did much of anything. They'd slam into him, but he would just keep running. After dodging another slash and turning to run, Alice afforded a glance to the aura monitors. Ray's meter was down to 82%, but he had shown no reaction to any of that damage.

Ebon knew he needed to do something to help, but all he could think of to do was fire his pistols at Ray as he chased Alice. He grabbed his hand as a black and yellow shoe slammed into it, launching one of his pistols across the small clearing.

Yaara smiled at Ebon, "Sorry about that!" Still using her wings to hover, she began throwing punches and kicks into Ebon, keeping him from doing anything to help Alice.

Ebon knew he was stuck. There was only one thing he could do to give Alice some slim chance.

In a discharge of snow, Ebon's snowboard extended out underneath his boots. A track of white snow appeared beneath him as he fled in hopes that Yaara would take the bait.

"Hey! Ray!" Yaara called out to her leader, "the boarder's buzzing off. You want me to-"

"I don't _care_ , Yaara!"

She winced, giving him a concerned look before hesitantly flying after Ebon.

Alice was in a battle she couldn't win. She didn't want to accept it. This rampaging Lion Faunus was after her. After her for the beliefs her family held. The ones that she wanted to turn against. She doubted he'd believe her if she told him that.

She turned on her heel, ready to throw a handful of cards at her opponent, "I don't care _what_ you think. I. Am. Not. My. _Family_."

Ray lunged at her through a huge mass of smoke, ice, and fire.

.

"You seriously need to buzz off!" Ebon shouted. He batted away the flying needles coming from Yaara with his only remaining ski pole in a vain attempt to give himself cover. Alice wouldn't last long against Ray, and he wasn't going to be able to do much about that with someone who could literally fly on his tail, "What is your problem?!"

"Nothing!" She swerved to the side, continuing her barrage as their chase continued across the mesa biome, "Just trying to give Ray a chance to fight the other queen without any distractions!" She pulled a large pin down the barrel of her needle gun. The majority of the mass condensed to the far end, leaving her holding her weapon by a newly-formed staff. The condensed form at the end was suddenly littered with black spikes. Upon a closer look, the spikes were made up of her needle ammo.

"Namely, _you!_ " Yaara threw her newly-formed mace towards Ebon.

"I'm surprised you didn't throw out another bee pun!" Ebon strafed to the right and lifted his remaining pistol. He fired twice, both shots passing harmlessly between Yaara's wings, _Damn_ , he grit his teeth at the mistake. He backed up and fired again, but Yaara zipped just inches away to avoid it.

The mace glanced off the mesa slope behind him. His sigh of relief was soon followed by a yelp when the spikes of the mace broke free. Dozens of needles shot out in a sphere of pain around the mace, many of them embedding themselves into his tattered down jacket. Each pricked at the aura underneath, but there was no doubt it would've done a lot of damage to his natural protection had the thick padding not been there. Saying that he was thankful for his jacket would have been an understatement.

Yaara flew over to the rock formation and grabbed her weapon to continue her pursuit. "Well aren't you just a tricky little _bugger_?"

.

Alice fell to the ground, feeling Ray's claws rip across her aura.

"Pathetic," Ray strolled up to her, his claws clinking against the palm of his golden gauntlet, "You Crims talk so much about Faunus being liars, degenerates, nothing more than killers. You call us garbage, but here you are," he chuckled, "I bet your father's going to turn this all around to push his agenda, huh? The big brutal Faunus defeating his fragile defenseless daughter."

Alice scooted back, feeling one of the ice structures against her back, "I am _not_ fragile and defenseless!" she had seen Ebon's gun fly across the biome. She was hoping that, if it came to it and Ray had her cornered, she'd have it to rely on. Despite the shots not doing much, if he got close enough, she'd have a clear shot to his face.

She snatched the black and silver ice pistol off the ground and pointed it towards Ray and pulled the trigger.

Nothing came out. No ice. No bang. Just the disheartening sound of a gun clicking.

"W-what?!" Alice beat the pistol against her palm, but no matter what she did, it wouldn't fire. It was as if there was no ammo inside. She felt all the color drain from her face as Ray began to let out a deep bellowing laugh.

As he regained his composure, he reached down and grabbed Alice by the white fluff around her collar, raising her up to be eye-to-eye with him, "Well 'Queen of Hearts', I think it's safe to say you've been dethroned!" he threw her to the side.

She slammed hard into an ice structure. A gasp came out of her as she bounced hard against the ground. The soles of her boots slid against the icy floor of their arena, preventing her from standing up fast enough.

The back of her metal corset crumpled in Ray's fist and forced the air out of her lungs. He hoisted her up off the ground for the audience to see. The way that she began to squirm, shiver, and gasp brought a smile to his lips. This wretched woman was getting a taste of what she deserved from looking down on his kind. He was getting revenge on the Crims family for denying Faunus their rights as people. For treating them like subhuman filth. They would see that Faunus could be just as good, and if not _better_ than, humans, "How does it feel, Crims? All these eyes on you while a _Faunus_ shows the world what you really are?! All talk and no bite! _How small do you feel?_ "

He slammed her against the ice wall hard enough to send fissures webbing outwards, "Come on, tell me!" he grabbed her by the back of her dress and slammed her down once more.

.

The chase was on across the floating islands. Yaara buzzed around overhead while Ebon zipped across the water on a thin layer of snow slipping out from the snowboard affixed to his feet. It was impressive to see that people organizing the Vytal Festival Tournament had access to enough Gravity Dust to actually simulate the landforms even after Lurida and Cyan blew one up.

"This isn't looking great…" splashes came up behind him from each needle being fired his way. Yaara had the clear advantage here, and he wasn't going to be any good in the Lava biome if she chased him into it, "Come on… think of something…"

Yaara swerved off to the side, disappearing behind one of the large floating rock formations. She was completely out of Ebon's sight as she flew along the rocks, keeping sure to stay low. While she despised Lancers, she took much of her fighting style after them.

Ebon could hear her wings buzzing, but he couldn't tell where they were coming from. _Damnit, Yaara…_ he thought to himself. He tried to pinpoint where she was, but he wasn't having much luck, "Come on! What's up with the distance? You scared to fight me head on?!"

The fluttering grew louder for a split second right before Yaara's foot connected with Ebon's cheek.

He fell, his goggles and remaining pistol skidding across the tiles as he was knocked into the center platform, left neutral following the arena's changes. His snowboard collapsed back into the soles of his boots.

"Okay, ow…" he groaned. His pistol hadn't been lost from the blindsided kick, but his dignity must've fallen into the water somewhere, "What happened to… you know…"

"Subtlety?" Yaara aimed her needle gun back down at him, "I've been on Team RYAL for _three_ years. I can act like I have skill," she giggled, " _You're_ the one that has to hold back."

"Because we both know who would win normally," Ebon fired a shot at Yaara, but it whizzed harmlessly past her face, "You should really sit in on more meetings, by the way… A certain friend of ours is getting frustrated by you not, ya know, showing up."

Yaara dashed forward, her wings retracting. Her feet hit the ground as she ran up to him and began throwing chops and kicks towards him, "Atlas is a little hard to get away long enough _to_ sit in on meetings," she swung her arm down, but it was blocked with a loud ' _poof_ ' from Ebon's jacket sleeve, "We may be under Khidna's watch, but I don't think the rest of her military would be too happy to learn about some top-secret organization sending in some of their members to hide among them," she winked at him from behind her bulbous goggles, "right?" she shot her foot forward, directly into Ebon's sternum.

"Woah!" Ebon leapt back before her kick could fully connect, "Watch it!" he turned on his heel to keep her from striking him again, "Do you at least keep up with the messages… like that one about the _Shady_ situation with a certain _toxic_ team? I was told to have you to report to a certain someone if I had a chance in the fight… but I need to keep it natural," his pistol slid back into the form of a ski pole. The icy tip made an arc of haze as he went in for a slash.

Yaara deflected with her own weapon. As she pushed Ebon back, the mechanisms within shifted again to form a mace, "I do. I do. I read _every single one_."

Metal slid against metal as she angled the weapon towards Ebon, his pole sliding harmlessly past her as the spiked end of her mace cracked him in the chest. As he fell to the ground, she paced triumphantly and shrugged, "I just usually leave the talking to Amaryllis. She always seems to know what she's talking about."

Ebon glared up at her, "We all need to speak up at a time like this… You are an active agent after all."

Yaara shrugged again before turning her gaze up to the large screens. Her cocky demeanor melted instantly, falling into evident shock.

Beside an image of Alice's face was the bar representing her aura level. Every few seconds, the bar shuttered down by a tenth. Each dip was accompanied by a rhythmic crash from the Ice biome, then Alice's desperate, incomprehensible, sobbing cries for help. The crowd had fallen into stunned silence from the sheer brutality that Ray was demonstrating.

Ebon shot to his feet, but was stopped when Yaara aimed her gun at his head.

Yaara fell right back into her facade, "Think I'm just gonna let you _buzz_ of-"

"I forfeit," Ebon holstered his gun and held up his hands.

Yaara snapped her head to Ebon, before aiming her mace at him, "What? No, we're supposed to fight for _real_ in here, Ebon. Ray and I are supposed to win, _normally_ as to not draw attention!"

" _I SAID THAT I FORFEIT!"_ Ebon shouted, then darted off towards Alice and Ray.

.

Alice kicked and screamed in Ray's grasp as she was dragged along to a fresh flat of ice. Dotted in a row were six human sized craters where she had been thrown down. Tears streamed from her eyes, blood streamed from her busted nose, and all she could do was sob, "Stop… Please… Please just stop…" but it only seemed like her cries fueled him. White flashed around her as she struggled to keep her aura up.

"Not until I'm _DONE!"_ Ray slammed her down against the ice for the seventh time. Cracks shot through the ice, running farther out than before. His monstrous smile grew with her gasping scream. Her aura had to be close to breaking, but he didn't care. Having the opportunity to teach this girl a lesson wasn't something he was going to ease up on.

"What's wrong, Crims?!" he shouted down at her, "Get up! Fight back! I know you've got it in you!"

Alice sputtered as she was slammed into the ice again.

"Just _tell me that you were wrong!_ " he lifted her up to meet him eye to eye, "I said _TELL ME!"_

"I was wrong!" Alice shouted as loud as she could, "I was _so uttaly wrong!_ Just please… stop…" she reached up and held onto his wrists, "P-Please…"

"Yeah, you were wrong. That's why you're getting exactly what you deserve," Ray raised her up and slammed her back down into the ice. As she laid there crumpled and quivering, his claws slid out of his fingertips. He raised his arm, too absorbed in the pleasure of bringing down his self-justified wrath to see the white shimmer fade around Alice's body. Strangely, no buzzer sounded.

Alice was cast in shadow as Ray Léon towered over her. No matter how hard she tried, she couldn't find the breath to tell him to stop. She could only lie there, helpless as he let out a triumphant snarl.

" _STOP!"_ Ebon shouted. He slid to a stop between Ray and Alice with a pistol, the one that he retrieved along the way, aimed at Ray's face. As the claw instinctively came down, he snatched his ski pole from his belt. The icy tip slipped between Ray's fingers and encased his hand in ice, "We forfeit!"

" _What?!_ " Ray snarled at Ebon as he pushed back against the skier's weapon, "This is between _me_ and _her_! _Don't_ _get in my way of giving her the punishment she deser-!_ "

The muzzle of Ebon's pistol clanged against Ray's chest piece. An icy charge formed an ice spike against the metal. A wave of snow came out from around his wrists and sent Ray sliding back into a nearby pillar of ice. The snow froze on contact with the ice, locking Ray in place.

"I said. We. Forfeit." Ebon kept his gun raised.

Yaara fluttered her way back into the ice biome just in time to see her leader get frozen in place. Her wings retracted back into the compartment on her back.

Ray struggled against the ice, but it held him fast to the wall, "Let me go! _I almost had her!_ " he began to let out guttural roars, similar to those of his Faunus type. It was terrifying, yet also somewhat pathetic.

A wisp of fog passed through Ebon's breath as he lowered his gun. He knelt down to Alice and held out a hand. Feathers fell out from the tears in his down jacket, but he looked far better off than her, "Can you stand…?"

Alice didn't say anything as she shook her head back and forth. She just clutched his sleeve, burying her face into his torn jacket as she sobbed.

"Hey, it's okay. You're safe now," he gently looped an arm under her knees and kept hugging her with his other arm. He picked her up and glared at Ray, then at Yaara, "Let's get you to the infirmary… again. Let's hope that the nurse from Beacon didn't come to help out, or she'll have an aneurysm."

Alice wasn't in any mindset to laugh at Ebon's poor excuse for a joke. She just laid her head back and closed her eyes, trying not to focus on the pain.

"Right… sorry…" he stood and made his way out of the ring, "Good game, guys. Hope you had fun…" he didn't so much as look back as they left the arena.

.

"Announce the victors, V…" Carmen's knuckles turned white around the doorknob of the announcer's booth. She knew from the start that she was going to see some of her students get hurt in the tournament, but this was too far. How Ray conducted himself was beyond the scope of what she could accept, "I have a few choice words for Khidna…"

Before Vivian could stop her, the door slammed shut. Hesitantly, he pressed the button on the mic. "Ladies and gentlemen, Team ANTE has forfeited the match… leaving Team RYAL the victors by default."

While Vivian went on to close out the day's fights, Carmen stomped down the hall until she finally reached the lounge for the faculty from Atlas. She threw the door open much to the surprise of the soldiers and teachers sitting at a ring of couches in front of a window. Khidna leaned on the back wall, her arms crossed.

" _ **WHO THE HELL DOES YOUR SON THINK HE IS, KHIDNA?!"**_ Carmen's eyes seethed with untapped fury. All that ran through her mind was the sight of Alice sobbing and begging for the abuse to stop. She saw her aura crumble. She had watched every single ounce of pain inflicted on Alice, but had to keep to herself for the sake of being unbiased. Now with the title of 'announcer' gone, she could unleash every bit of her pent up frustration.

"Ma'am you can't be in here!" the man to Khidna's side shouted at her with nasally disdain, "And you shall _not_ speak to the General that way!" Tsuga Kauri finished.

" _ **I DON'T WANT TO HEAR ANOTHER WORD COME OUT OF YOUR STUPID GREASY FACE,**_ **LIEUTENANT** _ **TSUGA. I AM NOT IN THE MOOD FOR YOU TODAY!"**_ Carmen jabbed a finger at him, " _ **SHUT. UP. FOR. ONCE. IN. YOUR. LIFE."**_

Tsuga sneered at the uninvited guest, "How _dare_ you?! I've told you before it's Lieutenant _General_. I can assure you that your employer will hear about thi-"

One of the other men in the room stood up from his chair, one with dusty red hair, "Shall I escort her out, General?"

"I will see her out myself, Tuscan. It seems that she has a problem with my son," Khidna stood straight. Even in her street clothes, she still carried with her the same reserved sense of militaristic intimidation, "I would ask that neither of you take any action regarding this personal matter. It isn't like Alabaster would listen to a complaint on his favorite instructor anyway."

"But General-" Tsuga began to protest.

"As you wish, General." Tuscan sat down, obeying his superior's instructions. He kept his eyes on the redhead instructor in case she tried anything too violent.

Khidna closed the door behind her as she and Carmen entered the hallway, "I told you you weren't going to like what you saw out there."

" _ **YOUR SON ALMOST KILLED MY STUDENT! I DON'T GIVE A DAMN WHAT YOU SAID!"**_ Carmen clenched her teeth, then stamped her foot down hard enough to make the door nearby rattle.

Khidna narrowed her gaze and clenched her fists, "The Crims family has made many _horrible_ statements concerning a Faunus' place in society, some rivaling the levels of hatred shown by the Grimm Brotherhood. I'm not going to say that justifies what he did, but he fights to win, and being matched up with a Crims only made him want to fight harder. He fought. He won. This is a _tournament_ after all, Ms. Maple."

" _ **NO, THAT-"**_ Carmen did her best to take a deep breath. She couldn't continue to cause an even greater scene. She knew that her and Khinda couldn't see eye to eye on this, but she couldn't say nothing, "Alice is a Crims, yes, but she is also Alice. She is not here to carry the burden of her family name, and she is definitely not here to _be_ a Crims. Your son had no right to be that brutal with her, and I have half a mind to push this until he gets disqualified. She was _begging_ for him to stop, Khidna. She couldn't even say that she wanted to forfeit. He didn't give her a chance."

Khidna lowered her voice and drew closer to Carmen, "In case you forgot, it was _your_ boss that said he needs to continue in order to keep the Grimm Brotherhood at bay. They can't capture him if he's in the spotlight. I'm sure Onyx wouldn't be happy if he heard you put my son in danger." She drew back, "Ray brought the girl below her threshold and her partner forfeited. Everything Ray did was within what's covered by the rules."

Carmen knew Khidna was technically correct on both sides, but she still wanted retribution of some sort. She may have had her role with the Nexus, but she was still Alice's teacher, "He had the intent of harming her after her aura broke."

"Are you referring to when he raised his hand to deal a final blow? Her aurameter was still reading-"

"I _saw_ her aura break, Khidna. You gonna try and argue that?" Carmen met Khidna's gaze with one full of nothing but rage, "If Ebon hadn't stepped in, she would have died. Your son would have killed one of my students."

"Please, Carmen. My son knows how to rough someone up without killing them."

"Not someone with an aura as weak as hers."

"Excuse me?"

"The aurameter can't accurately rate her aura level. She falls below the lowest point that it can read, so a 50% might a 40% for her in all actuality," Carmen crossed her arms and leaned against the wall opposite to the door to the Atlesian lounge, "Alice has probably the weakest aura I've seen at Beacon. It breaks fast. I've been working with her to strengthen it, but she doesn't seem to have the capacity to improve all that much. The girl doesn't even have a Semblance, Khidna, and your son just went berserk on her. I get it, it's a tournament, but you need to get that boy under control before he kills someone."

Khidna sighed as she leaned against the wall and thought over Carmen's words, "If the girl is that fragile, what is she even doing in the tournament?"

Carmen stood back up straight, clearly about to go off on Khidna once more.

"Much less, why is she even at a Huntsman Academy? Someone like her wouldn't even be considered for the combat program at Atla-"

Carmen slammed her fist against the wall beside Khidna's head, "Don't you _dare_ say _anything_ about my student being unfit to be a Huntress. _She_ shows passion. _She_ shows ambition. _She_ shows promise. I don't care about what you jerkoffs do at Atlas. I don't care what you think about my students. I don't _**CARE**_ if you think she's unfit. That was _my_ student, and _your_ son nearly killed her. That's what this is about, and nothing else."

"And you need to _get over it!_ " Khidna pushed Carmen away, "Things like this _happen_. You of all people should know that."

"Don't even-" Carmen was cut off as her scroll dinged. She yanked it out and read over the message, "That little…" she turned her back to Khidna to keep from doing anything too stupid, "Two broken ribs, a cracked nose, and her back was strained pretty bad. Not to mention all the cuts and bruises. That's what your son did to my student."

Khidna scoffed, "Battle scars. Him and his team did much worse to that Mistrali team in the first round."

Carmen's balled up fist slammed into the bridge of Khidna's nose.

She fell back against the wall, hitting the back of her head on the way down, then fell over on her side with her hands cupped over her nose. Blood trailed out from her hands and down her wrists. It was hard to process exactly what had happened, and the crashing of pain flooding her face came in before she could give it much thought.

" _General Léon!_ " Tsuga rushed from the open door of the Atlas lounge to Khidna's side. He had just stepped out into the hallway when he watched the obnoxious redhead slam his boss in the face, "Who the _hell_ do you think you are!?" Tsuga went to stand, but was suddenly pushed to the side.

Carmen found herself being held against the wall by the man with the red hair from earlier.

"It doesn't matter who she thinks she is. All she needs to be seen as is a disgruntled teacher who just attacked the General," Tuscan Umber glared down at Carmen as he tightened his grip on the collar of her coat.

"Stand down…" Khidna croaked. She tried to shake off the fact that she was just suckerpunched by Beacon's resident psycho. Her palms and upper lip were coated in blood, a bruise was forming on her nose, but she was still able to stand on her own, "I will speak with Ray on the matter if you are this upset over this…"

"But General?!" Tsuga and Tuscan questioned in unison.

" _Just do as I say, dammit!_ " Khidna shouted, not taking her eyes off of Carmen. The primal rage within her was barely being contained, but she had to keep up appearances.

Tuscan reluctantly let Carmen down, but he didn't let go of her collar just yet, "Don't think that just because you work at Beacon that you're out of Atlas's reach. And don't think that just because my son's grown fond of you and Onyx that I won't try my damndest to have you thrown in prison the _second_ you try something like that again. If the lack of growth in my son's skills and your attitude are signs of what the curriculum is like at Beacon, then maybe I'd be doing Remnant a favor by having you out of there. We don't need any two-bit Huntsmen wannabes out in the world doing more harm than good." Tuscan finally released his grip on Carmen's jacket and turned to go back to his seat in the plush lounge.

Tsuga put a hand on Khidna's shoulder as he examined her bleeding nose and the large dark welt on its side. He pulled a handkerchief out of his jacket pocket and handed it out to her, "Are you alright, General?"

She swatted his hand away, "Get out of my face…" she grumbled as she put a hand on the doorknob.

Tsuga sneered at Carmen as he followed Khidna closely, "Watch yourself, _Maple_."

Carmen ignored him, "Hey, Khidna."

The Faunus woman let her subordinate pass as she looked back to the instructor. She held the door, ready to slam it in Carmen's face if she decided to throw another punch.

"Don't let Ray end up like Janus. Don't let him get to the point that he hates who he is now. These are some of the most important years of his life after all."

With that, the door slammed shut and locked.

.

While the city of Vytal was going through yet another night of festivities, none of the bright lights or colors could get through the drawn curtains in one of the hotel suite's four bedrooms. What little light filled the room came from the holo-screen across from the lone bed. It cast an eerie blue-gray glow throughout the space, forcing all other color out and replacing it with a duller imitation of itself.

The holo-screen flickered as channel after channel went by.

Alice Crims was laying in her bed, staring absent-mindedly at the images that flashed a dull glow across her bandaged body. A thought crossed her mind, and she began scrolling through some of the menus. A long list of team names, numbers, and years scrolled past until she found the one she was looking for: **50th Biennial Vytal Festival Tournament: Round 1 - Team RYAL vs. Team GLSS**. The name RYAL was written in a bolded white while GLSS was in a bolded sky blue, denoting their kingdom and school of origin. She pressed play on the remote.

" _ **WELCOME TO THE-"**_ Carmen's voice disappeared as the recording zipped through the opening argument between her and Vivian. The selection of the fields, terrain generation, and initial scuffles all faded into one big blur of motion until Alice found the part that she was looking for.

Ray smashed the leader of Team GLSS' face into a concrete wall in the Urban biome. He ripped her back up, then threw her into a decrepit light pole by the leg. Right as he was about to use his claws to deal a final blow, there came a knocking at her door.

Alice quickly switched to a different program. "Come in..."

"Hey," Turf slowly opened the door a crack and poked his head in, "You… alright? Like, as alright as you can be right now? Like, do you need a hug, or maybe a bran muffin… or some tea… or…"

"No… Turf…" she managed a weak smile as she turned away from him, "Thank you anyway…"

"I could run down the hall to Team ARTS's room and borrow some music, or some movies, or some books, or… some… paintings…?" he thought for a moment before moving on, "Frost dropped by earlier and offered to bring you up something to eat from one of the restaurants nearby, so I could text her real quick. Navy even got a call from Gavin earlier to see how you were doing and if you needed anything. Like, we can get you anything you need, dude."

She shook her head, "No… I'm not hungry. I'm just going ta sit an'…" she gestured towards the screen in front of her, "watch some telly."

"Care if I watch too? I mean, just as long as there's no doorbells or anything in the program. I don't want to stress you out by getting jumpy, you know?" Turf tried his best to joke with her, but she just seemed too out of it. The last time he saw her like this, it was after Roland nearly beat her to death… or at least he thought Roland nearly beat her to death. That was nothing compared to what Ray had done.

"I dunno, Turf… I just…" Despite the warming pad beneath her back, she could still feel the chill coursing across her skin.

"I mean, if you need some space, it's cool. I get it," he went to close the door, "We're all just really worried about you, ya know?"

Right as the last sliver of light from the living area of Team ANTE's suite was about to disappear, Alice called out to him. "Turf?"

He pushed the door back open a tad, "Yeah?"

"Can I show you something?" she held up the remote to the television.

"Oh, uh…" he stepped in and shut the door behind him, "Sure…?"

As Turf sat on the side of the bed, Alice set her scroll on the flat metallic disk on her nightstand. Her heart-shaped emblem appeared on the large holo-screen before it faded to show a few rows of rectangles. It was an image gallery. Using the remote, Alice selected one. It grew until it fit the whole screen.

"My fatha... isn't very fond of Faunus-kind," she gestured to the screen, "He buys prime-time ad-space across Mistral, Vale… an' even Vacuo and Menagerie ta play this before the openin' ceremony of each tournament," she shook her head, "This doesn't play in tha kingdom cities themselves, but it did in smalla settlements an' villages across Remnant," she pressed play.

Turf turned his head to watch. The way Alice started this moment off had him worried.

"Heroes. Warriors. One of our greatest defenses against the horrors of the Creatures of Grimm and the threat of repeating our past." An image of an old tapestry depicting soldiers fighting in front of a large tiered temple-like structure scrolled across the screen. It was a well-known image to everyone. It was the final battle of the Great War, fought in the kingdom of Vacuo, where the king of Vale valiantly helped destroy the Mantle and Mistral forces.

The narrator continued as the image changed to one of the Atlesian flag. The emblem of Atlas, a fractured spear sticking up out of a gear, fluttered in the wind in gleaming silver on snowy white, "Since the Great War, Atlas has been valuable in keeping the peace amongst the other kingdoms. Their military influence is a deterrent to all those who might seek conflict, and their advancements in technology allow us all to live the comfortable lives that we do. However, this reputation is slipping under weak leadership."

The owner of the voice, a man dressed in a red suit and a red top hat, appeared. Turf immediately recognized the striking red hair and bright blue eyes. The man reached up and took off his hat, holding it against his chest as he spoke, "Hello, Remnant. I am March Crims, CEO and founder of Looking Glass Entertainment. I've donated a great amount of Lien to Atlas and her mighty forces, but over the past decade, General Khidna Léon has proved herself time and again to be rash, brutal, and, overall untrustworthy of anyone's support. If history has taught us anything, it's that Faunus can't handle power. They feel as if they're owed something, that they were mistreated. Every chance they can get 'revenge' against humanity, they take. They never let the past stay in the past."

He already knew the answer, but he had to ask anyways, "That's… your dad, isn't it…?" Turf stared on in complete shock at the ad. His ears flattened against his head under his hat from the nausea this man was giving him.

Alice could only nod as the video continued.

"Why, with so many _countless_ examples of Faunus temperament," the video faded to show still images of Faunus attacking people, Faunus bandits, and grizzled scary-looking Faunus individuals, "did we allow this woman to lead the greatest military on the _planet_? If you were to ask me and my family," the camera rotated as he moved to the right. A girl in a red dress sitting politely in a chair came into view. March put his hands on the girl's shoulders, "It's time for a change. Help bring General Léon down from her high-horse to be dethroned forever in favor of someone with the will, strength, and courage to fight for _all_ people. For the good of Atlas and for the good of Remnant."

The younger Alice on the screen smiled as the video faded out. Out of the black, a symbol resembling a red four-leaf clover appeared. A chipper heavily-accented female voice came out of the speakers, "For tha good of Remnant."

Turf bit the inside of his lips. Sure, he never really liked Atlas or General Léon, but this was unsettling to any Faunus the world over. He could see where Alice had come from, but could also see how much she had changed over a year. Before, he would be surprised if Alice wasn't that man's daughter, but now he was just as surprised that she was.

"My fatha wanted ta refilm that video with an additional statement about tha Grimm Brotherhood, but I felt… uncomfortable about being on camera again. We talked about it on Family Day… our first semesta..." she felt the cold seep deeper, "I said no because I was camera-shy, Turf… not because I didn't support tha things he was going ta say…" she sniffled, "Ray saw this the first day of the tournament. He'd seen it before. Even though this didn't play at all in Atlas, I'm sure General Léon got her hands on it at one point or anotha… and I'm sure her kids saw it too," she looked down at her hands, still wrapped in bandages, "The things he said to me… my father promised that the General was going to be 'dethroned'. Ray said tha same thing ta me as he was beatin' me against that ice…"

Tears began to well up in her eyes. No matter how hard she tried to hold them back to look strong, they began to fall onto her sheets, "I deserve what I got today, Turf. I held those ideas for my entire life. I can't make up for the damage my Papa's caused Faunus across tha world!" His words echoed in her head as she cried, "I am nothing but a small sad girl that thinks she's betta than she really is…"

"Hey, don't talk about yourself like that. You don't have to make up for all that damage, Alice…" Turf tried to choose his words carefully, "You aren't like your dad anymore. You aren't at fault for how he treats people, and you're not at fault for what he taught you. I mean, I doubt you even met a Faunus in person until you got to Beacon because he kept you so close for so long. You didn't know."

"That's not… entirely true, Turf. There is one thing I've done to a Faunus that can… never… ever…" she broke down, hiding her face in a pillow as she cried.

"I…" he scooted closer to her, but refrained from touching her, "Listen, I'm here if you need to talk about it…"

Alice took another minute to cry before she found the will to pull her face away from the pillow, "Turf…" she held out her hand, a weak white light outlined her fingers, "did I eva tell you that I wasn't completely surprised when Carmen told me my aura was white and not red?"

"No… why…?"

"Growing up, my fatha always told me that my mum had walked out on us."

"What does this have to do with…?" he began to ask a question, though he had a good feeling he already knew what the answer would be.

"My fatha isn't exactly the most… faithful man in tha world. Needless to say… affairs weren't uncommon for him… which is why I grew up in a single-parent household. Marriages were always short-lived. He always blamed my mum, sayin' that, if she had stayed, things would've been different for us. I never knew how bad it truly was until a few years ago… on my 14th birthday. We were havin' a party at our ma-… house. I was just about ta start openin' my presents when there was a knock at tha door. A servant went to answer it… an' came back sayin' that whoever it was demanded ta see my father. He left, and before I could even begin tearin' tha gift-wrap off the first box, I heard yellin'. 'I just want to see her! Let me see her, March! I just want to talk to her!'"

"That… was your mother, right?" he twiddled his thumbs, "She… wasn't like you… was she…?"

"I didn't know she was my mum, Turf. When I ran into tha foyer, I saw her screamin' at my fatha. She was bawling an' frantic... an' that's when I noticed it," Alice raised her hands up to her head and held out her index fingers. She folded them a couple of times, "Two big white bunny ears."

"So your mother was a Faunus, and you took after your dad…?" he thought for a few moments. He was stunned, "Alice, there's nothing wrong with having a Faunus parent. I don't-"

"It was when he refused to let her have any and all contact with me. I had forgotten all about it and didn't think about it for years. That is," she strained as she reached for the drawer of the nightstand and pulled out a blindingly white envelope with a crudely scribbled clock-face on it, "until this managed to get slipped to me in the post. It was sent to the hotel, not to home, so my fatha didn't see it."

"She's trying to contact you? Isn't that a good thing?" he nodded to the envelope, "If you worked things out for her, then maybe that'd take away from the guilt that you have." He said, sounding optimistic.

"She's in prison, Turf."

 _Okay, not the greatest choice of words…_ he looked down at the tear soaked pillow Alice had in her lap, "I'm so sorry. I didn't know..."

"I didn't know until we got back here. It was left on my nightstand by the staff while Ebon and I were at our fight."

"Do you… need some time to sort this out…?" he glanced nervously between the letter and her.

"I do… but I just felt like I needed ta tell someone about all this…" she rewinded the video to the point where she could be seen smiling at the screen, right around the point where her dad said 'For the good of Atlas and for the good of Remnant', "Do you still believe I didn't deserve what I went through today?"

"No, I definitely don't believe that. You're better than what your dad wants you to be, Alice. You're-"

"A Huntress in training, and a good one at that," Ebon said from the doorway. Instead of his now torn up down jacket, he had a black pullover on.

Turf jumped, surprised that he hadn't heard the door open, "Ebon, hey, I was just-"

"No one deserves what happened today. That's why I forfeited. Losing the match for sure was better than letting that go any further. I'm sorry I didn't get to you sooner, Alice," Ebon went on, "The only thing that you are responsible for at this point in your life is who you are, and I don't think anyone at Beacon could disagree with the fact that you did not deserve what Ray did based on that."

"Ebon-"

"That girl," he pointed to the screen, "is not you anymore. You've grown beyond that. You've become better than that. You are the leader of this team, and I don't think that Turf or Navy would disagree with me when I say that we wouldn't have it any other way. Your partner is a Faunus, for crying out loud. You are already the person that you set out to be a semester ago. You became more than the daughter of a racist scumbag that slept with a Faunus woman he met on a business trip or whatever. Your past doesn't matter."

Alice didn't know what to say. She had never seen Ebon so serious. He was known as the most chill and laid-back person in their orientation group, but now he stood before her with a steely determination in his eyes, "Ebon…"

"I'll be there faster next time. _We_ will be there faster next time. What happened today is not going to happen again. I promise you that."

Alice couldn't help but smile. Not like the girl on the screen, but with genuine happiness and pride in herself and her team, "Thank you Ebon, and thank you, Turf."

"And thank you for being our leader," Ebon nodded for Turf to follow him out.

"Yeah, what he said. Thanks, Alice," Turf stood to leave, "Get some rest, okay?"

She nodded, "Don't worry. I will."

"Good," he stepped out behind Ebon and slowly shut the door.

Then came a knock on the front door of the suite.

Ebon groaned, "We've got a girl in recovery. She's trying to slee-"

"It's Professor Maple. I'm just checking in on Alice," Carmen said from the other side of the door.

"Right…" Ebon opened the door to see his bright and smiling instructor with a single busted knuckle on her right hand, "Um… Are you…"

"Got in a fight with the General. I'll explain later," Carmen rushed past him, then pat Turf on the shoulder, "Oh, and good to see you too, Turf. You're still the goodest boy around, ya know?" she knocked on Alice's door without a second thought, then slipped inside.

"I… I'm the goodest boy…?" Turf passed a confused gaze over to Ebon.

"I'm more concerned about a fight with the General…" Ebon mumbled back.

* * *

The next morning, Ebon woke up much later than usual. After his fight with Yaara and Ray the day previous, he was sore, tired, and out of energy. It had taken a lot out of him to get Ray to back off of Alice. He stood, and as he swung his feet over the side of the bed he felt a twinge of soreness shoot through his legs and chest, "Ow… I _really_ need an aspirin…"

He looked at the clock on his nightstand.

 _I slept until noon?! I must've used way too much energy freezing Lion-butt to the wall…_ As he looked around his dimly-lit room, he saw it. A black down jacket sitting on the chair in the corner. It was just like his old one that the pair from Team RYAL had torn up. As he picked it up, a small slip of paper fell to the floor. He bent and picked it up.

 _Ebon. Thank you. - Alice_

He frowned and groaned to himself. "Dammit, Ebon…" The jacket fit perfectly as he threw it on before heading to late-breakfast/early-lunch, _You were supposed to get information on Alice and March Crims… You weren't supposed to get so attached…_


	61. V3Ch8: Excavation

The early morning sun shone through the curtains covering the sliding glass doors to the balcony and over the couch and coffee table resting in the suite's living room. A cabinet with a deactivated holo-screen rested against the wall just across from the plush sofa. The scent of fresh coffee wafted in from the kitchenette attached to the living room, and made its way into the hall branching off from the junction of the two rooms. It slipped under the cracks of the four bedroom doors, two on each side of the hallway. The suite certainly wasn't a yacht, but it still let Team ARTS live the high life when they weren't in a fight.

The door to one of the bedrooms opened slowly. A head of frazzled blond and orange hair flopped out, "Do… Do I smell coffee?..." Arty called out into the suite groggily.

"Vacuan dark roast. The good stuff," Roland called back from the kitchenette. He leaned on the counter with a mug up at his lips. For once, he opted for a cup of coffee with a small bit of cream and a couple spoonfuls of sugar.

Arty stumbled down the hall, obviously not fully awake. He walked up and slowly put his forehead against the counter.

"What are you doing?" Roland asked, weirded out by his partner's morning drowsiness.

Arty reached out a hand and clenched at the air a few times, "Give."

"Geez, you're turning into Lurida…" Roland pulled a mug from one of the cabinets and filled it up for his partner. He placed the cup of joe into his hand, then went back to sipping his own, "So, how do you feel about today's match?"

"Um…" Arty stood back up and took a seat at one of the barstools. He began sipping at his coffee. "Roland… I know you're probably pretty ticked off about my choice in who to send in, but I went over every combo I could think of, total of six potential pairs, and-"

"I was fine with it when you turned in the sheet, and I'm fine with it now, man."

Arty winced, "You can be honest, Roland. It's better to say if you're mad or not than t-"

"Arty, listen," Roland leaned up off the counter to look his leader in the eye, "I think you made a good choice to send in Timbre and Sepia."

" _Please don't hit m_ -wait what?"

"They work well together," he swirled his mug, "I can see why you picked them. Sepia's just too versatile to not send in, and it's literally impossible to blindside her. Timbre's pretty good at close quarters combat, way more mobile than any of us, and her Semblance will be good for evening the odds if need be. They're the best options we've got for winning this thing. I was hoping that you'd send them in from the beginning because of all that, but I was only going to say something if you tried to send me in. If there's water in any of the biomes, then I'm screwed."

"Oh…" Arty took another sip of coffee, avoiding any and all eye-contact with Roland. "The whole time, I was expecting you to be-"

"Angry?" Roland chuckled, "I mean, maybe before, but not now. I just want Team ARTS to win, not me specifically. I think that Mom would be more proud of me if we won as a team by sending in who's best, and I am definitely not the best one to send in."

Arty nodded, "Right… and I'm way too-"

"Reliant on Dust? Yeah," Roland nodded, "I know. Funny how we've been so-"

"Observant of our surroundings and our fighting techniques? And how they work together in different scenarios?"

"I was going to say 'in sync,' but that works too, yeah," Roland set his mug down on the counter, "It seems like it's been like this since the Maelstrom attack. Don't get me wrong, it's cool, but it's just strange. Maybe going through all that we did between grouping up, fighting Lieutenant Hulud, and then killing that _thing_ just… gave us the experience to figure each other out? That's all I can think of to explain it."

"That, or you need to lay off the calamari from those street vendors." Arty turned to see Timbre and Sepia walking down the hallway to the main area of the suite, dressed and ready for their fight, "But yeah, we do seem to have things a bit more figured out than before."

"Sup, guys?" Timbre winced as she looked to Arty, "God, you look like hell."

"Thanks, Pop-Star. You too."

"Gee, thanks."

"I'm kidding. Please don't hit me."

Timbre rolled her eyes as she went to get herself a mug, "I won't. I'm too excited about our fight! I mean, after what Alice went through yesterday… not really, but yeah. I don't know. It's all… jumbly," she drummed her fingers on the counter as she filled her cup, "I guess I'm just ready to get in there to the point of no return, you know? Start the fight. If we win, we win. If not, okay. We still have the festival to enjoy."

"Stop stressing, T. You guys will do _great_. No matter who you're thrown up against," Arty gave her a thumbs-up, "Look on the bright side. It can't be RYAL or those TCSC guys."

"Yeah, but that leaves the possibility of one of us fighting them in the singles…" Timbre went back to worrying as she paced the kitchen with her coffee.

' _In which case, I'm totally down to kick their butts. Ray doesn't have the agility to deal with me, and we all know that he's the one going on. Oh, and I'm sure that one of us could take on Tox or Cyan after what we did to Hulud. I mean, come on,'_ Sepia stood on her tiptoes and kissed Roland's cheek to say 'good morning', then punched Arty in the chest to give him the same message.

Arty gripped at his shirt where Sepia had punched him, "Ow! What? I don't get a good morning kiss, too? Why is it always punches with you?"

' _What, do you want a kiss from me?'_ she signed before reaching for a mug.

"You better not…" Roland grumbled from behind his coffee.

"That's not a requirement," Arty grumbled, "I just want you to stop punching me without warning… At least give me time to get my aura up before you go around trying to crack my sternum."

' _Then I'll kick you good morning now. Sound good?'_ she poured her mug up to the brim. She took a sip with her eyes locked on Timbre and a grin playing at her lips.

"Sepia?..." Timbre was snapped out of her trance-like state of worry, "Since when did you drink your coffee black?"

The two ARTS boys looked to see her happily sipping away at her beverage.

"Is that not normal?" Arty looked confused, "I never really paid attention to how anyone took their coffee… except for Lurida, who takes it by 'A lot'."

" _Hyping myself up for the fight,"_ Sepia mouthed.

Roland laughed, "Careful, babe, you might end up getting a little too trigger-happy with Avant and Garde if you have too much… but I guess that's not totally a bad thing, is it?" he watched as she started to sign something back, but his attention was yanked away as the holo-screen came on, "Uh… did one of you…?"

"I didn't." Arty denied.

"Neither did I," Timbre walked over to the living area to see what was going on, "Sepia?"

Sepia shook her head.

"We are sorry to interrupt your regularly scheduled programming. This is an announcement from the Vytal Festival Committee concerning today's matches. We regret to inform all participants and viewers of this year's tournament that the four fights slated for today will be postponed until tomorrow, and so the final two days of the 50th Vytal Festival Tournament will be moved forward as well to accommodate," spoke a monotone female voice from the holo-screen, "We have noticed that, due to technical issues stemming from the addition of a new biome this year, the Floating Islands biome is being chosen at a much higher rate this year than the years prior. We do appreciate all of the continued support through this inconvenience."

The holo-screen shut back off on its own.

The team sat in silence for a moment. Arty was the first to speak.

"Bummer."

Timbre whacked him on the back of the head.

"Ow! What did I do?"

"We train non-stop for two days at your request, we take time to get ourselves looking nice for the cameras, and our fight gets postponed and all you can say is _bummer_?"

"Well what else am I supposed to say? 'Gee sorry about all that guys, let me say the magic words and undo the technical difficulties in the giant _island_ floating over us?' I'm only one guy, T…"

Sepia poured her mug out in the sink and darted back into her room. Her door slammed shut, then came the crashes, shuffling of clothes, the sound of a small motor, and another slam. In only a matter of seconds, she popped right back out of her room.

Instead of her battle attire, she wore a tan bikini top and matching bottom, her choker still on, her hair was combed back and out of her face with a snorkel and mask holding it back, and around her waist was a bright yellow inner tube with a cartoon duck head attached. She reached down and gave the duck a squeeze, making it quack. With excitement blazing in her eyes, she signed, ' _Beach day!'_

"What?" Arty asked, the confusion from earlier still very apparent on his face.

"She said 'beach day'," Timbre smiled at the thought, "I thought you taught yourself sign language?"

"I did. I understood what she said. I guess it should've been more of a 'why' than a 'what'."

"Why not?" Roland tipped his mug up to finish it off, "I mean, we should really take this as a chance to relax. We haven't gotten to do that much between the terrorist attack, the Grimm invasion at prom, the _other_ terrorist attack, and the tournament. Plus, I've got a book I've been wanting to read, and plopping down in the sand to do so doesn't sound half bad…"

' _We could even invite Khimera! She's our friend now, so why not?'_ Sepia added.

Arty scratched his head, "Um…"

"Spit it out, Umber," Timbre called, already halfway down the hall to get ready, "I hope you brought something to swim in!"

"I've never been to the beach…"

Roland and Sepia stared at him blankly.

"You've… never been to the beach…?" Roland furrowed his brow, "Like… ever?"

"I hardly even know what _sand_ is, Roland. Much less what a beach is…" Arty stood and went to rummage through his luggage for anything resembling swimwear, "You guys gotta remember that, before Beacon, I'd never left Atlas…"

"Do you need to borrow some trunks…?" Roland opened the door to his room, "I think I have and extra pair somewhere."

"You could always borrow one of my swimsuits, Painter-Boy!" Timbre giggled with Sepia in the living area.

Arty felt his cheeks turn read at the idea of someone seeing him in a bikini, "I think I'm fine with trunks… thanks anyways, T."

"Here we go," Roland pulled a pair of burnt orange trunks from his suitcase, "I've never worn them. They're not really my color."

"Wow." Arty took the garment, "Convenient. Why do you even have these? I thought everything you owned was purple?"

"Cayenne got them for me," Roland went to close his door.

"Oh… well I guess that makes sense. Warm colors really are her thing." The bathroom door closed as Arty went to change.

"You… could say that, I suppose," Roland shut his door.

.

"Guys… I feel weird…" Arty whined meekly as they stepped off of the elevator and into the lobby of the hotel.

"If you didn't want to go out shirtless, you could've worn a t-shirt like I did," Roland tugged at the hem of the violet tee with a cartoon otter printed on the front. While he tried to dress as best as he could normally, he couldn't pass on the opportunity to wear this shirt, "and you have more of a reason to than I do. You're gonna blind someone with how pasty you are, dude."

"Yeah… but Timbre and Sepia told me that it was normal…"

"Our mistake…" Timbre mumbled to herself as she pulled out her scroll. She, unlike Arty, was well-versed in going to the beach for some fun in the sun. Dressed in a one-piece green and black swimsuit under a black shawl along with the sun hat and sunglasses from their first day on the island, "I'm gonna call Turf to see if he wants to go, too. With his team out of the tournament and Alice still recovering, things must be pretty boring during the day for him," she gave a sly smile to Arty, "You gonna see if Curie wants to come?"

Before Arty could speak, Roland spoke over him.

"And _double_ the amount of people we're going to blind? Really, T? Do you not care about the health of the people of Vytal?"

Arty scowled, "Yeah, you know what. I will," he pulled his scroll from his backpack that he had all what Timbre had called 'sundries' and began to type.

Sepia made a fake kissing face at Arty.

"Shut up, Sepia. It's not like she's going to give up a free day of no tournament to not play her ga-and she said she'll meet us, she just needs to know where," Arty blinked, staring at the text in disbelief, "Well then. Wasn't expecting her to say yes… but she brings up a good question. Where are we going? We're on an _island_. You've got sand in pretty much every direction. Saying 'meet us at the beach' could take her to the opposite side of Vytal from us."

' _The Vacuo side. The beach over there is the best, and we Vacuans know how to have a good time with sand,'_ Sepia skipped towards the front doors of the hotel, ' _So you guys are a thing, right? Like, a thing a thing?'_

Arty felt a cold sweat starting to form on his brow, "Yeah… I guess you can say that… I don't know what you can call it…"

"What's _that_ supposed to mean, Umber?" Timbre giggled along with Sepia as they walked.

"Well, what would _you_ do if you had your first kiss before almost being killed by a flying boat, then seeing one of your mortal enemies, and then carrying out this huge plan to kill a Grimm a million times bigger than you?"

Timbre went silent for a moment, "Good point…"

"I'd call it a normal relationship for people like us," Roland shrugged, "She's your girlfriend. Don't sweat over the details. Just enjoy the time you get with her, make her smile, and remember that she's always right."

' _You've learned well,'_ Sepia pat her stomach, ' _He buys me food, which covers all three of those bases in one way or another. It's simple, really.'_

"Well… Curie does like energy drinks and nacho-flavored chips…"

Timbre smacked him, "Don't take it _literally_ , stupid. Every girl's different, and Curie's definitely not an exception to that rule. You know her better than anybody. You know how to make her happy."

"R-right…" Arty rubbed the back of his head, "I think I get it…"

"Just get creative. You do that well," Roland went to open the doors. Right as they swung open, there was already someone waiting outside.

Khimera stood in a pair of white flipflops, a black two piece, and a white see-through shaw. Bronze lines formed a meander pattern similar in shape to a labyrinth around her arms from her shoulders to her wrists. Her curly brown hair was pulled back under a bronze bandana, but a few loose curls still hung around her face and over her sunglasses.

"Don't say anything stupid, okay? Atlas has eyes on me from every angle…" she grumbled as Team ARTS grouped up outside.

"W-wasn't planning on it…" Arty held up a hand and waved, "What's up?"

"I didn't know you had tattoos!" Timbre shouted excitedly as she looked over Khimera's arms. "I got one too!" she turned and pointed to a blank spot in her back as she held up her shawl, revealing her emblem in light-green on her skin, "See?!"

Khimera grumbled. They couldn't see her eyes shift blue, but her tattoos changed to reflect them, " _What did I say about saying anything stupid?..._ "

Timbre let her shawl down, "Oh… right… sorry."

"N-n-no," her tattoos shifted to yellow, "I-i-i am s-s-sorry… I m-m-meant a-a-about those t-t-things…"

"Chill out. You don't have to fight to day. Just enjoy the day off," Roland shook his head.

"Right," her tattoos shifted back to bronze, "So, are you all ready to go?"

' _Yup!'_ Sepia grinned.

"Yeah, but shouldn't we wait on Turf?" Roland looked to Timbre for an answer.

Timbre's scroll dinged. She smiled when she saw who the message was from, "Speak of the devil. He's getting ready now. Turns out, he _loves_ the beach. Too bad there's not really a beach worth going to close to Vale."

"Yeah! Yeah I do!" Turf called as he pushed open the doors outside. He was already good to go with a white tee, a knapsack thrown over his shoulder, and a pair of dark green trunks, "I love building sand castles. I'm really good at making the moats for them."

Timbre looked shocked, "I _literally_ just told you that we were going…"

"I heard you guys heading out, and figured that I'd better get ready for whatever. You can wear trunks and a white tee anywhere, so…" he shrugged, "and I _really_ like the beach. I took the stairs down to hurry, and even got my favorite frisbee for the occasion," he yanked a hot pink frisbee out from his knapsack. Bite marks covered the edges, "See?"

Arty raised a finger, "Um… You know what, I'm not even going to ask…"

"Me neither…" Timbre giggled nervously as she hooked her arm around Turf's.

"What?" Roland pulled a smooth stone from his pocket, "It's like me having my favorite rock…"

Khimera thought for a moment, "And I have a big plastic ball that Mom gave me when I was little. I still play with that occasionally..."

"And of course you do..." Arty clapped his hands together as they began to walk towards the shore, "Perfect little trio you guys got here."

Timbre rolled her eyes, "Leave them alone, Arty. It's not like you don't have something like that."

Arty thought about it for a moment. Come to think of it, he hadn't really had something sentimental like that for a long time. He remembered something. He quickly unzipped his bag and pulled out his orange sketchbook, "Yeah… kind of."

' _Didn't your sister give that to you not even a year ago?'_ Sepia looked at him quizzically.

"Doesn't mean it can't be sentimental," Sketches flashed through his eyes as he flipped through the pages, "I carry it with me everywhere, so why not?"

' _Fair enough. That's like me and my choker. I made it from the bandana that Opal used to keep me from bleeding out,'_ she ran along ahead, ' _Anyway, come on! Let's get going!'_

Khimera raised an eyebrow, "What did…"

"Don't worry about it," Roland nodded everyone along.

.

While the walk to the Vacuo side of the island wasn't exactly short, the six of them didn't mind the trip as the city was already getting on with the festivities that usually didn't start until after the days' fights.

"They really don't waste any time around here, do they?" Arty commented as they walked through the Vacuan market, which was bustling with people dancing and enjoying the loud music that echoed off the stall walls.

"Nope!" Timbre began to shimmy her shoulders to the beat of the drums, "That's why Vytal is my kind of city!"

Sepia eyed a belly dancer for a moment and tried to mimic her movements. She threw her arms out and swayed her hips and knees with her yellow duck inner tube still around her waist. Then she turned around to show her team and friends.

"Very nice, sweetheart. You're getting better every day…" Roland tried his best to smile at her spastic dancing. While she was a great fighter, she was not particularly a good dancer. Still, it was nice to see her so at home around her fellow Vacuans.

She clapped her hands above her head and tried to keep going while they walked towards the beach.

"This is weird…" Khimera shrunk away from the people laughing and running by.

"Why's that, K?" Timbre laughed as they continued to move through the crowd, "Too many people?"

"It's so… busy," Khimera looked around. A good twenty-five percent of the people occupying this side of the island were Faunus like her, but that still came off as strange. She was so used to being the outlier that it felt strange to feel almost at home.

"Well, we won't be in here too much longer. The beach should be right at the bottom of this hill," Arty laughed as he watched a couple of people flailing their arms wildly as they argued over prices, "Unless you want to buy some spices or fancy rocks."

"Like this thing I just bought," Turf held up a rock with the fossilized etchings of a feather inside, "Super cool, but pretty pricey…"

Roland watched as Sepia flapped her hands, then translated, "Did you not barter it down?"

"Um… no…?" Turf tilted his head, "Was I sup-"

A red handprint appeared on his cheek from the lunging slap that Sepia gave him. Fury stirred in her snarling scowl as he recoiled from her.

"Woah! Sepia!" Arty held an arm out to push her back.

"I know you hopped yourself up on coffee expecting to fight today, but… what the hell?" Timbre examined the stinging red mark on Turf's face.

' _It's_ incredibly _rude not to barter! If you don't, then you're patronizing the merchant! You're just lording over them how much more money you have than them! If you don't try and bleed them dry, then you're just a jerk!'_ Sepia frantically signed.

"Sepia…" Timbre stared incredulously at her partner, "Turf's not from Vacuo…"

"I've never even _been_ to Vacuo…" Turf mumbled while rubbing his cheek. "What are we talking about?..."

"Not bartering is super rude," Roland explained, "Like, insulting someone's mother rude."

' _Let's just get to the beach before I hit him again…'_ Sepia signed with her hands low as if to grumble. She ran along down the hill to the beach to keep from teaching Turf another lesson.

Khimera cautiously followed, "I will not be buying anything, then… I don't want to get slapped like that too."

"No kidding. Sepia's got quite… the… Dante…?" Roland stopped in his tracks.

Just ahead, Dante stood with her arms defiantly crossed. Her shoulder was turned just so that she appeared guarded to the merchant shouting at her. There was a hint of fear in her face, but also a look of excitement. When she turned back to the merchant and slapped her hand down on the table, her bartering opponent reeled back.

" _That is my final offer, and that is it."_ she spoke with authority at the poor man, "Take it or leave it. I have far better things to do today."

The merchant bowed his head and held out a paper sack to her covered in dusty powdered sugar. She took it happily before handing him a few plastic cards of Lien, then looked over at Team ARTS minus Sepia, Turf, and Khimera, "Oh, hey."

She jogged over with her blood red flip flops clacking underfoot. Unlike Sepia, Timbre, or Khimera, she wore a red one piece with a pair of black trunks on to cover the upper half of her legs. Her hair was let down for once, and bobbed up and down as she stopped in front of them, "I got us snacks."

"Right… probably should have told everyone I invited you… oops," Roland scratched the back of his head, "Didn't expect you to be in the market, though."

"I do love snagging a good deal," Dante held up the bag. The faint aroma of citrus wafted off of it, "Vacuo has the most wonderful pastries."

"Well… good morning, Dante!" Timbre smiled to Roland's half-sister, "Guess Sepia and I aren't the only ones taking a break today since our fights got postponed."

"I thought it would be good to get some shopping done while I had the chance," Dante bowed to Khimera, Arty, and Turf, "It's good to see you Khiman, Arthur, and Toff."

Turf cocked his head in confusion, "Uh… it's-"

Arty held a hand out to stop him, "It's better if you don't, dude. Just… just let her."

"Well then…" Khimera eyed Dante for a few moments, "Should we all really be in this close proximity considering..."

"Considering what?" Arty asked as he nibbled on one of the pastries Dante had handed to him.

"I don't want to say too much, but because of the Gr-"

"No!" Timbre clapped her hands loudly in Khimera's face.

Khimera stepped back with her tattoos flashing yellow, "W-W-What…?"

Timbre clapped again, "I said _no!_ We're not talking about them!"

"But we-"

"N. O. No!"

"W-w-what if they…"

"They won't! They haven't been seen on the island since we killed the Maelstrom!"

"I agree with Tombra. We are perfectly safe, especially with your mother's security. It's because of Atlas that there weren't really any casualties in the attack," Dante handed a pastry out to Khimera, "Please, just enjoy yourself."

"But the malfunctions in Amity…" Khimera hesitantly took the pastry.

"I shaid no dammit!" Timbre stomped her foot, crumbs falling from her mouth. She gulped loudly, "You heard the report, it was because they added a new biome this year! It's not the GB… for once!"

"I did read up on that on the way. It's really just a malfunction. It's happened before," Roland explained, "Listen, let's just chill out and get down to the beach. Sepia's going to flip a lid if we don't," he jabbed a thumb over at Sepia, who was jumping up and down in the sand at the bottom of the hill and waving her arms.

"I'm with you, Sepia!" Timbre ran ahead as well, ready to get on with their day of fun.

"Hey! Timbre!" Turf awkwardly stumbled down the hill after his girlfriend, "Wait up!"

Arty looked to the Roland, Dante, and Khimera, "If you can't beat them, join them," he went running as well.

"Agreed," Roland took off after them.

"Please, let's…" Dante ran to catch up, "Come on Khimera!"

"Fine…" Khimera followed along.

.

Curie watched on in amusement at Sepia bounced up and down in front of her, "About damn time someone showed up. I was starting to wonder what was taking you so lo-WOAH!" she suddenly found herself buried halfway into the sand as a mound of people accidentally dogpiled on top of her.

Khimera laid limply on top of the dogpile, "Well then…" she pushed herself off of Dante's back, "Come on. Let's not kill the girl."

Dante shimmied to get up and pull her brother along with her. She knelt down to address Curie, "Circe… good to see you again. How are you?"

"Probably a few broken bones from having a few extra hundred pounds crushing me out of nowhere," she pushed Turf off of her legs, "What were you guys doing running around like a bunch of idiots, anyways?"

"It's hard to stop running when you go downhill…" Turf mumbled as his face was forced into the sand.

Sepia scrunched up her eyebrows at Curie, then pointed down at the sand. Of course they were running around like idiots. That's what people do at the beach. It made perfect sense to her.

"Well apparently some people have other ideas…" Roland nodded over to the waterfront where Midas was ogling a sunbathing Saffron. The effects of her Semblance were magnified by a string bikini and Midas' stupidity, "I'm not even paying him anymore… Guess she took him back anyway."

"Well he did say something about them going out for a 'celebration' after the Maelstrom thing," Curie rolled her eyes, "Guess things just… started up between them again… for real."

"I swear he said he was done with Mistrali girls," Timbre smirked.

"He obviously lied." Arty waved to his best friend, "Yo! Midas! What are you guys doing over here? Vacuo's a bit out of the norm for a guy from Atlas and a girl from Mistral!"

"Just hanging out with my favorite cowgirl!" Midas called back without taking his eyes off of Saffron, "You know! Talking about stuff!"

Saffron crossed her arms, "Yeah… sure. Pretty sure I'm the only one talkin' here, hun."

"Yeah, about… how… you…" he blinked a few times, "Sorry… I forgot what we were talking about. I couldn't help but… uh… take in the view."

"Yeah… sure." Saffron huffed before returning to the group, "So, what're you guys and gals doin' here? You up for some beach-time, too?"

Sepia squeezed her inner tube's duck beak again, making it quack.

"Right…" _He left me and got with_ that _?_ Saffron thought to herself begrudgingly.

Sepia narrowed her eyes and started squeaking the duck over and over and over.

Roland covered an ear to block out the awful sound, "So you and Midas. Interesting."

"Yeah… after the whole you paying me thing and the Maelstrom stuff, we decided to actually get to, you know, get to know each other!" Midas grinned wide.

"It hasn't been completely awful." Saffron smiled as she pinched Midas's cheek, "He's actually pretty sweet once you get to know 'im."

Arty and Curie could only watch in confusion.

"Are..." Arty stammered.

"Are you sure you know the same Midas we do?" Curie finished for him.

"Sure as sunshine, sugah!"

"Right…" Curie latched onto Arty's wrist, "Come on. I want to find a good spot before they're all taken. With the fights postponed I'm sure _everyone_ is going to be heading this way…"

"I…" Dante pried her eyes away from the pair and over to the mounds of dug up sand, "I think it's going to be difficult to find a spot with the… dinosaur in the way…"

Roland stepped back from her, "The wha- oh…"

As they walked to the mounds, they found a deep pit on the other side. Stakes with rope tied to them formed a makeshift fence around the pit, keeping onlookers from falling in.

"What the..?" Timbre stammered.

"It looks like a dig site," Curie pushed up her glasses, "and that… is a very big lizard."

Inside the pit, five students tiptoed around a fully intact skeleton of one giant, thirty foot long lizard that looked a little too much like a Trex. The student dusting off the eye socket of the beast's bones was very familiar. Damascus Brown, Team DINO of Vacuo's leader and Opal's boyfriend, reached up and straightened the dusty pink bandana on his head. Instead of his average leather jacket and khakis, he was dressed down in a light brown tee and slightly darker cargo shorts. His already pink skin was running the risk of getting sunburnt, but the white sheen of sunscreen on his cheeks and nose and the tinted pink sunglasses over his eyes told that this wasn't his first time managing his albinism in the hot midday sun.

The student at the stubby arms of the Tyrannosaurus rex was dressed just the same, but in black and white and in a green bandana. Oliver Lu usually handled the more scientific aspects of Team DINO's digs, but he was no stranger to picking up a brush himself to get some work done on the larger things that they dug up. His fingers guided short and methodical strokes along the ridges of fossilized bone.

At the edge of the pit, Neila Lithic sat with a bag of sunflower seeds at her side. She spat the husks of her seeds back over her shoulder and away from the fossil. Blue jay feathers puffed out around the fringe of her baby blue bandana. Just as all of Team DINO, she wore the same matching outfit in her own shades of blue and white. Her beady eyes followed the last member of Team DINO as he paced circles around the fossil.

While it would have been difficult to convince anyone that this tanned young man came from Vincentas, his mild-tempered attitude could easily be seen in his mother, Orchid. Ivoros Saurus stroked his chin as he examined the fossil. The edge of his white bandana and hems of his white shirt and cargo shorts were damp with sweat, but he wasn't paying that much attention. He was too focused on the task at hand.

"Oi!" Opal called as she trudged up the rim of the three meter deep pit scooped out from what was normally a public beachfront. Unlike the team she was tagging along with, she wore her normal attire, "What's up, mates?!"

"Came to the beach to find it being excavated," Arty replied as Sepia tacked Opal in a hug, the duck head of her inner tube quacking as it was crushed between the two girls, "How about you?" he asked back, already knowing what the answer would be.

Opal grinned as she gave Sepia one big squeeze before letting go. She bounced over to the others while clapping with excitement over the new discovery, "Ya know, helpin' with the dig! D called me up an' was like 'We should totes hang while we dig up this dino' and I was like 'Yeah, we should totes hang out! Ya bet I'd love to see ya team!' and he was like 'Just be ready to get some actual work done' and I was like ''Kay! So did Ivoros just come across the thing with that Semblance of his' and he was like 'Yeah, that's why we're going on the dig!' and I was like 'Sensin' bones an' stuff must be _really_ convenient for diggin' up bones!' and he was like 'Ya bet it is! You shou-"

"It's good to see you too, Opal…" Roland could only hope that he could stop her before she recited her entire life story to them, "So you guys are digging up the beach for a dinosaur… Crazy that Damascus got it cleared with all the people trying to use the beach for a bit of rest and relaxation."

"Aw, they don't mind! No need for clearin' anything! They just get to doin'!" Opal said without even the faintest hint of realization that every solitary person occupying the beach was passing glares of disgust over at the students.

"This would never happen in Atlas…" Khimera grumbled.

"Yeah, a lot of things around the world wouldn't." Arty said, not seeing the slightly offended look on Khimera's face as his eyes darted around the dig.

Turf leaned in to get a closer look, "Dude… if I had a tail instead of ears, then it'd be wagging right now," he looked over the dinosaur's femur as if it were the buffet of a five star hotel, "Maybe I could-"

"Fossils are actually mostly stone, so I doubt you would want to gnaw on a rock, Turk," Dante cut in, "I believe I learned that from _The Global Encyclopedia of Remnant_ for a research paper."

"Page 1562, line 16, starting on the sixth word, yeah," Roland nodded.

Curie, Khimera, and Turf all turned and stared at Roland.

"I don't think I'll ever get used to that..." Khimera mused as she looked off to the ocean, obviously ready to move on from the giant pit.

"Me neither..." Turf winced before returning to Dante, "and that's not what I meant!"

"Oh I would kill to be able to do that," Curie whined. After being around Arty and his team for half a year, the only skill of his friends that she was truly jealous of was Roland's incredible memory when it came to books. "If I could remember books like you do, Roland, I'd memorize every strategy guide and every book in the _Huntsmen's Requiem_ extended universe ever released."

"You think memorizing books is cool? It's nothing compared to Sepia's memory of movies… she can tell you what second a line is said on. I still haven't stumped her…" Roland looked to Sepia, who was running around between the members of Team DINO and greeting them.

"They haven't made a _Huntsmen's Requiem_ movie…" Curie pushed up her glasses defiantly, "yet."

Opal laughed. "You buggas are straight up weird, ya know that?" She whistled and waved her arm to Damascus, then turned back to them as he got up to his feet, "Since you Team ARTS farts are 'ere, D wants to chat with you guys. Cool if ya friends go get a spot? It's about that Grimm ya fought a while back."

"Which one?" Timbre laughed, "We've fought a lot recently," she meant it as a joke, but considering Team DINO's status in Remnant, it was obvious which one Opal was referring to.

"The Trex," Damascus said as he stepped up from the rim of the dig site. His large stature and confident ring in his voice made him seem like an alternate version of Gavin Quasar. With Opal at his side, he leaned down and kissed the top of her head, "So," he nodded for the friends of Team ARTS to leave, "Don't wanna ruin you guy's beach day. I'll only keep these four for a few minutes."

Turf's dog ears perked up, "Hey, I was there too. I got a few glimpses of the thing. Glad that Timbre saved me so I could actually say that…" he leaned over to Timbre to whisper, "Thanks again for that…"

A weak smile passed and quickly faded, "You don't need to thank me, Turf."

Curie suddenly stepped forward, "I want to stick around, too. I would love to hear what the team that discovered the Trex have to say over the whole mystery as to how one was transported from Vacuo to Vale."

"I would like to enjoy the sun a little bit, so I won't fight it. Come on, Khiman. Both of us could use some sun," Dante waved Khimera along as they headed out to search for a good spot.

Khimera almost corrected her, but just gave up to follow along, "That doesn't sound terrible. Fenix said I was getting a little paler than usual, so maybe I should get some sunbathing done while we're here."

Sepia bounded up to join her team and friends, ' _You know, Arty did figure out one of the Trex's weaknesses. Nova Dust!'_

Opal watched her fingers carefully, then jabbed her thumb into her forehead as she tried to decipher what she was saying. Even with a few months of practice under her belt, sign language was proving difficult to learn, "Uh… Arty made a Trex with explody Dust…?"

"Nova." Arty corrected as he looked to the other team leader, "It's a special mixture of Lightning and Fire Dust. We got a friend at a shop back home that supplies us."

"Even after her shop got blown up…" Roland nearly snarled as he thought about the destruction wrought in Vale by the Grimm Brotherhood, "She was lucky she wasn't in there, and that they could get a temporary location while the original got rebuilt…"

"As I was saying…" Arty returned to Sepia's original point, "Yeah, I used our Nova Dust to kill the Trex that the Grimm Brotherhood sent after us."

"Blew. It. Apart." Timbre finished for him.

Damascus chuckled, "Right… rockets do about the same thing if you get 'em into the thing's mouth, or it's-"

"Oi! A little nasty, there," Opal puffed out her cheeks.

"Mhm, right," he shook his head, "Anyway, what I was wanting to ask was if you guys knew how it got there?"

"Not a clue." Arty responded quickly. The rest of his team nodded.

"Probably their airships that they have," Timbre suddenly realized she wasn't supposed to fully know _why_ the Grimm Brotherhood had said airships, "you know, the ones the papers talked about dropping off all the Grimm during prom."

"Heard that it charged you guys, though. I mean, they're typically aggressive, but I've never see one of those dudes actually charge. From what I've seen, they usually walk a few laps around you to get a good angle," Damascus thought over his many experiences with Trexes, "They aren't Rippers, after all."

"Well it doesn't help that the Grimm Brotherhood have those control doohickies." Timbre pointed out, "You saw what they did at prom, didn't you?"

"Other than explode and hurt Faunus with dog ears," Turf added.

"Yeah, gonna add that to the reasons I'm thankful Mom gave me this tail…" Roland wagged his otter tail as if it were a dog's.

"Right…" Damascus thought for a few moments, "Weird. It could have just been that, but that's still not the norm in terms of behavior… Not like you can train Grimm, though. Ya know?"

Before any of Team ARTS could speak up, Curie held out her hand, index finger raised, "But, there's the possibility of artificial Grimm, isn't there? I came to that conclusion following the attack by the 'Maelstrom'," she used finger quotes to emphasize her disbelief in the supposed myth that she had seen with her own eyes, "If the Grimm Brotherhood is in fact getting quote-unquote _smarter_ with their tech and methodology, who's to say they don't have the capability of continuing what Atlas abandoned years ago?"

Sepia began signing, which Roland began translating, "Did their research allow for the possibility of a giant, white, pulsating rainbow octopus Grimm?"

Curie furrowed her brow, "No, but did they ever get close enough to make devices that can seemingly lead and even _control_ Grimm either? No. No they did not." She winced and began rubbing her forehead, "The closest they really seemed to get was zapping them with cattle prods until they got angry. My parents always make fun of that whole fiasco, saying that they're glad the military has moved on to more realistic technological pursuits."

"Well how bad would it be if those crazies got that research, C?" Opal raised an eyebrow. After all, failed research couldn't be worth much to anyone if it never got beyond the point of zapping Grimm, "Ya think they could even read the stuff?!"

"It's not like it'd be written in caveman on boulders." Curie grumbled back. "It's not about what they _did_ do, it's about what they _theorized_. There's been rumors that there was some really messed up stuff in that research. Did the GB get their hands on it? I honestly doubt it. General Leon would be in a real mess if it was stolen. But if the GB actually did… well..." she pushed up her glasses and shot a quick glance over to where Dante and Khidna was setting up towels and umbrellas they'd gotten from a nearby rental stall, "You don't really want to know what ol' Lion Butt can do when she's backed into a corner like that."

"It's something to keep in mind. I just thought is was all a little weird given the circumstances. Sorry if I freaked you guys out. Guess I just wanted to make sure it wasn't something my team could have, I don't know, somehow prevented," Damascus held out his fist to them, "Seriously, though. It's impressive that you guys took one of those things down, weird or not. Like, Team DINO struggled a lot more when we first found one. Thought it was going to be like a big Ripper, but nope!"

"R-right." Arty hesitantly bumped his fist against Damascus's. He didn't know the guy too well, and he never thought someone usually described as a Huntsman-in-training and part-time paleontologist could be so laid back.

"The girls did most of the work, but I guess that's the whole teamwork thing, right?" Roland gave Damascus the same treatment, "Timbre and Sepia seriously showed off their best moves that night."

' _You bet we did!'_ Sepia slammed her fist against Damascus's hard enough to make him wince.

"I don't know about that, Roland…" Timbre also returned the fist-bump as Damascus turned to her, "We were just… you know, trying not to die?"

"Life of a Huntress, yeah?" Opal giggled, "We should probably get back to diggin'! Wish that thing could come up by itself. Bit of a pain in the arse, ain't it?"

Turf's ears perked up at the word 'dig'. "Oh! Is there something I can do?" he slumped back a little bit, realizing he was being a bit over enthusiastic, "I mean… if there's… something… I might…"

"Down, Fido. The bones aren't yours." Timbre giggled.

His ears drooped, "Timbre…" he whined, "I told you not to call me that… I get it enough from Clay and Loam…"

"Sorry," she gestured into the pit, "I felt like if I didn't say anything, you'd have dove head first in there to meet old Skully-Bones down ther- Hey! Turf!"

Oliver looked up from the arm of their fossil right as Turf started sliding down the rim of the dig, "Hey, watch it! You're gonna damage something!" he carefully stood up, "We don't need another hand digging!"

"But I don't use my hands to dig!" He said to the other young man. "I can show you!"

"No! No you will not!" Oliver held his hands out to keep Turf away, "Back off!"

"Aw, come on! Look how excited he is!" Neila called through a mouth full of sunflower seeds.

Ivoros looked up from the foot he was working on, "Yo, what are you guys all screaming about?" He stood and walked over. He seemed startled upon seeing Turf. Apparently he didn't even notice the newcomer entering the dig site. "I'm sorry… who are you? And what are you doing in our dig?" The tone in his voice sounded more curious than annoyed.

"Well, I _really_ like digging. Dog Faunus thing," Turf knelt down and held his hand out to one of of the arm bones of the fossil, "Watch. I promise I won't hurt anything."

"Turf! Are you sure about that!" Timbre called from up above.

"Can he… differentiate between rock and… more rock?" Arty asked.

"I don't know, that's why I asked if he was sure about that." She rubbed her arms in anticipation, waiting to either hear gasps of amazement or, more than likely, frustrated screams and Turf yelling 'Oh crap!' over and over.

"WaitwaitWAITWAITWA-"

Turf wrapped his hand around the arm bone of the fossil and pulled it out as if it weren't even embedded in the ground. Not even a speck of dust remained on the bone that rested in his hand. He laid it back down in the divot that it left for safe keeping, "My Semblance allows me to change the elevation of earth. It's as simple as lowering the ground below the bone."

"Woah," was all Ivoros and Damascus could get out.

"You could've _destroyed_ that bone!" Oliver shouted, but then began inspecting the fossil, "But… it's… in immaculate condition!" He rushed over to a nearby folding table and began scribbling figures and numbers onto a sheet of paper, bone still in hand.

"Dude… you can do my share of the work! Stick around!" Neila slid down to the fossil, "You rock!"

"Well, I mean…" Turf trembled with excitement at the idea of helping Team DINO, but then looked back at Timbre, "Uh…"

"She's kidding, bud," Damascus chuckled as he observed the bone-shaped hole in the stone. "We'll let you get back to your beach day, but if you ever feel like you need some dig work, don't be afraid to check us out back in Vacuo!" he clapped Turf on the back, nearly knocking him over with his strength.

"R-Right…" Turf nodded and began climbing out, "Let me know if you guys need help later!"

"Oh, will do," Damascus went back to work with his team and Opal.

"So…" Turf looked up to his friends as he stood back up, "We good to get to relaxing?"

"Looks like Dante and Khimera have everything set up," Roland jabbed a thumb back to his sister and Khimera who were both laying out on towels under a set of three bright blue umbrellas, "They've got a head start."

' _Better play catch up. I need to get my tan on!'_ Sepia ran off to join Dante and Khimera.

"Hey now, wait up!" Roland ran to keep up with her.

Timbre looked to Turf and smiled, "Race ya?"

"Uh, yeah!" Turf darted off with Timbre running along just a foot behind.

Arty looked back to Curie and held his arm out, offering her to hook hers onto his, "Shall we?"

She shook her head, but allowed a weak smile, "You are _such_ a tool, Umber."

Arm in arm, they walked together to meet up with their friends at the umbrellas.


	62. V3Ch9: Clever Girls

"Vivian just had to eat some bad fish at that restaurant with his wife last night. Bet the guy's just trying to get some sympathy from her…" Carmen grumbled on her way through the halls of Amity Colosseum. Black coffee swirled inside the styrofoam cup clenched in one hand. With her partner in crime gone, she tried to figure out who her co-announcer would be for this day of fights. Surely it wouldn't be Khidna after their previous scuffle, and she knew that Alabaster was out of the running with everything he had going on. McGouran would be a good option if he hadn't already made plans for the day with his family. Hopefully Orchid could answer the call. That would have been nice.

She stopped at the door to the announcer's booth. Only ten minutes until the next fight. The door was unlocked, and she could see a faint red shimmer on the other side of the door with her Semblance. Of course they had to send her of all people. She had half a mind to run off to call in sick like Vivian had, but it was much too late for that.

The last bit of hot coffee in her cup went down the hatch in preparation for what was to come. She opened the door as calmly and normally as she could.

"Hey, Shirley! Didn't think they'd get you to be my partner today!" Carmen stepped inside, "I'm sorry that Vivian couldn't make it."

Haven's headmistress sat at what was normally Vivian's microphone. Unlike Khidna, Shirley didn't bother with casual wear. The dedicated Huntress was dressed in her crimson armored combat dress. Her blood red hair was pinned back over her ears and allowed to flow down her back, minus her bangs which hung just above her icy blue eyes. It didn't have quite as much curl as her daughter's hair, but each lock of hair did twist up at the end. The only thing missing from her attire was her weapon.

"Good morning, Miss Maple," she smiled kindly, "There's no need to apologize. I'm glad to take over for him today."

I meant that I felt sorry that he wasn't here… Carmen bit her tongue to keep from saying exactly what was on her mind. She took a seat next to Haven's headmistress, then shifted her gaze to the steaming cup of coffee sitting right in front of her microphone. She sat her empty coffee cup in the miniature trash can under the announcer's desk, "So, did Vivian ask you to take his place, or…?"

"Not necessarily." Shirley drummed her fingers against the table, "He asked General León first, considering she's already covered for an announcer once before, but then she refused… telling him that you and her had an altercation of sorts."

Carmen rose the new cup of coffee, undoubtedly brought by Shirley considering she had a matching yellow disposable coffee cup, to her lips. She froze as soon as Shirley mentioned her and Khidna's scuffle, "Uh…"

"But, since headmasters are traditionally the announcers when the festival is actually on Vytal, you taking Onyx's place of course, Vivian came to me," she stopped drumming and smiled at Carmen, "It was the least I could do after the snafu that got yesterday's fights postponed to today."

"Yeah. Weird technical glitch, huh?" Carmen slowly took a sip from her second cup of coffee, then lowered it back down, "Wow…" she shuddered, "For the record, I take mine black now… haven't had that much sugar in my coffee for years. My doctor told me to cut back on carbs because apparently, and this might come as a surprise, I'm getting ooold..."

"Huh. Seems like just yesterday you took coffee with your sugar rather than the other way around," Shirley looked over to the other woman, "Is something wrong? With Onyx and the Nex-"

"Gonna stop you there. We've had a few issues already with that mic…" Carmen set her coffee to the side, "and I can't say too much anyway considering you don't exactly… work with us like that anymore. Sorry."

"Right… Right. I get it," Shirley sighed, her breastplate heaving as she did so, "Guess that's what I get for making that choice, hm?" she looked back over to Carmen, "But I can tell something's bugging you, so how about you let the fights you enjoy so much distract you a bit?"

"Yeah… right," Carmen ran her fingers back through her curly ginger hair, "Sorry. Knowing that Timbre's in the ring again today makes me a little nervous. I know she isn't going to take it well if she loses."

"I'm sure she'll be fine. She hasn't been on a stage to sing in... what? A year now? If anything, the experience will make her stronger," Shirley watched sixteen students take to the arena, "She'll live up to her mother's reputation, I'm sure of it."

"Yeah, I'm sure she will…" Carmen looked down at the mic in front of her, "So, do you wanna get this started, or should…"

Shirley held out her hand to the panel built into the table, "Please, I'll let you have the honor."

"Figured," Carmen put her finger on the button to turn on the microphone.

.

"AND WE'RE BACK WITH THE FINAL DAY OF ROUND TWO! ONLY EIGHT TEAMS REMAIN TO FIGHT, AND ONLY FOUR WILL MOVE ON! LET'S GET THAT RANDOMIZER GOING!" Carmen's voice echoed across the stadium.

'Wow… so we're up against Team READ, ASHS, FREZ, MNNT, STON, MTLC, or DINO. MNNT isn't exactly an issue. Didn't think they were impressive. Everyone else might kill us,' Sepia signed as she looked over the pairs from other teams.

Eden and Dante were brought in from Team READ. Two girls in green and blue stood in for Team MNNT, but she hadn't made the time to actually learn their names. Anubis and Set represented Team ASHS, and Rime and Zero were there for Team FREZ. Of course, Midas and Ledning were the ones from Team MTLC. That one wasn't too surprising. The people that she was most concerned about were Shorla and Opal from Team STON, and Damascus and Neila from Team DINO. She knew what they could do, and they all knew what she could do.

Timbre whined, "Sepia… I really don't like our options here…"

'Tell me about it…' Sepia looked around, 'Kinda hoping for MNNT. They're incredibly underwhelming…'

"Sepia!" Timbre punched her partner lightly in the shoulder, "Be nice."

'Oh, because they totally know sign language,' she glanced back over to the girls in green and blue, both of which were glaring at her, 'Oh…'

"If Arty can learn it, you should expect it by now. Besides," Timbre pointed to the large screens lining the arena, "They kinda… translate for TV."

'Sorry, Auntie-Mom…' she meekly signed.

"Nice one." Timbre watched as four squares rolled through the potential combatants, "Oh god…" Please don't be us first. Please don't be us first. For once, she desperately wished her Semblance worked on computers.

Timbre and Sepia's pictures appeared on the left side of the screen, backed by the signature emblem and green color of Vale.

Dang it! Timbre shouted in her head. Please be Team MNNT. Please be Team MNNT!

The panels on the right stopped. Backed by the orange of Vacuo were the albino leader and the Faunus of Team DINO.

"Dang it…" Timbre whined quietly as those not fighting in the round turned to head back to the stands. Damascus and Neila stood, waving at them from down the line.

'We're so dead…' Sepia signed as the other twelve students left the stage, 'I mean, let's show them what Beacon's made of! Happy stuff!' she wished that she could sign fast enough to throw the translator off.

"What's wrong, huh? I mean, I thought we were pretty buddy-buddy after our talk yesterday!" Damascus pulled his carved bone club off from the back of his brown leather jacket. He held the weapon in his arms as if cradling a child, only this child had a port on the end that could only be for the cylinder of six miniature rockets feeding into the side of the weapon, "Just a bit of friendly competition," he said while adjusting his pink tinted sunglasses.

"Yep!" Neila added, waving around two baby-blue bladed fans. Her baggy red shirt and equally baggy khaki shorts hung around her loosely. A brown hiking boot kicked the ground with brimming excitement.

Timbre forced a smile, "Yeah! Friendly competition!"

'Auntie-Mom, please look in my trailer for my will. I think I put it in one of the cabinets,' Sepia signed with a big smile on her face. Her only hope was that Damascus would go somewhat easy on her considering her friendship with Opal, but she had the sinking feeling that it would only make him hit that much harder, 'Hopefully I'll have enough time to edit it before I die in the infirmary. I'd hate to not leave my teammates anything.'

"Y-You alright, Sepia?" Timbre looked over to her partner.

'Now, yeah, but probably not later,' Sepia eyed the rocket launcher bone club that Damascus had, 'Definitely not later…'

Timbre, Sepia, Damascus, and Neila all stepped to the center of the arena.

.

"Okay… not to be a pessimist here, but…" Arty looked over to Roland, Curie, and Opal, who were all sitting in the front row with him, "how dead are Timbre and Sepia?"

Curie pushed up her glasses, "Well… let's see. We have Grappling hook gloves and two machine pistol whips against-"

"Bladed fan needle guns and a club that can turn into a bloody rocket launcher!" Opal shouted excitedly as she jostled Curie, much to Curie's disdain.

"Well…" Roland's eyes darted between Timbre, Sepia, Damascus, and Neila. He ran a few scenarios in his head, but none of them seemed like they would work out in favor of Team ARTS. However, Sepia was full of surprises, and Timbre had an ace in the hole, "If all else fails, we still have our Siren."

It was still shocking to hear such faith in Timbre voiced by Roland of all people, but Arty certainly thought it better than the alternative, "You sound… confident."

"Shouldn't you be, too?" Curie swung her leg towards him, bashing her knee into his.

Arty fumbled with his words, "I am! I mean… it's just…" he gestured towards the combatants, specifically to Damascus and Neila swinging their weapons in their hands. The blades and giant club seemed to move effortlessly in their owner's grips. "Look at them! Team ARTS isn't exactly known for our brute strength…"

"Got everyone beat in creativity, though! Bein' a Huntsman or Huntress doesn't mean ya just brutally strong," Opal wagged her finger, "It's a toss up here, ya know? Even knowin' all four of 'em, I can't say for sure who's comin' out on top. Damascus may be pretty damn strong and has his book smarts, but that's about all he's got goin' for him."

"Almost well said…" Roland bit the tip of his thumb as the biomes began rising from the quadrants around the opposing fighters.

The first of the biomes to be brought forth stood to the backs and to the left of Damascus and Neila, and it was a stony mountain covered in moss and grass with a thundercloud sparking with flashes of lightning. At its base was a grassy patch of land with a few pine trees dotted about. To their backs and to the right sprung forth a flat plane of black stone, only for massive pillars of quartz to spring up like spears to form a maze of crystalline columns. Following the clockwise movement of the rising biomes was the stepped pyramid left collapsing in the center by the rushing river flowing through its middle. Double rows of stone columns formed a square around the entire structure and even those with their bases in the water stood high like the others. All around the ancient structure were the lush trees that might have been found in a jungle. Finally, the last biome to come about was a field of tall, dry grass with a single tree that seemed to be one that would be found in the savannas of northern Vacuo.

"Looks like field advantage is going to be a big factor…" he murmured, his eyes locked onto Sepia, "Let's hope our wild card plays out fine."

.

Timbre immediately knew she should avoid the mountain and savanna at all costs. With her weapons relying on tall solid structures to swing around, the slopes of the mountain and the openness of the grass would heavily limit her. She knew she could hold her own in a one-on-one fight, but against second-years like Damascus and Neila she'd have no hope of actually taking them out before they got her. She and Sepia already had their plan, which was a favorite of Team ARTS's whenever they didn't have time for an actual plan, "Looks like dividing and conquering is really our only option here, Moviemaker."

'I'm on Neila, and you take Damascus. I'll keep an eye out and give you some backup if you need. You know what to do if things get hairy,' Sepia signed quickly before raising her guns. She steeled herself while Carmen shouted out a few things about how great the fight was going to be.

"Really hope they didn't see that on the screen, genius..." Timbre felt the stress getting to her. Her heart pounded heavily in her chest as she drew two long lengths of wire from her gloves.

"See what on screen?" Neila looked on in confusion, her bird-like tendencies moving her to blink one eye at a time at them. She lowered her fans a little bit, "Damascus?"

Damascus chuckled, "Probably just more nervous comments from Opal's friend," he lowered his rose-colored glasses so the ARTS girls could see his eyes, which happened to be the same light pink color, "Don't worry, ladies. I didn't see anything," he pressed a button on his weapon, causing a small metal site with a pink lens similar to Damascus' glasses to shoot out. As nonchalantly as anyone would throw a backpack on, the leader of Team DINO shouldered the rocket launcher, the barrel aimed right at Timbre and Sepia, "Doesn't mean we'll go easy or anything, though."

"Wasn't expecting you to," Timbre replied, her voice feigning confidence. She just hoped they didn't see through it to bear witness to how frazzled her nerves were.

"AAAAAAAAAAAAND FIGHT!" Carmen shouted after finally finishing her little spiel at the request of Shirley and allowed the match to proceed.

Oh yeah, let's get it on… Sepia stared blankly at where Neila had once been. All that remained were a few stray baby blue, black, and white feathers that floated down to the tiles. Her eyes blazed gold as an orb appeared in each biome of the arena. She caught a blue streak from within the jungle around the ruined temple, then darted off to face her chosen opponent.

She was suddenly tackled to the side before a large explosion rocked where she stood.

"Sepia!" Timbre coughed, "Was that really the time for you to start off with your Semblance?" she gestured to Damascus, who was walking slowly up to them, holding his weapon by the handle, the whole thing condensed into a large club. "He was aiming a rocket launcher at us!"

Sepia smiled stupidly, 'What happened to divide and conquer?'

"Well I wasn't going to let you get blown up before we had a chance to divide and conquer!"

Damascus cleared his throat as he towered over them. They looked up to him.

"I'd really hate to end this fight early, but you two are making this a bit too easy," he held his club out, "I'll give you a chance to make up for it. A mulligan, if you will," he cocked his head to the side, gesturing for them to run, "Gotta warn ya. Neila'll catch up to you real quickly."

Timbre knew she had a choice to make, "Sepia. Stick to the plan," Timbre whipped a wire along the ground, catching Damascus by the ankles. As he tumbled to the center platform, Timbre shouted, "Go!"

Don't have to ask me twice… Sepia thought as she darted off to face Neila. With her guns at the ready, she zipped into the wall of trees.

"You really want to take me alone?" Damascus pushed himself up with his club. He grinned at Timbre, "I honestly didn't expect that having Neila running off to lead someone away to work so well, ya know?"

Looks like they just played us with the same plan. "Who says I'm not just keeping you around?" Timbre lunged at him, swinging her wires down at him. Her twirling motions sending a tornado of metal strands slamming into him.

Damascus chuckled as he batted her wires away with his club, "Are you trying to ask who's dividing who here?" He ducked down so he could thrust the blunt end of his club into her abdomen. Although it clanged off of her corset, his incredible strength still knocked the wind out of her.

Timbre went tumbling into the tall grass behind her.

.

Sepia traded the sight from her orbs for her own to get a look at the forest around her. Her light brown eyes still glowed a dull gold as they darted around the dense pillars of foliage around her. Knowing how Neila's Semblance worked, she knew that staying in a densely packed area might be her best bet, but Neila would know that as well. It had to be the temple in the center of this biome that Neila wanted to lead her to.

Great… she thought to herself as she squatted to take cover while she thought out how she would pin down her opponent, Maybe if I-

Something nearly invisible slammed into Sepia, making her fall against a tree. She didn't see it, but the whooshing of leaves and a lingering feather left on the ground was a good indicator as to what it was.

Over the course of the next few seconds, Sepia received hit after hit to her face until she fell to the ground.

The whooshing noises stopped, leaving Neila standing over the fallen actress.

Neila giggled as she bounced in her dusty hiking boots, "Oh, come on, Sepia!" she collapsed the fan in her left hand, the metal rims extending outwards. Pointed metal disks lined the top, all chained and ready to be launched in rapid succession, "You went down way too easy!" she pulled the trigger of her gun. The points of her ammunition imbedded the ground, leaving a line of sparkling silver in the jungle.

None of them hit Sepia.

"Wait, wha- AH!" Neila yelped as she felt hot lead bouncing off the aura around her legs.

Sepia kept the smoking barrel of her gun angled at Neila's legs. While she didn't have super speed, she was certainly light on her feet. It also helped that she could could see both herself and her opponent from a bird's eye view. Her smile grew as she swiveled on the ball of her foot to fire both of her guns at Neila, specifically aiming for her legs.

Neila began dancing about, her legs a blur of motion as she tried to keep the strings of bullets from hitting her, all the while returning her own fire. Rapid gunshots and the swishing of metal sliding against metal echoed through the trees as they fought.

Just as the Faunus girl had planned, she was able to use their little exchange as an opportunity to lead Sepia towards the temple deeper within.

.

"Woah, now!" Damascus swung his club downwards to send Timbre's wires slamming down into the dirt. He planted a foot down on them to keep them from moving. The ends were just a few agonizing feet from connecting to the singular tree in the Savanna Biome, "Gotta limit my opponent's mobility, ya know? You didn't think you'd actually latch onto that tree, did you?"

Timbre clipped the wires before Damascus had a chance to drag her towards him. She had learned the hard way to speed up her reaction time when someone managed to get ahold of her wires. She could still feel the steam-enhanced boot print in her face left over from her encounter with Agent Venice. She wanted to say something snarky back, but she knew that she had better options.

Damascus watched as Timbre ducked beneath the grass.

"Uh… I mean, okay," he watched a trail of crumpled grass form as Timbre tried to crawl in a circle around him to get to the tree, "You know, I can see you," the high pitched ring of his rocket launcher priming slipped in between his words as he raised the weapon to his shoulder, "The grass is only waist deep for me…"

Dammit. She looked up through the dense grass towards the aura monitors, where Sepia's and Neila's bars were slowly depleting little by little. She glared at her partner's smiling portrait. That's what I get for watching too many of your movies. That crap always works in your movies! She snapped back to attention when she heard the dull thud of metal against metal.

That's… that's a rocket being loaded… isn't it?

Despite not being able to see him, Timbre realized that Damascus was aiming for her. She could see the yellow-green canopy of the acacia tree in the center of the biome. That's when the idea hit her, I may be too big to get through the grass without being seen, she aimed her fist out, but Klavier's wires sure aren't.

Damascus tapped his finger on the trigger, "Hope Opal isn't too mad that I'm about to blow up her friend!" he pulled the trigger, sending a rocket ripping through the grass. The fiery trail behind it burned a black trench through the grass towards Timbre.

Timbre was already sliding through the grass towards the tree, the wire reeling in dragging her across the dirt. Halfway there, she clipped the wire and aimed straight for Damascus. Another wire shot from her wrist.

He didn't have enough time to react as thick wire circled around him. It drew taut, sending his rocket club into his chest and his arms slamming down against his sides. His eyes widened as he felt a jolt, and had to dig his heels into the dirt to keep from getting dragged forwards.

That was his mistake. Had he let himself fall, he would have avoided the hard kick to his side.

Timbre reeled in her wire as she landed on her feet, her opponent now stumbling back. She readied herself, spacing her feet apart as she took her fighting stance.

Damascus jumped around with his weapon's barrel still sending smoke up into his face. He struggled against the bonds that Timbre left him with, and the dizzying pain in his side made it that much more difficult to get free. He could hardly believe that a First Year was actually holding her own against him.

"Aw, come on! Seriously?!" he glared at her from behind crooked sunglasses, "Not cool, dude!"

Timbre didn't bother responding. Seeing Klavier's wire holding him in place, she began running straight for him. Upon reaching him, she threw a series of punches and kicks at him. Occasionally, she'd jump up and throw a quick attack to his exposed face. A quick glance to the monitor every few seconds showed her she was making leeway in taking Damascus out of the fight. She ducked low, ready to swipe his feet out from underneath him.

That's when he caught her leg between his ankles. He dragged her down into the grass with him as he fell. As she struggled to get free, he threw his heel down into the back of her knee to keep her from doing too much. Using her yelp of pain as a cue, he pressed the soles of his boots against hers and kicked with all his might to send her sliding across the grass.

With his arm pinned to the ground, it was easy to wiggle his fingers into his pocket to produce a serrated pocket knife. He dragged it against the wires to snap them, and loosen the bonds keeping him down. The frayed strands fell to the ground with a series of soft metallic clangs.

"There we go…" he stood and aimed his rocket launcher at her. If he was lucky, one direct shot would take her out. If not, then a second one surely would, "Hey, Timbre. Look alive!"

Timbre pushed herself up and came face-to-face with the barrel of Damascus's weapon.

He sighed as he pulled the trigger.

.

Carmen cringed at the ensuing explosion, "This might need a gentler touch. Would you mind to…"

"Timbre Forté of Vale has just been on the receiving end of a devastating attack from Damascus Brown's weapon 'Eizmi'! With her aura reaching close to the threshold, there's the possibility that her landing may just take her out of the tournament!" Shirley proclaimed confidently and clearly into her microphone.

"Better than Vivian…" Carmen murmured away from the mic. Although she didn't particularly like Shirley, she had to give credit where credit was due. The woman certainly had more energy than the man that she was covering for.

They watched the many monitors in front of them. One camera caught Timbre crashing into the roaring waters of the faux river in the jungle biome of the arena.

"And Timbre Forté is still in the fight, as long as she can get out of the water before it carries her out of the ring!"

Carmen pressed down the talk button on her mic, "WITH DAMASCUS STILL IN THE SAVANNA BIOME AND BOTH TIMBRE AND SEPIA WITH NEILA IN THE RUINS, THE BALANCE HAS BEEN SHIFTED, BUT WHO HAS IT SHIFTED IN FAVOR OF?!"

Shirley passed a concerned glance to her co-announcer. "Okay then…"

"Hey," Carmen leaned back, "gotta keep the dynamic flowing. We're keeping the show going too, you know? We're just as much a part of this as they are."

Shirley looked back to the ring as she pondered over her response. She shrugged her shoulders, "Sure?"

.

Good thing Roland didn't hop into the ring instead of Timbre… Sepia thought as she watched her partner plop down into the water. She could hear the distant sounds of Damascus shouting in frustration over the position that he made for her and Timbre.

She slid to the edge of the riverbank, hoping that she had lost Neila for long enough to rescue Timbre from a watery demise. An orb appeared over her shoulder and on the surface of the water to keep watch for Neila and search for her partner at the same time.

.

It had been almost a full minute since Timbre crashed into the rapids of the river. A few feet to any direction could have easily slammed her into the bank on either side or into one of the massive stone pillars rising from the fast-moving water.

With sputtered gasps, Timbre's head emerged from the river. She was moving fast, the current pulling her along. Even as she panicked, she could make out the edge of the arena coming fast, the dirt and blank gray tiles beyond were fast approaching. She could barely hear the sound of water pouring through a grate above the roar of the river. She had to get out, and she had to get out fast.

Timbre shot wire after wire at anything that could save her, but with the current whipping her around so violently, none of them ever hit their mark. She was only about thirty feet from the edge of the arena.

I'm going to get kicked out of the tournament because of a stupid river! Timbre screamed at herself, coughing as water tried to flood her mouth and nostrils.

Plastic film and bundled bullets cinched tightly around her waist. When she opened her eyes, she caught a glimpse of the golden orb of light in front of her, then felt a tug from the direction of the riverbank. She jerked to a stop in the river, then began inching closer to the bank as Sepia began pulling her in like a freshly caught fish.

Timbre coughed up a few splashes of water as she pushed herself up onto the bank, "Th-Thanks, Sepia…" she could barely react in time as she saw a light blue blur heading for them. She fired a wire at the base of a nearby tree as it drew closer. As soon as it snapped taut, they heard a confused shout.

Neila, no longer a blur, had tripped over the wire, flying right for the ARTS girls. At first, it had caught her off guard, but as she readjusted herself in midair, she was ready to strike with her fans.

Timbre caught a glimpse of a fistful of silver blades and blue fabric as one fan came dangerously close to her face.

Neila bounced and giggled as she slid to a stop a few feet behind them, "Damn! So close!" her fans shifted in her hands, leaving her aiming two firearms at them. Small sharp metal shapes lined the top, each ready to be fed into the firing mechanisms, "I could've taken you out after your little flight on Rocket Airlines!" she laughed to herself, "I'd ask if you saved me any peanuts, but I think they'd be a little soggy after that rough landing."

"Eh, service was lousy," Timbre ducked as metal blades shot towards her, "and the turbulence was just awful." she continued mocking as she dodged before tapping Sepia, telling her to backtrack through the jungle towards the ruined temple structure back upstream.

Sepia unzipped the bustle on her side and reached inside. She held out what she retrieved from her fanny pack to Neila: a thin blue bag of unshelled peanuts. Right as she saw the girl's eyes light up, she threw the package as hard as she could right into the girl's eye and took off by Timbre's side. Even though she wasn't the one to take a flight, she ended up with the peanuts somewhere along the way.

"Did you actually just throw peanuts at our opponent? Why do you even have those?!" Timbre yelled. Her sopping wet clothes was making running miserable. A light squish could be heard each time a combat boot hit the ground. She shuddered as water surged between her toes with each step.

"Yeah, I thought it was weird, too."

They turned to find Neila running, virtually jogging, and keeping pace with them. She swung a fan towards Timbre, her primary target. If she could take out the Pop-Star, that'd only leave her and Damascus to deal with the Moviemaker.

What would have been a solid hit on Timbre's neck only ended with a clang and the shuddering of a camera reel. Sepia slapped Neila's fan away with the reels atop her gun, then held her other gun over the first to get a few shots in. A few bullets sparked off of Neila's fans, but more ended up striking her aura.

The temple was fast approaching. The river rushed underneath a tunnel made within the stepped structure, creating an eerie echoing rumble from within.

The ARTS girls were holding their own for the time being, but Neila's incredible speed was making it hard to prevent damage.

If we can get her in there, out of the open… Timbre reasoned as she kicked Neila away. "Sepia!" After getting her partner's attention, she pointed to the top of the pyramid, 'Hard to run up those big stairs, huh?'

Sepia nodded in response. She turned her attention back to Neila. While it would be easy to just bean her in the head with a package of food again, it lacked the satisfaction of shooting the girl in the face. Instead, her best bet was to just trust Timbre. She collapsed one of her guns and hooked it to her bustle, then held out her hand to her partner.

Timbre latched onto Sepia's arm by the wrist. She stopped and whipped her towards Neila. After Sepia delivered a swift kick towards one of Neila's guns, it went flying into the trees nearby.

Neila, in a state of confusion, wasn't expecting their rotation to continue, or the heel of Sepia's boot hitting her in the face. She went flying backwards and landed in the dense tropical foliage.

"Nice!" Timbre yelled as she continued to build Sepia's momentum. As they became a speeding tornado of green and tan, Timbre let go of Sepia's arm.

Three orbs spun around Sepia as she flew towards the staired slope of the temple. She held her arms out in front of her just in time to land a handspring off one of the steps. The orbs shattered as she flipped up onto her feet atop the third step from the top.

Timbre waved to Sepia when she saw her land safely on the pyramid. Leaves rustled and twigs snapped as Neila started to get up. There wasn't much time before a barrage of metal blades came flying towards her. She had just managed to launch a wire and reel herself to safety when the projectiles of Neila's weapons came whizzing by her head, missing her by mere inches.

Sepia high-fived Timbre as she landed next to her.

"Great," Timbre huffed, taking a moment to catch her breath after nearly drowning and running for so long, "So we're up here, she's down there. Speed isn't good on stairs," she looked to her partner, "Any ideas how we could use that to our advantage? You know, before the lead archaeologist shows up and blows us to bits?"

"PALEONTOLOGIST! WE'RE PALEONTOLOGISTS!" Neila shouted in frustration from the other side of the river.

Well… Sepia ignored the Faunus girl screaming at them, tapping Avant's barrel against her lips as she thought. She pointed to Klavier with Garde, and then she began drawing circles in the air with the end of the weapon. Her message was finished when she pointed Garde at Neila, then back to the dirt pit around the arena.

Timbre nodded in approval of the plan, "You know, Sepia. You have quite a way with words for someone who can't speak."

I'm just gonna take that as you get what I mean and you're not going to just wrap Neila up and kick her into the river… Sepia's eyes followed Neila as she prepared to leap over to the temple. Her mouth was curved down in a curious frown, That would work too, though. Either is fine.

Timbre rolled her eyes, seeing the look on Sepia's face, "Yes, Sepia. I know what you meant. I'm not that oblivious," she aimed and fired wires at Neila as she approached.

Neila smiled, "You really think your wires are fast enough to catch me?" she jumped, dodging wire after wire as they zoomed towards her. As she drew closer, she saw one coming right for her face. She threw one fan up.

Timbre and Sepia watched as the frayed silver cords flew down the steps of the ruins.

Neila giggled, "That's really funny," she kicked off the step, clearing the four foot rise of each step in front of her with ease.

"Okay, so the steps aren't hindering her speed!" Timbre rolled to the side as Neila made it to her. The blades of the fans missing her and cutting deep gashes into the stone behind her. Arty would've known that. God, he's so much better at this whole situational thing than me. Why can't I have the same short attention span?! I would have noticed that! Timbre heard the fluttering of blades as something flew over her. Looking back, Neila was ten feet in the air above her, fans reeled back and ready to strike. Timbre's eyes widened. She knew she was going to be out of the tournament and leave Sepia in a two-on-one battle that she probably had little chance of winning. Damascus and Neila were definitely more competent than Saffron and Pepper, and Sepia didn't have the element of surprise that she did during their fight with Team SPCE.

Team ARTS was going to lose.

A whistle pierced the air, then the shutter-like bangs of Sepia's guns rang out. Neila touched the ground with her fans raised to defend herself just in time to see a brown and silver whip sling towards her. The whip snapped against one open fan, then another snapped between her feet. Even with Neila having the upperhand in speed and maneuverability, Sepia's way of retaining the element of surprise shone through despite Timbre's greatest doubts.

In blurs of motion, Neila side-stepped back and forth on the temple step. Occasionally, a blue feather would fall from her, "Come on, Sepia!" she bounced back as another whip slapped the ground, "I know you're quick, but you're nowhere near as quick as I am!" she rushed Sepia, fans held out.

Sepia held up her guns to defend herself, but the hit never came. She heard a dull thud coming from in front of her.

Neila had fallen flat on her face, her fans skidding out in front of her, "Hey! Wha-what the?!" She looked back, scared and confused. Wrapped tightly around her left foot was a coil of silver wire. She looked up to Timbre, who was pushing herself to her feet.

"You need to work on paying attention to the beat, Neila," Timbre made a few quick jumps to make it to the top of the crumbling pyramid. She widened her stance, digging her boots into the ground. She heaved her torso around as she pulled on the wires attached to her opponent's feet.

Neila began to slide. She scrambled and whimpered as she tried to undo the coils at her feet, but it was too late. Before she knew it, she was in the air.

Similar to her earlier method with Sepia, Timbre began to spin in place, using the friction of the rough stone to keep herself balanced.

"DAAAAAMAAAAAAASCUUUUUUUUUUUS!" Neila began to screech as she began to spin faster and faster above the temple. She tried to pull her hands to her face to keep from hurling, but the force was too strong to do anything but go limp. Feathers flew off of her as she circled round and round in Timbre's demented recreation of a carnival ride. Sunflower seeds rained down with each pass as well, her pockets unable to contain the salty morsels as the centrifugal force acting upon Neila intensified, "HEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEELP MEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEE!"

With Neila spinning fast enough, Timbre clipped the wires connecting her to Neila. The momentum launched her onto her butt, but that was much better than what Neila was going through. She watched as the other girl flew across the arena.

.

Damascus, taking his sweet time getting to the jungle biome, had heard the screaming. Before he could even pick up the pace, he heard the source of the screaming seemingly grow closer. Looking up, he saw something bright blue and red flying over him.

"Neila?!"

His theory was confirmed as his name was screamed again. Due to his limited mobility, he knew there was nothing he could do to help soften her landing, "Looks like I'm going it alone now," he mumbled to himself as he looked up to the ARTS girls' photos on the screens around him. Timbre was barely holding on. Sepia had helped her get rid of Neila, keeping the odds in their favor.

"Clever girls…" he sighed under his breath as he charged through the trees.

.

A sunflower seed plopped down into Sepia's outstretched hand. She threw it into her mouth just in time to watch Neila fly directly into the thundercloud above the Mountain Biome. Lightning illuminated the arena for a few moments, and Neila's scream reverberated off of the walls of Amity Colosseum. A buzzer sounded as the Blue Jay Faunus flopped out of the cloud and onto the peak of the mock mountain.

"Guess that makes us even then," Timbre mused, "Damascus launches me across the field, I launch his partner across the field… only I landed in a river and she got struck by lightning."

That's one down, she spat out the husk of the seed out into the river, Now for Damascus… and Timbre is a little worse for wear… she looked up to the aurameters. Damascus sat at a solid 95%, the resilient bastard, and she herself was sitting at 80%. However, Timbre's 20% wasn't looking good. The fight was still a toss up between ARTS and DINO.

"I know, one hit and I'm out." Timbre sucked at her teeth, "Never thought I could ever hate the number fifteen so much..." with a quick swing of her elbow, she nudged Sepia, "We've been in worse situations before, right?" her famous smile flashed over her face as she tried to stay confident.

Between the Kokonatsu infestation, the whole Yamuna incident, Oro, Sanguwalker, Venice, Trex, the Trex, that time terrorists attacked Vale, the Grimm that got into Beacon at prom, the other terrorists during the Maelstrom attack, and the actual Maelstrom, I'd say that fighting a big paleontologist dude with a rocket launcher club is pretty low on the list. Still… he wants to win… Sepia shut her eyes and sent out a few orbs into the jungle around them. Damascus had to be close, and being on top of a pyramid that could easily be blown to bits into a raging river didn't sound particularly great.

Damascus was nowhere to be seen.

Her orbs disappeared. She furrowed her brow at Timbre and shook her head, "He's hiding somehow," she mouthed.

"Shouldn't he be sticking out like a sore thumb in this jungle?" she scanned the area below, but like her partner, didn't see any sign of Damascus.

"Nah, I just climbed up the other side of the pyramid and hopped over," Damascus smiled politely from behind them both.

In a fearful revelation, Sepia began to whip around. Bone smacked her in the cheek before she could even turn all the way. The blunt end of Eizmi struck her like a golf club in the side of the head. For a few moments, she couldn't see or hear anything as the pain rippled from her face to every other part of her body. Stone cracked along the column that she slammed into with enough force to leave her embedded inside.

Sepia's head slumped forward just in time for the buzzer to sound. In one strike, her aura was brought down from 80% to 3%.

Timbre felt paralyzed. In one fell swoop, the trump card, the best solo fighter, the one person that could've taken Team ARTS to the finals, was out of the match.

"Looks like I evened the odds a bit, eh Pop-Star?" Damascus flashed a cocky grin and winked at her from behind his glasses. He raised his weapon as it shifted in his hands.

Even when faced with the threat of another missile hitting her, she couldn't move. She just stood there in frozen fear as she and Damascus stared each other down.

"I'll give you a three second head start," he shouldered his rocket launcher. His finger curled against the trigger, "Three… Two…"

Timbre stayed still.

"That's your cue to run, sweetheart."

Timbre booked it off of the pyramid just as an explosion tore the stone apart where she had once been standing. Rubble flew past her, pelting her a little bit as she jumped down the stepped sides. If I lose because I got hit by a few stupid pebbles, I'll scream.

Damascus smiled to himself as he watched Timbre disappear into the trees. The temple in front of him crumbled and fell into the river, leaving him on even more ruined ruins, "Let the chase begin."

.

"Damnit…" Roland bit the end of his thumb as he watched the fight take a dangerous turn. The advantage Sepia and Timbre had gained had disappeared in a matter of seconds. His gut told him that they were done for, but they had to keep faith alive in Timbre, no matter how hard that was, "It's up to her and Siren's Song…"

Arty looked to his partner, "Roland, you know how she feels about that… right?" The concern on his face showed he felt the same way, but he was having a hard time staying hopeful as he watched the man with a rocket club darting across the arena, "If she uses Siren's Song to win this round, she'll feel awful."

"I don't think that matters too much right now…" Roland rubbed his forehead. He pulled his hat into his lap to keep the nervous sweat on his brow from getting on it, "Knowing her, she'll do it for the team. I mean, you are sending Sepia to the singles, aren't you? All that matters is winning for Team ARTS."

"I mean… yeah... but still…"

"Her mom would want her to use her Semblance for the betterment of her team," he leaned forward to watch on, "She'll use it. She has to."

.

Out of breath, Timbre stopped behind one of the massive quartz crystals dotting what she believed to be one of the strangest biomes she'd ever seen in the Vytal Festival Tournament.

"Oh God…" she panted, her chest heaving as she struggled to get air, "I'm dead. I'm so so dead!" she dared to peek around the crystal, looking to see if Damascus was there. I really hope these crystals are opaque enough… Nervous sweat dripped down her face as she pressed her back against the smooth rock. Okay… stop that, Timbre. You can do this. I don't know how, but you can. "Just get out there and finish this," she whispered forcefully to herself.

"You did good, Singer! No need to prolong this! I mean, we all knew who would win from the start!" Damascus's voice echoed around in the crystals. It was impossible to pinpoint exactly where he was by voice alone, "Don't make this harder than it has to be!"

She began moving through the crystals, trying to move away from the direction she assumed Damascus came from, but she couldn't be sure. For all she knew, she could be walking right towards him. Moving from crystal to crystal, she tried not to stay in place for too long.

"Found you."

An explosion hit the crystal above her. She turned back and watched as the top half began to fall right towards her. She rolled right before it would've crushed her. Looking over the bottom half of the crystal, she met eyes with Damascus.

"Found me and almost killed me you mean!" she fired a wire, swinging it towards him as she ran in a wide circle around him.

"I'm not trying to kill you! I mean, I pretty much just have to look at you wrong at this point!" he shouted back as he tried to aim up another shot. Right when he thought he had her, he pulled the trigger. More crystal pillars exploded and collapsed, but Timbre was gone, "Oh come on! Seriously! Just give up already! It's pretty much over, dude!"

"Not yet it's not…" Timbre whispered to herself as she hid behind another pillar. I really don't want to do this.

"Turn around Damascus! This fight's over!" She shouted with all her might from her hiding spot.

Right as he was about to step over a chunk of crystal, he froze. The ringing of her voice stuck to his eardrums. The whole world felt hazy, but it passed as soon as it had come. He shook off the feeling with a grin on his face. Her desperate cry left an echo from just one way between a cluster of crystal pillars. While he might not have known where she was had she spoken normally, her yelling made it easy to pinpoint where she was hiding.

He leveled his weapon in the center of the cluster, "Time's about up, Timbre."

Bits of crystal went soaring over her. The shockwave of the rocket throwing her a good distance away from where she had been hiding.

Did the buzzer go off? Did I lose? She looked up at a screen through the dull white columns surrounding her. She wouldn't make it through another hit like that. The meter representing her aura was barely visible past the line representing the 15% threshold.

Dammit. Calm down, Timbre. You probably only have one more shot at this. She crawled behind another rock before Damascus had a chance to see her through the smoke. She took a deep breath, "Calm down, Timbre."

Her breathing slowed as she focused on her words. Calmly, slowly, and purposely, she whispered into the crystal pillars, "Turn around, Damascus. See that crystal right in front of you? I'm hiding behind it," she felt as if she were burning with confidence, "Go ahead. Shoot. You wanna win, don't you?"

An unconscious grin formed on his lips, "Yeah… I do!" he raised his weapon at the crystal pillar just a few feet away from him. He pulled the trigger without a second thought.

The explosion sent him crashing back into another pillar. Slivers of quartz jabbed at his back as he shakily tried to walk off the massive backfiring of what he thought would be a final blow, "What the… I was sure she was…"

"Sorry. I'm over here," Timbre's voice echoed through the crystal maze as she made her way to the edge where it met with the Mountain biome, "Why don't you try again?"

"Oh…" he raised his weapon at the pillar just behind him, "My bad…"

Another explosion sent him slamming into another crystal pillar. This time he was sent through the shattering pillar. His body ached as his aura wavered around him. He shakily stood from the pile of broken quartz, "What are you doing...?" he mumbled in a daze.

"Missed me," Timbre stood at the edge, where the crystals were replaced with the rising slope of a mountain, "Try again. You'll get me this time."

All she heard from her place at the biome boundary was one final explosion. The third buzzer of the match sounded.

.

"Timbre…" Carmen covered her mouth as she looked over the battlefield. She knew how it had to have felt. She knew how Timbre felt about Siren's Song. She knew it didn't feel fair. Unable to find her words, she looked to Shirley, "Could you…"

"And using quick thinking and the echoing effects of the Crystal biome, Timbre Forté tricked Damascus Brown into taking himself out of the fight!" Shirley grinned, "Team ARTS wins the match!"

Carmen only sat and listened to the applause of the crowd. To them, it was merely a couple of First Years taking on a pair that was way out of their league, but she knew better. Sure, Aria would have been happy, but that's not what she was worried about. She took a deep breath to ready herself to give the introduction to the next fight.

* * *

"Timbre! Sepia!" Arty ran with Roland around the edge of the field as the biomes began to lower beneath the regular tiles, "You guys did… great!" he hesitated, not sure if Timbre saw it the same way.

"Yeah… thanks…" Timbre held her arm out to Sepia, who was limping slightly. After the beating she took, she'd still be sore for a few days, but she smiled wide, knowing her aura would take care of it quickly.

"Come on," Roland knelt so Sepia could hop onto his back, "You deserve it."

She flopped onto him without a second thought and shut her eyes to begin a well deserved nap. The next matches could be watched later in the night.

"Well then…" he smiled at her over his shoulder, then turned his attention back to Timbre, "I'm… sorry that you had to use it, Timbre. I know it couldn't have felt great…"

"No… it's fine," Timbre reached up and put an arm on Sepia's shoulder, "We got Sepia to the singles. That was the plan, right?" The smile she gave was obviously forced. Whenever she made eye-contact with anyone in her team, she'd look away quickly.

Arty slowly gave her a thumbs up, "Yeah. It was. Although…" he looked to the girl snoozing on Roland's back. A bit of drool dripped from the corner of her mouth onto his shoulder as she snored silently, "I'm a bit worried about her after the… you know, pillar."

"She's resilient. You should have seen what happened when I let her ride my bike a few weeks ago… I told her to wear a helmet, but…" Roland reached over and tapped her head with his knuckle as if knocking on a door. She didn't so much as stir, "she's pretty hard headed… literally."

"You sure it's such a good idea to do that to someone who might have a concussion..?" Arty watched Sepia with a worried expression, as if Roland had punched her instead of tap her on the head playfully.

"Probably shouldn't let her sleep in that case, but I doubt she's got a concussion for real. Like I said, she's pretty hard headed," Roland looked at the puddle forming on his shoulder for a moment, then decided it best to just ignore it, "Still, we won. Thanks, T."

"Yeah… no problem." She looked over to a trio of medics heading their way. Apparently they weren't the only ones worried about Sepia's condition.

Of the three, two of the medical team hurried right past them. While the one that stopped checked Sepia over, the other two ran for Damascus and Neila. They led the pair back around the ring towards Team ARTS.

Neila, now looking rather crispy, her hair still smoking slightly, gave them a grin and two thumbs up, "Guys, you were awesome out there!" she laughed before slamming Timbre on the back with one arm, "We should get together for dinner after the last fight, eh? Winners' treat?"

Damascus had one arm slung over the medic leading him. He had bits of crystals dusting his once-prim suit, now torn and smoldering, "Yeah. I'd say it's only fair after the absolute beating you two gave us!" he laughed heartily.

"Yeah," Arty smiled awkwardly, "Sure!" he turned out his pockets, "Can't say I have much cash on me though."

"She was joking, Umber. We can handle our tickets," Damascus, like Neila, gave a thumbs up, "Least I could do after…" he looked to Sepia, "Yeah… That might have been a bit much on my part."

"Wait… I was joking?" Neila looked around confused, "But… free food…" her lip quivered, "Damascuuuuuuus!"

"Fine. Fine. I'll cover your ticket for you. Better?"

As Damascus made her the promise, she instantly brightened up, despite being electrocuted less than twenty minutes earlier.

Timbre found it weird that, despite being the winner, the losers were much happier about the fight than she was. It was for Sepia, so it doesn't matter, right?

She forced a smile again, "Yeah. Dinner sounds great! How about burgers?"

Damascus mulled the idea over, "I was actually thinking some good ol' fashioned seafood. I found a place near the Perch that has the absolute best Valean sea bass in all of Remnant!"


	63. V3Ch10: Between a Rock and a Hard Place

A shrill whistle echoed across the seats closest to the arena, "Wow!" Midas chuckled, "Kinda glad we didn't go up against Burnie's girls, eh, cuz?" he nudged Ledning with his elbow, "Gotten a bit better than when we first met 'em! Seems like just yesterday Curie and I _obliterated_ Timbre and Arty in that training room. Now, here she is taking on a dude with a _bazooka_!"

Ledning drew circles in the lead bracelets on his wrists with his finger. All that mattered was that he wasn't paired up against Team ARTS in this round. Had that one cog in the machine not turned right, then the objective could have been much harder than it needed to be. He looked up to see the battlefield descending into the floor below, "They aren't that good, Midas. They got a few lucky shots in. Whatever."

Midas cocked an eyebrow towards him before he threw his hands up, "If you say so. Just saying, those 'lucky shots' woulda sucked if _we_ were on the receiving end of 'em."

"They wouldn't have gotten any good shots on us between our Semblances." he shot back with a terse grumble, "Team DINO splitting up lost them the match. We wouldn't have done that. We aren't stupid."

A tense silence lingered between them for a moment.

Midas put a hand on his cousin's shoulder, "Are… are you okay? You seem a bit… angry."

"I just want to get the fights over and done with. We'll be done with Beacon and all these freaks from the other schools…" Ledning crossed his arms. What Midas perceived as eagerness to get back to the comfort of Atlas was evident.

"Aren't you, like, _dating_ one of those… 'freaks'?"

He hesitated for a moment, "Lurida isn't a freak. She's one of the few people around here that gets it. Everyone else are freaks."

"Oh… kay then..." Midas thought back to when he told Ledning that, strategically speaking and according to Curie, mostly according to Curie, Ledning had the best chance in the singles. For once in his life, Midas decided to be an actual nice guy, telling Ledning that he had the choice as to who he went into the doubles with. Ledning, surprisingly, had chosen Midas over his own partner, Titian. The rest of Team MTLC had found it odd, but maybe Ledning just felt like having some family bonding over beating the crap out of some other teens in front of the entire world. Standing next to his brooding cousin, Midas wasn't so sure that was the case anymore, if it ever had been.

.

"Oi," Opal waved her hand in front of Shorla's face, "Yoohoo! Shorla? You alright? You're spacin' out again! You sick or somethin'?"

"No… I'm fine," Shorla pinched the stud in her lip with her thumb and forefinger. She leaned against the wall facing the locker room, her eyes glazed over in thought. Opal's interference brought her back to reality for a few moments, "I'm worried about Namib, is all. I hope that Torbern can keep him from doing anything too stupid…"

Opal rolled her eyes, "You two _really_ need to get more time away from each other. I know the two of ya are close, but really," she snickered, "Do we need anotha giant squid? That seemed to do tha trick last time."

"I would have been there had I not overexerted myself getting everyone off of the stupid boat," Shorla crossed her arms. Her dark brown eyes settled on the toes of her boots. Opal was right in one regard, and that was that she hated being too far away from Namib, "I have to be concerned about what you'll get into, but it's a rare occasion that I need to worry about him of all people…"

"You havin' regrets askin' me to go in with ya instead of him?" she looked eagerly back to her scroll, where a video of Sepia fighting Neila Lithic of Team DINO was playing, "Sepia's bout with DINO got your stage fright goin'?"

"I am completely fine with fighting, Opal. It's you and me going in because we're the least situational on Team STON. Nothing more, and nothing less…" Shorla looked over at her partner, "Are you having second thoughts?"

"Pfft. I never have second thoughts, Shorla. You know that."

"Remember when you were panicking about Damascus taking you out for the first time after you already said yes…?"

Opal remained silent for a moment, "Okay. I _rarely_ have second thoughts, Shorla. Few and far between. Fighting is the one thing where I _never_ reconsider." The video on her scroll ended as she pushed it into one of her pants pockets, "Are _you_ having second thoughts?"

"No…" Shorla could feel the shadowy pocket dimension begging to tear open at her fingertips, "I'm fine. Our last fight was just concerning in a way."

As if she were back on the site of Sepia's last shoot, Opal felt the sinking feeling in her chest. Her eyes narrowed and her brow furrowed, "You mean with the freak from FSTV? The one that made us see our worst fears?" she spit into a nearby trash can, "Hell of a Semblance, huh?"

"We would have lost if my Semblance wasn't related to my fear…" Shorla bit her lip. As brave as she acted, she was still reeling from the inky blackness shown to her by Samhain. It felt like she was running out of air just by thinking about it, "How do you even get a Semblance that… screwed up?"

"No telling," Opal grumbled as the image of Sepia falling into that ravine refused to leave her head. _Why did she have to bring that up?_ "So Sandy's all messed up ova what he saw, then?" she looked to Shorla, "So what is it then?"

"Huh?"

"His fear. He's _your_ brotha afta all."

"Don't call him that…" Shorla tucked her arms tighter against her chest, "and it isn't for me to say. That's his business, not yours."

"Geez… Just thought I'd ask."

The two girls looked up at as a smooth female voice came from an overhead intercom.

"And there's our matchup, ladies and gentlemen! Shorla Tamil and Opal Uluru of Team STON against Midas Ankara and Ledning Coyle of Team MTLC! Will both pairs come and take their places on the center platform?"

The intercom clicked off, leaving the locker room in silence.

Opal held her hand out to Shorla, "Come on. Let's go show Atlas what we're made of _again_ ," she smiled, but quickly stopped as she saw the steely glare her leader was giving her, "I'm sorry, okay? I didn't mean ta piss you off. Can we please not go inta this mad at each otha?"

Shorla didn't even look at her partner's outstretched hand as she stood up. She brushed past her on the way to the arena, "We're fine as long as you don't go asking him what he saw."

"I won't. I won't. Geez..." she watched as Shorla exited the room. Cupping her hands around her mouth, she shouted after her leader, "I said I was sorry, okay?!"

.

"Let's get this over with…" Ledning grumbled as he stepped out into the battlefield with his cousin, "We should really try to make this quick, alright?"

"Quick," Midas held his gun parallel with his face, aiming to the sky above them as he winked to the girls across the platform, "But flashy. We don't want to deny our people a good show, right?"

"You are such a freaking tool…" Ledning grumbled. He looked to the girls in front of them apologetically. This wasn't the first time that he had to halfway apologize for his cousin's tendencies, nor would it likely be the last, "Don't forgive him if you don't want to."

"Nah, it's _fine_ ," Opal laughed, "At least we know you mates are cool, unlike those _last_ Atlas freaks we went up against."

"I wouldn't call Midas cool, Opal," Shorla reached into the tears beside her hands and pulled out six knives, three in each hand, "No wonder he ended up with a girl like Saffron… you know, the one that has a Semblance that encourages flirting…"

Before either of the cousins could respond, they could hear someone screaming particularly loud from the stands. Looking behind the pair from MTLC, they could see a familiar purple-clad cowgirl waving frantically from the crowd, her redhead partner sitting quietly beside her, trying to not get bashed in the head by Saffron's flailing arms.

" _ **KICK THOSE SKANKS' BEE-HINDS, SHUGA PLUM!"**_ Saffron stopped shouting for a moment to blow her boyfriend a kiss.

Midas reached an arm up and grabbed at the air, as if catching the kiss she had sent, "Will do, Saf!" he turned back to his opponents, smiling as he held his hand to his chest, "You know, being around her long enough kinda makes you immune to her Semblance. Honestly, my attraction to her is 100% natural at this point," he smirked, "I'm sorry, are you jealous or somethin', Nose-Ring?"

"Right… you're immune to her Semblance, but not the two other things that you can't help but stare at all the time…" Shorla rolled her eyes.

Opal recognized what Shorla was doing. Considering they knew Team MTLC fairly well, it was easier to get under their skin. Shorla was certainly one to use insults and snarky comments to get an opponent riled up to the point they were going off of annoyance and anger alone and lose all sense of strategy. It usually worked, though it did mean that Team STON didn't keep many friends for too long.

Midas scoffed nervously, "I'm sorry, are you insinuating that I'm only dating Saffron for her looks?" he leveled his sword, aiming the point between Shorla's eyes, "I may have been a player in the past, but those days are over, Princess. For the time being, Midas Ankara is a one-woman man."

"Sure…" Shorla watched Midas carefully. He was already on the defensive. That would make the fight a lot easier, and would do better if he became outright hurt, "Are you, Midas? Are you really?" she shifted her weight to the side, "Is that why you keep staring at my legs when you think I'm not looking…?"

Midas's stance faltered for a moment as he began stammering, "I… I… I was not! You're just trying to make me look bad! Goths aren't even my _type_."

"Is that why you tried to get my number at the beginning of the semester…?" she scowled at him, "Or told me that you were into 'scary chicks'...?"

"That was the old me!"

"Of course…"

As the dispute between his tool of a cousin and Vacuo's scariest goth girl continued, Ledning looked around in the crowd for a few locks of neon purple hair. He looked through each row of the Vale section of Amity until his eyes stopped on Team GLXY. Gavin and Xannie were caught up in a conversation about the fight to come, presumably, and Yamuna was stuffing her face full of popcorn. Lurida, however, was absent. He lowered his gaze, but doing so made him catch a bit of purple out of the corner of his eye. In the front row sat exactly who he was looking for.

Lurida's rare smile was infectious. Just as he had done for her, she was there to watch the fight unfold, and she would be the first person that he saw after. She sat on the edge of her seat to watch someone that she could actually tolerate fight. She waved at him, her arm barely coming away from her body to do so, but that was the minimal effort that he found was really refreshing from a girl like her. While she was cold, she was still bashful with the people she was fond of.

It only made him feel more guilty for what was bound to happen.

"There's nothing wrong with the way I fight! If anything, hiding in a portal and waiting to jump out is _more_ pathetic!" Midas shouted, the building anger finally busting out.

"So are you kids done, or…?" Carmen carefully asked through the intercom.

Looking up to actually take in his surroundings, Midas saw himself on the giant screens. The crowds had died down quite a bit, entertained by the bickering.

"Wow…" Shorla mumbled as she clanked her knives around in her fingers, "Now you're a player _and_ a laughing stock. Good going."

"Bu-but…" Midas looked between the screens before looking back to the STON girls. He was seething. They'd made a fool out of him, which wasn't hard, but it had still been done.

"She's playing with you, cuz." Ledning threw his hands out, morphing long blades out of his bracelets, "She _wanted_ you angry."

"That's ol' Shawly Tammy for ya." Opal winked to the two boys as she drew her "Boom-erang" from the strap on the back of her jacket. "She's pretty good at bringin' people's piss to a boil." The grin plastered across her face and the jump in her step showed that she was confident and quite pleased with the results of Shorla's usual tactics.

"Didn't she do the same thing to you in my class, Midas?" Carmen asked as the randomizers for the biomes began spinning."

"Sh-sh-shut up, Teach! That's not funny!"

"Whatever makes you feel better…" Carmen giggled as the biomes were selected.

The randomizers stopped.

A loud rumbling echoed across Amity Colosseum as the stretch of floor around the central platform opened. Rising from the depths of the floating arena came a miniature pine forest, a swathe of tall grass, a single mesa-like rock structure surrounded with sand and baked by an artificial sun, and most interesting of the four, a large shallow pool of water dotted with small islands and even a mock shipwreck. Yet another faux sun burned above the palm trees and the crystal blue water.

Midas tugged at his collar. With three suns beating down on him, he was feeling sweat starting to soak into his clothes, "Well, this officially sucks," he sheathed his weapons and began tugging at his sleeves. Once it was fully off, he tossed his jacket to the ground. His sparkling gold vest and white undershirt were already dotted with wet spots of sweat, "This _really_ sucks!"

"Quit being such a baby, Midas," Ledning griped. Surprisingly, even with him wearing multiple layers like his cousin, Ledning wasn't sweating near as much.

"You're from Atlas, too! You know how much it sucks to be in the heat!"

"Doesn't mean I have to whine about it as much as you."

"Oh look at that… now he's undressing on live television," Shorla readied her knives, "Obviously trying to seduce me…"

" _I'm not even talking to you, shut up! I took off my jacket because it's hot, dammit!_ " Midas looked up to Carmen and Shirley in the announcer's booth, "Start the countdown! _Start the damn countdown!_ "

Carmen's hysterical laughter could be heard in the background as Shirley came over the intercom, "Good luck to both pairs! Fight clean, and, most importantly, have fun! Now let the countdown begin!"

Giant holographic numbers counted down from ten. Each second was another second in burning agony for Midas. He didn't know if he was more hot from the actual heat, or how annoyed he was with the girl in black standing before him.

"Get your head in the game, Midas…" Ledning held his blades out towards Shorla and Opal, "We said we were going to make this quick… Don't screw that up…"

"What're you talking about, cuz?" Midas aimed his gun and reared back his sword, ready to deal the first strike, "I never screw anything up."

" _ **TWO! ONE! GO!"**_ Carmen screamed as the buzzer sounded.

"You'll be in the Forest Biome," Shorla told her partner as a black tear opened up at Opal's feet. A similar one opened up below Ledning, sending him tumbling in. It seemed clear that they weren't expecting Team STON to use the same trick they had used on Team FSTV.

She smiled softly at Midas, "How about we go somewhere private like you want _so_ badly to…" she sneered as a portal opened up underneath him.

Midas had taken a running start. The shadows that Shorla wanted him to vanish into barely missed his feet. He swung his sword at her, shouting as he did so.

Shorla barely managed to duck backwards. A few stray locks were lopped off of her bangs as the gilded blade passed uncomfortably close to her face.

She swung back around, ready to throw her knives towards Midas, but found something cold and metal pressed into her abdomen.

Midas gave Shorla his winning smile as the sheen of his gun grew more intense, "Never, _ever,_ try to make me look bad in front of my girl and my friends. Capiche?"

Before Shorla could respond, the reinforced shot from Midas's gun sent her flying backwards. She tumbled across the tiles before skipping across the water of the ocean biome like a stone. Once her back slapped against the hull of the wrecked ship, she sank into the shallow water below.

Midas leapt across a stretch of the water, landing in the soft sand of one of the islands. As he stood under its lone coconut tree, he looked back to Saffron and waved, "Nice starting move, eh, Nose Ring?"

"Not bad, but how about I do you one better?" Shorla fell back into the water, then disappeared. Seawater drained into the girl-sized tear in the damp sand. All that was consumed by her portal soon found its way out through the tear opening up behind Midas.

A jet of saltwater and sand sent him flying into the ship hard enough to crack the boards of the hull. Right when he thought he would get a break, she jumped out of a new portal and slammed the soles of her boots into his back. Splinters flew out in every direction as the two crashed into the ship's interior.

The storage area inside the hull of the ship was completely open and halfway flooded. A few crates floated out in the water. Only a single ladder to the starboard side served as an exit. To his memory, it had been a while since a fight actually took place inside the ship, but that just gave him the opportunity to show this girl and the world who the real boss was.

Midas fell towards the stagnant water inside the hull with his sword outstretched. The blade pierced the side of a floating crate to anchor him against it. His gun, still perfectly dry by some miracle, was already pointed back at the hole he tumbled in from, "Heh… so much for quick..."

A crystalline knife ripped past his ear, taking a few locks from his ponytail with it. Shorla, equally soaked as him, stood on the sloped edge next to their newly created entrance with another raised. Not a word passed her lips as she threw it.

Golden light illuminated the hull. Violet shards of crystal went shooting every which way, but the gilded bullet kept going. It slammed into the base of the hull, leaving a hole large enough to serve as a drain.

The crates lurched forward, giving Midas just enough leeway to pull himself on top of one by the grip of his precious sword, "Couldn't catch it like you could with ol' Sammy's bullet? Too fast for ya?"

She tightened her grip on her knives as he raised his gun towards her. Each shot moved too fast for her to open a portal to redirect it. Whatever his Semblance actually did, it was counteracting hers a little too well. In such a tight space, she didn't stand a chance. Outside the ship was an artificial sun that would make it far too exhausting to use her own Semblance extensively, _If I'm going to take him down, it has to be in here._

Another shot sent ripples through air. She barely had enough time to slide into the V of the hull to avoid the third hole to open up. As the spray of water, splinters, and dust cleared, she caught a golden streak out of the corner of her eye. Midas was trying to make his escape via the tilted ladder. That was not happening.

"You're not getting away that easily…" she whipped her hand down to send three knives chasing after him. One pierced his dress shirt at the shoulder, another glanced off of his back, but the third slashed his hand right as he was grabbing for another rung of the ladder.

"Ah!" his hand retracted back, then clamped down onto the rung. He couldn't let her throw him off so easily, "What? You wanna keep the action down here?! What's wrong?" he pulled himself up to the trap door and tried to push it open. It didn't so much as budge. He considered shooting it open, but he had to keep Shorla at bay.

 _Dammit._ he cursed to himself, but he didn't dare let his bravado slip, "Don't wanna let the world see your makeup running? Or is it because you'll hiss at the suns?"

Shorla yelled as she lunged for him, knives raised and ready to slash at him.

Before she got to him, Midas let go of the ladder, letting himself fall and land on one of the crates piled against the hole in the hull.

Still raring to get another hit on Midas, Shorla turned to look down at him.

"Good," Midas aimed his gun down at the crate he was standing on, "Now I got my battering ram." As he fired, the crate below him exploded, launching him up and directly into Shorla. With the side of his sword raised, he slashed at her.

Spectators cheered as the wooden trapdoor of the shipwreck exploded outwards.

Shorla launched into the air before she went tumbling across the deck, but managed to roll and land back on her feet.

Midas nonchalantly climbed his way up and walked towards her. He twirled his gun in one hand while spinning his sword in the other. "Thanks for unlocking the latch for me, Nose Ring," he held his sword parallel to himself and aimed his gun towards her, cocking it as he did so, "It was getting kinda stuffy in there."

 _Damn…_ Shorla glared up at the sun just over head. She could feel it eating away at her. Under the shade of the ship or a palm tree, she was fine. Out in the open under the sun and its two imitations, she was having a much harder time opening up a portal. So much for being the least situational, _I wasn't expecting two biomes with simulated sunlight. Maybe I should have sent Namib in with half the arena covered in sand…_

"What's the matter? Too bright? Let me see if I can help with that," Using his Semblance, he strengthened Crysos and Drachma, not that anyone else truly knew that. He lunged, firing bullet after bullet at Shorla as he stepped his way up the bow of the ship. Every shot bounced off of Shorla's knives, but shooting her wasn't really part of the plan.

Shorla stepped back as Midas inched his way closer, gaining ground with every shot he fired, "Come on, then!" she swung her arm, deflecting another golden bullet at the cost of shattering another knife, "You're going to run out of bullets sooner or later!" Another knife exploded, but was quickly replaced after she dipped her hand into the tiny portal she could barely manage to form, "And that's bad for you, because I'll _never_ run out of knives."

"Don't need ya to, Nose Ring."

Shorla stepped back but felt nothing but open air beneath her. _Did he really just trick me into walking right off of the ship?_ she turned, seeing the fluttering light bouncing off of the crystal blue water beneath her, _Wonder if someone like him even knows what momentum is._

Midas chuckled as he watched Shorla disappear off the side of the boat. "Arr! Shoulda watched your footing, matey!" He laughed at his own joke, but became concerned when he didn't hear the splash he was expecting. He walked over to where Shorla had tripped. Looking down, he didn't see her in the water below. He did, however, see the shadow cast by the boat's hull, and was suddenly reminded of the shadow of the boat's mast casting over him.

He didn't have time to react to the boot smashing into his back and throwing him over the boat. As he fell, he saw a void of black opening in front of him. The last thing he heard before being completely enveloped in the darkness was Shorla asking him, "How about a change in scenery?"

.

Lead spread out to form a disk out in front of Ledning as a makeshift shield. A soot covered dent was already on the surface from a Magma Dust charged slug. He grunted as another slammed against it, sending him sliding back a few inches. His heels ground up the soft earth of the Forest Biome.

"What's tha matta, mate?" Opal flickered up behind him, "Can't keep up?"

Ledning threw a fist backwards, but it went harmlessly through the trail of colorful afterimages Opal had left in her place. He was thrown forward by a powered kick to his side. As he pushed himself up, he found Opal standing over him. Morphing his bracelets into blades, he snapped at her, "How do you even run and kick in flip-flops? That's pretty stupid for someone wanting to be a _Huntress!_ " he lunged, slicing towards her.

Opal feigned a yawn as she held up the fob to her weapon. Right as the dull silver metal was cutting its way towards her, she pressed the button.

Her boomerang fired another shot into his ribs. He was sent slamming into a tree, but the blow was at least cushioned by the lead pad that had instinctively constructed itself from his bracelets.

Opal skipped up to him and knelt down, "Ouch! Sorry 'bout that, mate!" she held her hand out to him, offering to help him up, "Didn't think you'd go down _that_ easy from a surprise attack like that!" she reached her other arm back and, without looking, caught her boomerang, which had flown in a wide arc and back to her following its previous firing. Seeing that Ledning wasn't going to take her offer, she turned her head to the side and tapped her cheek with her index finger, "Here! I'll give ya a free shot as payback!" she giggled as she slid her weapon into the strap on her back, "It's only fair."

"Oh yeah…?" Ledning peeled himself away from the tree. Lead condensed around both of his hands like a pair of wrecking balls, "Bad call…" he ran towards her with his metal covered fist raised, then brought it down as if trying to put a dent in the ditz's head.

Opal didn't even flinch as the lead-encased fists collided against her afterimages. Small ribbons of light flowed off of her cheeks as Ledning pulled his hands back, "Ooh. Sorry, mate. Betta luck next time!" she clapped her hands together before balling them up and taking a fighting stance, "My turn!" Rainbow afterimages of her fists followed the arc of her arm as she threw a straight jab directly for Ledning's nose.

He barely dodged to the side before she would've hit him. Splinters rained down on him as her supercharged punch caused the tree behind him to explode.

"Timba!" Opal laughed, "Eh… too bad I missed, though."

"I'm more light on my feet than you give me credit for…" Ledning knelt down and threw another lead covered fist into her abdomen. Light burned around her entire body in preparation for the attack, but he drove it home anyway. As she slid back from the strike, he rushed forwards and drove a left hook into her side. Keeping close to the ground, he was able to avoid most of her strikes with relative ease.

Another tree exploded as Opal threw another kick, "Are ya actually tryin' ta hit me, or are ya just gonna keep pussyfootin' around me?!" she threw another punch towards him, but he kept side-stepping out of her reach, fists raised in case she got a lucky shot.

Thunderous crashes echoed across the arena as the two trees Opal had previously punched slammed into the dirt.

"Aw, look whatcha made me do!" Another punch, another miss, "You know, deforestation is kind of a problem in some parts of tha world! Kinda insensitive if ya ask me!"

"Just shut up and go down!" he shouted. His blows were more or less nothing to this girl. The only way Samhain even took her out in the first place was because he threw her off her guard with his Semblance. He wasn't so fortunate, unless he could think on his toes.

"How about this?!" he threw his fist towards her face. Her arms were already crossed to block the hit, just like he wanted.

"Noice!" Opal stood with her arms held up to keep his fist at bay, "What's wro-"

Lead collapsed around both her arms. She was stuck, unable to avoid the left jab that came flying into her chest.

Opal went flying back. Afterimages shimmered around her to cushion her as she slammed into the tree behind her. She struggled against her lead restraint for a moment, but it quickly became clear that she wasn't going to get out by any normal means.

"Not so agile now, huh…?" Ledning's left bracelet shifted into a blade. He pulled it back to go in for a quick, finishing stab.

The lead blade stabbed straight through a shimmering red silhouette and into the tree behind it. As he tried to pry out the blade, another strong kick sent him sliding.

Opal ran over to him and stomped her foot down into his stomach, "Ya may have gotten my arms, but my legs are still free!" she looked down and sneered at the lead cuff melding her wrists together, "Too bad my Semblance can't get this thing offa me." she shrugged her shoulders, "It's 'kay though. I can finish this with just my feet," she reared her leg back. On the follow through, a rainbow of light followed her foot as she drove it into Ledning's side, launching him through the forest and straight through another tree. It tumbled and crashed to the ground just as the others before it.

It was beginning to become clear that he couldn't deal with Opal on his own. As much as he hated it, Midas could have done this much better than him. His Semblance might have actually been able to break through hers.

"Fine…" he glared Opal down as he stood up. If he got to the center platform, then he could figure out where his cousin was, "Come on. Finish me," he snarled with his fists raised.

Opal charged through the forest towards him, a trail of rainbow copies following her as she sped towards Ledning. She raised her foot, ready to throw it forward into his chest.

Ledning flew out of the forest and into the center platform, just as he had wanted. He stood, panting heavily. He spread his arms out, taunting his opponent, "I said _finish me!_ "

The rainbow trails seemed to magically appear, moving from the forest towards Ledning. Opal jumped into the air, flying high above Ledning as she prepared to bring his own weapon down onto his head. _If he can't touch it before I hit him, he won't be able to morph it._ She thought to herself as she began her descent.

Lead coated his left side up to his neck in an instant. He bent backwards so that she would strike him in the dead center of his chest. As she did, his weapon left her arms and coated the rest of his body like a suit of armor. He stumbled back away from the blow and held out his arms, "Come on, that was nothing!"

Opal, realizing her hands were free, began throwing a flurry of rapid punches into Ledning. She was trying her damndest to break through the lead to what she saw as the squishy punchable center.

As her punches glanced harmlessly off of his lead armor, he looked around for anything that resembled Midas's annoyingly gold attire. Then he saw him spill out of a shadowy tear just under the tree in the Savanna Biome.

"That will do…" he glanced over at Opal, "Try and keep up, okay?"

Opal was taken aback by Ledning's sudden retreat. She stomped her foot as she shouted after him, "Oi! What did I say about _pussyfootin'!?_ " She reached down and touched the tile with her hand, taking the position of a sprinter at the beginning of a race, "You made a big mistake thinkin' you could outrun _me_ ," In the blink of an eye, Opal was already halfway caught up to Ledning, her Semblance making the large distance seem like a leisurely stroll.

.

Midas fell into the tall grass. After scrambling to his feet, it took him a moment to process exactly where he was. He stood, not even caring if Shorla or her partner saw him, "What's the matter? Too scared to fight me back on the ship where I was _kicking your ass!?_ That's fine! That's _perfectly_ fine! I'll take you on _here_! I'll take you on at the _boat_! I'll take you on _anywhere, Nose Ring!_ "

"I'm honestly surprised you are this mad…" Shorla stood still underneath the tree, her arms crossed over her chest, "I didn't even get to the part where I was going to call your girlfriend a fat cow…"

Midas shouted as he charged her, beating her down with a barrage of sword slashes and gunshots.

She slipped back into a portal, then appeared just behind him once more, "That really strikes a nerve, doesn't it? Does it also piss you off that no guy can take their eyes off her?"

Midas held his gun out. He fired a string of shots as Shorla ran in a wide arc in front of him. The golden ironsights of his flintlock stayed locked on her, but none of the bullets managed to hit her, "Stop talking about her that way!" he fired another shot, this one grazing the heel of her boot, "Why did Umber and his team _ever_ start inviting you around?!"

She disappeared, then reappeared sitting on one of the low-hanging tree branches. Every shot became more erratic with his growing rage, "Let's be honest, there isn't any personality to like about her… You only like her for her looks, right?"

"I told you that wasn't the case, Nose-Ring!" Midas fired a shot at her, hoping to knock her off her perch, but she rolled backwards and dove into another portal, reappearing behind him. He swung his sword, aiming to hit Shorla across the shoulders. He knew she had aura, so there'd be no risk of actually decapitating her, but the idea of hitting her hard enough to launch her made him feel it was the perfect punishment.

The look on his face made it obvious his anger was growing to a level that was dangerous to his strategic thinking. Shorla opened a portal at her feet, falling below the sword before it had a chance to hit her. She appeared on the other side, slicing with her knives a few times across Midas's back before throwing them at him to keep him stunned.

The knives hurt a lot, but Midas didn't care. He still had aura, so he was going to keep fighting. Even as dark holes appeared in mid-air around him, he didn't flinch. He charged straight for Shorla as knives began to rain down upon him like bright purple hail.

She thought that she had him. She was sure of it. Then she heard her knives clanking softly off of what sounded like a sheet of metal. To her annoyance, backup had arrived for Midas. Ledning stood beside him with a hand on his cousin's shoulder, and an umbrella of lead to keep her knives at bay.

"You're seriously an idiot…" Ledning glared at Midas, "Falling for that is going to make us lose this match…"

"I'm not falling for anything! She's trash talking not only _me,_ but Saffron to-"

"She's baiting you into charging her," Ledning waved his hand to bend the lead above them just so as to block a couple knives, "You finish Opal off, and I've got Shorla."

"Baiting me into a…" Midas looked up at the aurameters. He was shocked to see that his was much closer to the disqualification threshold than he thought, "She's been distracting me?"

"Not too hard when your girlfriend is… well, Saffron…" Ledning rolled his eyes.

Midas stared at his cousin, "I will seriously beat your ass, too. I don't care if we're on the same side!"

"Opal's seriously about to be here. Could you just take care of her?" Ledning angled his lead umbrella down between him and Shorla, "Just get a few good shots in."

Midas stared off into the distance, "I… was played?..."

Ledning saw the rainbow light drawing closer, "Midas, dammit!"

"I got you now, Led!" Opal shouted as she vaulted into the air towards the two cousins.

Shorla, seeing that Ledning had foiled her barrage, dashed towards Midas with knives ready to deliver the attack that would take Midas out of the fight and leave Ledning an easy target.

His grip tightened on his weapons, "Nobody. Plays. Me!" He planted his firing-arm and gun firmly on Ledning's shoulder, pushing him back as he used him as a springboard, his hand flying down to brush against Ledning's hand as he flew over him. The dull silver lead turned a bright gold.

 _About time_... Ledning spun in a circle, all of his now-gilded lead encasing his right fist as he reared it back.

Shorla barely had enough time to register what was going on. All that she felt was pain, the air being crushed out of her lungs, and then came a loud buzzer. A dull silvery-gold flash sent her falling back into the grass. Just a few feet away, Ledning stood with his gold fist still extended from the finishing blow.

As he flew over his cousin's shoulder, Midas flipped his gun in his hand, holding it by the barrel as he reared it back. He saw it as a bit undignified to use his gun as a melee weapon, but at the time, he didn't care. It was more blunt than his sword, and it'd do a better job at taking Opal out.

With the way she was using her Semblance, there was nowhere near enough time for Opal to redistribute her afterimages to act as a damage sponge rather than a speed booster.

The grip of the solid gold flintlock cracked over Opal's cheek, sending her sprawling. The remnants of her afterimages sent her awkwardly skidding in fast-forward through the grass. She landed on her back in the center platform as a buzzer sounded.

"And in another twist of events…" Shirley began.

" _ **TEAM MTLC TAKES HOME THE VICTORY BY A HAIR! AFTER A QUICK SWITCHAROO, SHORLA AND OPAL ARE LEFT BELOW THE AURA THRESHOLD!"**_ Carmen finished with her usual screaming praise, " _ **MIDAS ANKARA OR LEDNING COYLE WILL GO ON TO REPRESENT THEIR TEAM IN THE SINGLES ROUND!"**_

"Well, I hate to say it, but way to go, Mi… das?" Ledning, in a show of congratulation, held his hand out to Midas, but as he turned around, he found his cousin suspiciously absent. Looking back, he found Midas standing near Shorla.

"Yeah? How about that, eh Nose Ring? Even after all your snarky remarks, we _powered through them!_ " Midas held his hand up and smiled as the cameras zoomed in on him. Cheers erupted from the massive crowd, "That's right! Golden Boy of Atlas Academy bay- _bee_!"

"Probably shouldn't have taken Saffron's word on that, then…" Shorla rolled her eyes. She rubbed her forehead to alleviate some of the pain associated with her Semblance, "Make fun of her instead, she said…"

Midas stopped waving to what he saw as his adoring public, "Wait…" he turned to the goth still sitting on the ground, "What did you just say?"

"Saffron never told you…?" Shorla raised an eyebrow.

"Told me _what?_ " Midas asked, ignoring the fact that Ledning was tapping his arm and trying to give him a congratulatory handshake.

* * *

"I never told ya that me an' Sho are friends?!" Saffron sat beside a slumped over Shorla in the locker room holding an ice pack to the girl's head, "We been friends since that whole brawl with her and Dan-tea!"

"She thought we could trade accessories because we both like purple… so I lent her some earrings…" Shorla was sprawled out on the bench with her head resting on Saffron's hat, "Then I found her tolerable when she actually liked my style… couldn't say the same for her, but whatever. That's why I spent the night on Timbre's boat. Opal and Damascus went along, but Saffron texted me an invite herself…"

"So… you told her to piss me off if we ever happened to get fight each other?" Midas's eyes flickered around as he tried to process what he was being told.

"Back before that boat got chucked, yeah!" Saffron pulled out a pair earrings with purple crystals dangling from silver hooks out of her shirt pocket, "Bet that I could keep these earrings if she pissed ya off and lost. I almost suggested y'all had a quick sparrin' match, but then both a'y'all showed up on that screen, so not only could our little bet take place, but on live TV, too!" she began putting them on, "Don'tcha 'member? Wore these on our first date, shuga plum."

Shorla rolled her eyes. "I was honestly hoping the whole 'pissing you off' thing would work in my favor like it usually does for my team. Step 1: get under your opponent's skin with petty insults. If you know more, use it. Step 2: Keep going until they're so blinded with anger that they forget any and all strategy they may have had. Step 3: win. That's the usual Team STON way. I was thinking it would work especially well on a couple of Atlesian goons like you and your cousin since we actually had some sort of a relationship to ruin in order to get the victory, but lo and behold..." she turned, looking Midas over as if she saw him as an equal and not just some random playboy, "you exceeded my expectations and used that anger to win instead. Guess you really are a lone wolf."

" _Like I always tell ya, Sho!_ " Saffron clapped, "I knew my boy could take ya down! No question about it!"

"Please… please don't, Saffron…" Shorla groaned, "Not until Opal comes back with my migraine medication…"

"Sorry, sweetheart…"

Ledning leaned against the lockers. He tapped his foot impatiently, "Just glad it's over…" he stood up, "I've got some things to go take care of, so- woah!"

He almost ran face-first into a familiar girl with long purple hair. Lurida blushed as she stepped away from him. She hesitated and then awkwardly wrapped him in a hug, "You did great out there. Better than Xannie and I…" as she pulled away, she saw Midas, Saffron, and Shorla sitting behind her boyfriend, "Oh… I…" her cold neon purple eyes hardened as she pointed to the others, "If you tell _anyone_ you saw that, I swear..." she quickly turned on her heel and headed for the exit. Before she rounded the corner, she held up her scroll and tapped it with her finger, telling Ledning she'll message him later.

"H-Hey! Wait! I wanted to… talk… to… you…" he sighed, "Great… thanks, guys…"

"Thanks for what?" Midas asked.

"Existing?" Shorla theorized. She stopped, taking a deep breath.

"Yeah, a little…" Ledning rushed out the door to track Lurida down.

"Alright then…" Shorla sat up slowly and looked at Midas. Hesitantly, she held out her hand, "I'm sorry for what I said. I honestly didn't mean any of it."

Midas didn't know what to do with the hand being presented to him, "Um…"

"Just _shake it_ , Ponyboy," Saffron smiled, "Don't let there be any rough feelin's between your teams. Work it out! Leader to leader!"

"It was just strategy," Shorla nodded to her hand, "Please hurry up… I'm getting dizzy."

"Oh… okay…" Midas quickly shook her hand and returned his to his side, "Sorry for… you know. Hitting you with my sword and… shooting you."

"You're really not good at apologizing, are you?"

"Not really."

"Good, me neither," Shorla quickly stood to leave, "That makes us even."

Before she could make it to the exit, another newcomer appeared, "Torbern..?" she realized her teammate looked a little more frazzled than usual, a look of deep concern on his face. She felt her heart sink. Torbern rarely ever showed this much emotion, "What's wrong?"

"Namib, he's… not okay. Opal's holding him down," Torbern pat his thigh anxiously, "I thought you would need to know, since Opal said that you knew what was going on… I don't know… He just freaked out when he saw Vincentas."

"No…" Shorla dizzily stumbled forwards. The only thing that saved her from falling flat on her face was Torbern's quick thinking. He already had her looped over his shoulders by an arm.

"I've got you. Come on," he helped her along.

"Right…" Shorla looked back to Saffron and Midas apologetically, "Sorry… I gotta go."

.

Shorla, with Torbern's help, pushed her way through the growing crowd in the wide open-air airship docks in the lower levels of Amity Colosseum. The shouting and gossiping whispers grew louder as they drew closer to whatever all of the spectators were looking at, "Namib!"

"Namib!" Orchid held her hands out to her student, "Please. Calm down, dear."

"Don't you tell me to calm down!" Namib struggled in Opal's grasp.

Vincentas stood idly by just behind his wife, "Look, kid, I don't even know where Oases is, much less have I ever been there."

"Don't you lie to me! I know you were there at Oases! You were there and you did _nothing to help us!_ " Namib stared daggers into Vincentas, "You were the one that convinced everyone that there wasn't a _threat!_ " _That look in his eyes. He knows what I'm talking about._

Despite her increased strength from her Semblance, Opal was losing her grip from Namib struggling so much, "Namib, mate, please stop. You're actin' crazy!"

"I'm. Not. _Crazy!_ " he threw his leg up, hitting Opal hard in the side. A few shimmers of her afterimages were cast away from her body.

Vincentas reached under his cloak to his sides, where each half of his weapon was hanging.

Orchid glared at him, "Don't you _dare_ aim your weapon at one of _my_ students."

"I don't want to hurt him, but if he wants a fight, I'll give it to him," he spit out the hard candy he was sucking on. It clinked to the ground and rolled until it fell out of the structure to the ground far below, "Maybe it'll snap him out of whatever's gotten him so riled up."

 _He's so calm. How can he_ _be so calm?_ "How can you just sit there and _deny what you did?!"_ Namib threw his knee into Opal again, "You've hid from me, Vincentas!" Another knee, "Just confess to what you did!" he struggled, throwing his leg even harder into his teammate.

Opal gasped as a blue-green shimmer traveled across her body. Her aura, weakened from her fight with the duo from Team MTLC, had been broken.

With her Semblance no longer in effect, Namib tossed Opal effortlessly to the side and leapt to his feet. Even without his weapons, he charged the Huntsman hiding like the pathetic coward he was behind his wife, "You were the one that got them all killed!"

"Namib!" Orchid reached out to stop him before he could get past her. Shock shot across her face as she was struck by his open palm. She stepped back with her hand over her face, but that just gave him a chance to lunge after her husband.

Vincentas pulled the silver and blue shotgun from his side.

All he wanted was to make Vincentas pay. It didn't matter that there was a gun leveled at his chest. It didn't matter that he slapped his favorite teacher. All that mattered was that he was about to make Vincentas hurt just as much as him. Right when he thought he was going to get the chance at vengeance, he fell into a shadowy void.

Shorla held onto him by the shoulders, her weak grip keeping him frozen in place, "You need… to calm… down…"

Namib didn't even know Shorla was there. _She was one of the only people there for you. She's one of the only ones that believed you about what happened in Oases._ "Sh-Shorla?"

"Shut up," she hugged him tighter.

Namib didn't want to hit her. He didn't want to struggle. He suddenly remembered Opal and looked over to where he had shoved her. She sat there, tears in her eyes. Those weren't tears of physical pain. No. Not from Opal. Those wet streaks running down her face were those of worry and shock from having one of her own teammates attack her. He saw Torbern watching them from the crowd that he didn't even realize had gathered. He tried to turn further, but Shorla refused.

"Shorla-"

"No." She shook her head, despite her throbbing headache, "We're going to move backwards and get on the airship back to the hotel, got it?"

"But… Professor Ensi-"

"I said no. No buts. You're way out of line right now. "

Namib could only stand there, stuck in his adoptive sister's arms, "I'm… I'm sorry… He just-"

"It's okay," Orchid lightly put a hand on his shoulder. She only hoped that he wouldn't turn enough to see the red mark on her cheek. He felt bad enough, and that would make matters worse, "Just take whatever time you need. We don't even need to talk about this if you don't want to…"

Shorla looked to Orchid apologetically before looking to the crowd around them, "What about Professor Willows? The Vytal Committee?"

"I will handle them. Don't worry about it. It' really okay," Orchid reassured her, "Now, please, take care of what you need to. I need to have a talk with my husband," she sighed as the crowd began to dissipate, "Please."

After nodding, she latched onto Namib's hand and led him away.

Opal jumped to her feet and followed along quietly.

As he began to walk off with his team, Torbern stopped and looked back to Orchid and Vincentas.

"It's okay, just go be with them," Orchid shooed him off, "Please."

Torbern nodded and ran to catch up with the rest of his team.

As the people around finally went their own way, Orchid faced her husband with nothing but contempt, "What was that all about, Vincentas?"

The Huntsman looked down to his wife, "Like I said, I didn't do a thing _to_ him."

"You told me that nothing suspicious happened in Oases before that Grimm attacked…" she glared up into his eyes. It wouldn't be the first time that he lied to her, and it wouldn't be the last. Forgiveness came easy as long as he owned up to what he did, "You told me that there were no survivors when you returned…"

Vincentas returned his shotgun to his side. "Yeah. I did tell you that."

"You'll admit to all of the times that you cheated on me while we were engaged, but you're going to make me drag this out of you…?" she clawed at the inside of her long coat's sleeve. After twenty years of marriage, Oases hadn't come up once. It didn't seem like it needed to, but now it seemed as though it was because Vincentas was keeping it hidden, "Are you even going to talk to me about this, or are you going to blow me off?"

The memories flew around in his brain. The village. The people. The Grimm. And in the middle of all of the destruction… "I need to talk to some of your Nexus buddies."

"I'm your wife, Vincentas. Talk to me…" she pleaded.

Vincentas turned to leave, "Let me figure out how to first."

She started to follow him, but then stopped. She couldn't be there for him when he was like this, "Vince…" she bit her lip, "Why will you still not let me trust you…?"

Vincentas stopped for a moment. As much as he wanted to, he couldn't turn around, "I don't want to hurt you, Orchid, and that's just what happens to people that trust me."

With that, he disappeared into the stairwell leading to the upper layers of the arena.


	64. V3Ch11: God of Chaos

"So Rime and Zero are against those girls from Team MNNT," Anubis watched the four combatants carefully, "Should be a quick battle then."

"Yeah… don't know how fun it's gonna be to watch a bunch of nubs get slammed by an ice witch and a ninja… who happens to be an _ice_ ninja," Set covered his mouth as he yawned. The red jackal ears atop his head wiggled around as Carmen began spouting off her less than useful commentary, "How has she not lost her voice, dude…?"

"With Professor Maple… no telling. My guess is if she's close to Timbre Forté, she does what performers do. Tea and honey." Anubis stated matter-of-factly, as opposed to the joke Set wished he would've cracked instead.

"Whelp…" Set checked his scroll for the time, "How much time is set aside for this fight?"

Anubis let out an exasperated sigh, "Two hours, like all of the others before it…"

"How long do you think it'll take, oh great leader?" Set fiddled with his scroll even more.

"Probably… half an hour? Twenty minutes? I don't know. But we have two hours until our fight," The leader of Team ASHS scanned the crowd until he saw Roland's sister. Her dark hair and red cloak stood out due to her sitting next to a deer Faunus with long green hair, "and we're up against Roland's step-sister, so we need to be ready. No goofing off and no overfilling on junk food. Got it? I don't want you hurling in front of all of Remnant and getting eliminated early."

"I'll be fine, dude. Give me a break!" Set rolled his eyes. He looked over to the girls that Anubis was looking at, "You know, Roland would give you a serious beat down if you tried to hit on his sister, but Eden's free game I bet. Does the whole predator pursuing prey thing get you riled up for her?"

Anubis glared at his twin, "No, it doesn't get me 'riled up for her'. She's cool and all, but like I told you before. I'll like who I'll like, human or Faunus. Unfortunately for you, she just isn't that girl I like."

"So you're jealous of Ledning, then?" Set tried to suppress the fit of laughter building inside of him. He knew just how flustered Anubis got when the subject of Lurida came up, either directly or indirectly.

"No…" Anubis took his eyes off of the rising biomes to find his brother biting his lip and giving him the 'really?' look, "Okay, yeah. I'm still pretty miffed over the whole prom situation. Kinda sucks. We fight, I end up doing something so childish as bringing up our decision in order to ask Lurida, you apologize and say I'm free to ask her, and when I go to Team GLXY's room, Gavin tells me she already got a date with this… what do you usually say? Rando?"

"Rando, yeah, but did you see how that rando and his cousin kicked butt, bro? Like, Ledning looked good out there! You've gotta admit that, at least," Set shrugged with his scroll still in his hand, "Let's be honest here. Lurida _definitely_ chose the better looking of you two."

Anubis cast another look at his brother, "In case you forgot, we're _identical_ twins. You look just like me."

"I present myself better than you do, though. Like, a lot better," Set stood up, "So can we, like, get some food? I'm hungry, and I bet you're hungry, and… wait, I think Rime and Zero just…"

" _ **AND TEAM MNNT IS LEFT FROZEN SOLID! TEAM FREZ WINS!"**_ Carmen paused for a moment, "Wait, but, like, seriously. Completely frozen solid… In the center platform… can we get the medics out here, please?"

Anubis pulled up his sleeve, looking at the watch he had hidden beneath, "Wow. Five minutes. Looks like I grossly overestimated."

"Are you seriously wearing a watch…?" Set gawked at his brother's poor choice in clothing, "You look like a total tool, dude. Our scrolls tell the time already. Like, do you know what year it is?"

Anubis felt like his brain was melting, "I wear a watch because I don't have to worry about its battery dying anytime soon. Remember last semester when we were on that mission outside Hillfjall-Yama and you got lost and your battery died and... You're doing this on purpose. I _swear_ you're just trying to annoy me now."

"Me? No! I'd never do such a heinous thing! I'm just as innocent as the day you met me!" Set nodded his brother along, "So as innocent as a baby. Never did anything to anybody! Never put thumbtacks on McGouran's seat! Never switched your bullets for blanks! Never ate that cake that Carmen hid in her office!"

A quick check of his wallet told Anubis he had enough Lien on him to buy some snacks to refuel before their fight. If they hurried, whatever they ate would have time to settle before they had to get into the ring. He stood up, "Come on. Let's get food. Not like we're going to miss much," he gestured to the empty arena, now devoid of the biome structures, "If we hurry, we can beat the crowd. People will probably eat out of sheer boredom waiting for the last fight of the day."

"You mean the _best_ fight of the day. We've got a show to put on! As long as we keep Dante's mouth shut, we're good!" Set followed his brother closely. He knew entirely too well that there wasn't even a single Lien in his wallet, so he hoped that Anubis would just buy snacks without asking too much, "Then you shoot her in the head, and then I'll just beat Eden up while you do that! It's foolproof!"

"We need more of a plan than that, idiot."

"I mean, you might, but… I don't. You've gotta be adaptable, Anu! Remember what Professor Maple said!"

"She's never said anything close to 'run in without a plan'."

"But it's good to be able to if you need to!"

Anubis felt the migraine coming, "Can't we just agree to have a plan? I don't want to have to fight through a headache."

"We can agree that we will try to go with your plan, but we wing it if that fails," Set held up his hands, "Can't plan for everything!"

As the two brothers descended to the lower levels where food stalls lined around the entirety of the walkway. People were starting to flood down, but none of the lines were what Anubis would consider miserably long yet, "I guess I can't argue with that. Fine," he gestured out to the stalls in front of them, "Okay. What do you want?"

"Dude, I saw someone with a big thing of nachos with barbecue sauce and barbecue pork. I'm down for that with _extra_ jalapenos… and cheese. And meat. Definitely extra meat. And a churro. Or two. Or… three..." Set watched people step away from the food stands with those very nachos in hand, "And an extra large diet cola. Don't wanna get fat, ya know?"

Anubis pulled his wallet out again to double-check the amount of money he had on him, "I swear, I'm going to be poor the rest of my life because of you-HEY!" While in the middle of counting the cards of Lien in his wallet, his brother snatched it from his hands.

"There's enough. I counted this morning!" Set ran to get in line for food, "Don't worry! You'll have all the money you want when I'm the Huntsman! _I'll_ be the one feeding _you_!"

 _There it is again_. Set brought up the tradition, but Anubis knew if he tried to continue the conversation thinking Set actually wanted to discuss it for once, Set would just shut down and try to change the subject. Anubis decided to go for the one question that he still wanted the answer for, "Why do you want to be the Huntsman so bad, Set?"

"Wouldn't be a good patriarch," Set shrugged. He kept looking ahead and away from Anubis. This was not a conversation that he wanted to have, so he was going to have to redirect it, "Why do _you_ want to be the Huntsman?"

 _Deflecting the question again._ Anubis sighed, "I've tried to tell you before that I want to live my life the way I want to. The only way to do that is to completely go against the code the Lunas have stuck to for over a century," he stared off into the open air around them and through the archway leading out to the airship docks. Hundreds of feet up, above the Perch of Amity, the view of Vytal spread out before them was incredible, "I want to be a Huntsman. It's what I've trained for, but I'm not going to be told I can't have a family if I end up meeting a girl and decide I wanted to have kids. And it'd be easier to get out of Menagerie if I'm the Huntsman between us. I can't exactly get the same… effect, if I'm the patriarch and marry like, a human girl or a Faunus that isn't a Wolf Faunus like us," he felt his stomach twist, "Father would probably kill me if I did that. If I was out in the world, I could just… avoid him. Turn my back on it all."

"I mean, I feel about the same way. Just not exactly the same, but close enough, I guess…" Set pat Anubis's wallet against the back of his hand. His brother was hitting a little too close to home. He had to change the subject. Fast, "So I hope we can keep things cool between us and Eden. She's super cool, dude. You should really get to know her. I got to hang with her and Neila down in Vale a few days after prom, and it was _great_. She's definitely got the Set seal of approval for you to go after!"

Anubis looked to his brother, annoyed with the sudden change in subject, "Is… is _that_ why you asked me about Eden earlier?" he laughed, " _You_ like Eden!"

"No. That's not-"

"I mean, it's not going to piss Dad off as much as a human girl, but a non-Wolf Faunus might do the trick also. I just realized, he'd probably be _furious_ about Sköll and Hati going to prom with Xannie if he hasn't already found out!"

"That's really not what I-"

"Sköll and Hati won't stick with it though… Hati'll just go with whatever girl Dad finds for him."

"Can we please not talk about this here? Or at all? Like, not talking about this is _fine by me!_ " Set's ears flattened against his head. This was the kind of conversation he had been dreading for years, but it seemed inevitable, "I just want those nachos, man…"

"I know. I know. We'll get the nachos. I'm just thinking out loud," Anubis began to pace in a small circle, "Sköll and Hati see the logic in it, but they're too scared of what Dad and Uncle Lycaon would do. _I_ don't have that fear. I _want_ to put an end to our traditions," he grabbed his brother's wrist, "I've been trying to tell you for years now, and _you_ can help me with that, Set. You want to leave the possibility of having a family open, right? You say you're fine becoming the Huntsman and not getting married, but what if, ten years, fifteen years, hell, twenty years down the line, you meet a girl and realize she's the one? But then the stupid tradition gets in the way and you _can't_ be with her because Dad would literally _destroy you_?"

"Because I _really_ don't think that's gonna happen, Anu! Like, I'm pretty sure that it won't!" Set tried to pull away from Anubis's grip, but he was trapped. Given the nature of his Faunus heritage, the thought of gnawing his arm off came to mind. It would be far less painful than what was coming, "Can we, like, take this somewhere else please? Hati might be around, and I don't want him to hear… this…"

Anubis was confused, "Why just Hati? Why not Sköll?"

"Because I already talked to Sköll about… it…" Set scratched the back of his head, "I really need those nachos, man. Can we please grab them and go?"

"Okay, fine. But don't you see?" Anubis, for once, was smiling, "We're finally about to get this figured out! But we're not going to decide how to best 'fit the mold'. We're going to figure out how to best _break_ the mold!" he loosened his grip and let go of Set's sleeve, "We can finally show Dad how stupid our family's been for following these rules for so long. Maybe we can finally convince him that it's fine to just… let us be us, you know?"

"I don't think that's gonna happen, Anu…" Set sighed, "Let's just… get some food and privacy… please…"

.

"The nosebleeds?" Anubis questioned. While the view was infinitely better at the top of the stadium, the altitude made him feel light-headed and the nachos he and his brother were sharing tasted a little odd. Their spot at the railing looking over Amity's edge was far away from anyone, even civilians that came to watch the fights.

"No one is gonna be up here until the next fight," Set anxiously pinched four chips together and crammed them into his mouth. His horrible habit of stress eating was coming out. He looked around, a dribble of barbecue sauce leaking from the corner of his mouth. The coast was clear, which meant that he was actually going to have to talk about what was going on.

Anubis didn't say anything. He just took a sip of diet cola and waited for Set to start the conversation for once.

Set struggled to swallow. He had to say it. He had to tell Anubis what was going on, what had been going on, "Well… I just… don't think I'll be able to find a woman, ya know? I don't really… want to."

The slurping of soda suddenly ceased, "What?" In the two years they'd been at Beacon, Set was always making comments about girls, "You had your eyes set on Lurida for over a year, though."

"No, _you_ had your eyes set on Lurida. Hati and Sköll were trying to get with Xannie, and you were into Lurida, so I thought that… I should be, too," Set tried to find the right words, "Which, it's cool. I talked to Lurida and Xannie about it in our first year at Beacon. They get it… completely."

"Get… what completely?"

"That I don't want to get with them. Like, I didn't want to give the wrong impression and creep them out. I like to think that's why we're still kind of friends with Team GLXY…" Set went for another chip, but stopped halfway. He wasn't feeling too great anymore, "Listen, it's not that big of a deal. I'm okay, really. Lurida and Xannie have been really cool about it, and so have Eden and Neila. And Sköll! Never would have thought he would be so supportive…"

"What are you trying to say, Set? Will you just explain this… whatever to me so maybe we can finally figure out our problems with the family tradi-?"

"I don't want to be with a woman, Anubis!"

The way Set yelled that at him. The desperation in his voice. Anubis had never heard his twin so borderline distraught before. It all hit him like a truck, "You mean you..."

Set sighed as he slumped against the railing, "I'm screwed either way, Anubis… Either I be miserable as a patriarch with a woman that I can't actually love, or I go out and be a Huntsmen where I can be who I am. But then that rips me away from my family… and I don't want that either. I know what Dad would do if I became the Huntsman and he saw me with… anyone, but especially another guy…"

For years, Set had hidden such a huge secret from his entire family, from most of the people in his life, "Set. You could've told me."

"You were already disappointed with me. I didn't want to screw that up even more. My joking around is something that I think you can look past, but I never felt like anyone could look beyond something like that… not until I got to Beacon, anyway," Set tried to figure out how to feel a little bit less awkward about all of it, but it still just hurt. He was never going to be seen the same way by his own brother. He felt a hand on his shoulder, followed by a hug that almost made him knock their nachos over the side of the Colosseum.

"Set, I don't care who you like. You're my brother," Anubis held Set at arm's length, "You may have… different circumstances, but don't you see that what I'm fighting for will help you, too? If I take down the traditions that have probably affected Lunas like me, Lunas like _you_ in the past, Lunas that have had to make compromises just to fit in with the rest of the family, then we, and every Luna after us can be who we want to be instead of shoehorning themselves uncomfortably into one of two categories," he realized that, even though he wanted to break those barriers, he could still fit within them. Set was right, he couldn't fit into either without giving something up. He'd be living a lie his whole life if they made their decision now, "You just gave me another reason to make our father and Lycaon see that this tradition is going to do nothing but bring more misery."

Anubis's usually stoic and flat voice began to quaver, "We've already lost Shuck to this mess. I'm not going to lose you too just because you don't fit into what our family wants," he let go of his brother, "I would've thought you could trust me of all people with something like that… We could've been fighting against everything together instead of me trying to take it all on by myself."

Set was at a loss. After keeping it from his brother for so many years… it was still about him. Even though this had pained Set for as long as he could remember, Anubis was only concerned about breaking the tradition and nothing more. His own circumstances were not being met with even an ounce of empathy, but instead was being met with a plan to use those circumstances just to advance his own goals. That hurt even worse than trying to hide it.

"Are you…" Set tried to find the words, "Are you serious, right now…? Are you really serious, bro…?"

Anubis looked back to him, confused, "What? Set, I'm just saying that we, _we_ , can do something about this! You don't have to choose between lying and being miserable and… well, lying and being miserable! You don't have to be alone with this anymore!"

"I didn't tell you this to further your stupid plan! I told you because I thought you would actually support me!" Set stood, his fists clenched against his sides, "Now that I'm telling you, it's like it doesn't even matter that I am who I am!"

"But it does, Set! Don't you see? We _both_ want to live our lives and, with the way things are now, _neither of us can!_ "

"I'm not as worried about what might happen as I am what _is_ happening!" he shouted back, "If I go out with someone even while we're at Beacon, then what? Everyone is gonna say something! Then Hati would find out! Then you would have! Then Yamuna! My existence would hurt our little sister because she would have to know that I _can't be normal, Anubis!_ If I can't be normal, then how is _she_ gonna be able to feel okay with her problems?!"

Anubis fell silent for a moment before speaking again, "Set. You _are_ normal. Being who you are _is_ normal. So why won't you listen to me when I say that our family is poisoning itself? It's not that you're not normal, it's that our _family_ isn't normal."

"I'm still proud to be a Luna. I still love our family, and I don't want to hurt them like you apparently want to," Set looked down. He could feel the tears start to flow, "I'm scared that our family won't love me, though. I know that Dad won't… and I know it's going to just make things harder on everyone. I cannot tell you how much I wish I wasn't this way, Anubis. I wish I could just lie and act happy, but I can't. Not anymore."

"But don't you see that you _can_ be?!" Anubis was desperate now, "We'll figure something out. We'll find a way to make Dad and everyone else understand! You already have two of your brothers supporting you! It'll happen, Set!"

"Do I really, though? Do I really have two of them? Because it really only feels like I have one, and the other wants to use me to further his own vindictive agenda," Set turned to leave. He didn't want to make matters worse, "Just… forget I said anything. Consider it a joke. I'm still the womanizer I've always been. Don't worry about it."

"Set!" Anubis called after him, but he could only watch as his twin vaulted over the railing and into the tunnel below. As the crowds started filing back in, Anubis knew he'd already lost him.

.

"I can't believe him…" Set crammed his hands into his pockets. He tried to disappear into the crowd. He looked around for anyone he could actually talk to about what was going on. Eden wouldn't want to talk with it being so close to a match, and Lurida would probably be with Ledning still. Xannie or Neila might have been around still. From his pocket came his scroll, which he began tapping out a message on.

He didn't even see the giant of a man before him until he ran face first into him. His scroll clattered to the ground, "Oh, crap! Sorry, man," he snatched up his scroll, then looked up to see a far too familiar face, "G-Gavin…?! Hey! Uh… what's… what's going on?"

Gavin looked back towards the tunnel where Set had just come from, "I was actually looking for you. Thought I'd see how you and Anubis were doing before your fight," he winced when he saw the remnants of dried tears on Set's face, "and it looks like you're… hey, are you okay?"

"Y-Yeah, I'm fine," Set shoved his scroll back into his pocket. He backed away, not wanting to give Gavin the wrong idea. With him here, at least he could figure out where Xannie was, "So… I was just about to text Xannie. There's something that I need to talk to her about, and I'd like to before the match. I'm just a little freaked out about some things, ya know?"

Gavin retrained his eyes to the tunnel, "Like what you and your brother just had an argument about?"

Set froze, "I… what are you talking about?" he tried to throw on a smile, "Anu and I were just planning out our fight with Dante and Eden. No biggie. I wouldn't really call it an argument, dude."

Gavin nodded, "So that whole thing about who you are and trying to explain to your brother about your feelings towards… other people?" he shook his head, as if disappointed, "I would've thought he'd look past his grudge for your family aside long enough to actually give you the support you expected. Pretty sad if you ask me."

"That… you can't just…" Set could feel the uneasiness shaking in his stomach. This wasn't how he normally felt around Gavin. Usually, Gavin was someone that was very nice and comfortable to be around, but that just flipped with nothing more than a few words. Still, he felt sincere, "Gavin, please. Please don't tell anyone. If anyone found out, it'd ruin me, my family… Yamuna… You can't. Please."

Gavin held up his hands, "Hey. Hey. Set, calm down," his usual confident grin returned, "Don't worry. It's none of my business, and I'm going to leave it that way. I just happened to overhear."

"How did you even hear us? I made sure that no one would. I listened for anyone, and there was no one besides us up there," Set watched him carefully. He trusted Gavin, especially because of how he treated Yamuna. He would never mean anything by listening in. Surely he meant to help somehow, but still…

Gavin let out a hearty laugh, "Well, it's part of my job to know as much as I can about everyone. I wouldn't be good at it if I didn't have my ways of gathering information without raising suspicion."

"Your… job…?" Set looked up at him, confused, "What do you mean your job?"

The crowd was thinning out, but there were still too many people around to have this discussion, "Maybe we should find somewhere to talk. Somewhere we'd be _sure_ not to be overheard."

.

The machinery below the arena was like nothing Set had seen before. Giant plates carrying whole swaths of each biome were held up in giant metal frames attached to a whole system of gears spanning the diameter of the entire structure. There wasn't much room to move aside from the designated pathways between the bases of each plate's storage frame. Things like water, suns, ice, lava, and thunderclouds were absent, which meant that they had to have been generated through the use of Dust. Just how much this thing would cost to operate was unfathomable.

"What makes you so sure no one's around?" Set asked meekly. He still stood a bit away from Gavin in case he did actually need to make a run for it. Sure, he trusted the guy, but coming all the way down here felt strange for a chat. Hopefully Gavin wasn't getting the wrong idea after the confession to Anubis.

"They already did the maintenance rounds. Nobody will be down here unless something goes wrong with the randomizer," Gavin chuckled, "We made sure of that yesterday."

"W-We…?" Set stared at him blankly.

"Yeah," A small ping sounded out as Gavin flipped what appeared to be a coin towards Set, "We. That whole debacle with the Floating Islands. All us. A bit meager and childish, the higher-ups wanted to do a test run before they carry out their endgame."

He caught it, then opened his palm to get a better look at it, "What…" his eyes widened. Etched into the silver coin was the familiar lines making up an eight spoked wheel. The same symbol that the Grimm Brotherhood tagged all of Vytal with was laser engraved into it.

"That's… you're…" Set's muscles tightened. Surely this was just Gavin's idea of a sick joke, "You're kidding. Man, you're funny," he tossed the coin back, "Like you'd be in the Grimm Brotherhood. You're too nice."

Gavin caught the token, "I mean… you're _partially_ right," he slipped the coin into one of his pant pockets below his armor, "But make no mistake. I am a member," he held out his arms and smiled, as if presenting the vast array of biomes and mechanisms to Set, "But I'm still the same old Gavin you've known since you got to Beacon."

"You can seriously stop the jokes now, Gav," Set could feel his hands trembling. The way that Gavin spoke… he wasn't lying. Gavin didn't lie, "You can't be one of those terrorists… There's no way…"

"Didn't really want to pull this card. Such a cliche… but..." Gavin slid his hand over a panel on his forearm, revealing his scroll inlaid into the piece of armor. After pressing a few buttons, his armor began to shift before Set's eyes.

The bright whites and yellows of Gavin's signature armor began to dull and become much more sinister. The white darkened to a lustrous jet black while the yellow became a deep blood red. As he stood before Set, showing off his changed uniform, Gavin smirked, "Pretty cool, huh? It'd be much cooler if I had my cloak and helmet on me. The whole visor turns red, and a bunch of bits magnetically attach to it, and just looks overall pretty sick."

"I…" Set backed up step by step. He needed to run, but his legs wouldn't move. All he could do was stare at one of Beacon's best role models as the reality of who he was sank in. Down here, no one would hear them, "Y-You guys… I… what you did to those Faunus in Mistral…" his heart thumped in his chest. He couldn't stand it anymore. Live or die, his best chance was to run. He turned, but froze back in place when he felt the cold metal plates of Gavin's gauntlet on his shoulder, "P-Please. I didn't do anything. Please. Please don't hurt me."

Gavin smiled warmly down at his fellow classmate, "Set, you know me, I have absolutely no intention of hurting you. You see, I actually want to recruit you."

"You guys hate Faunus like me, Gavin… you guys killed a lot of us…" Set struggled to pull away, but couldn't muster the strength to, "You hate us."

Gavin's usual confident and optimistic mood became a lot more sullen, "That's where you're wrong."

He let go of Set and turned around, pacing away from him, "When I heard what my associates in the Mistral branch did to those people, I began to rethink a lot of things. I wasn't active in the field until recently. In Vale, we honestly don't do too much. Out of everyone involved in the attacks on Vale, and Beacon, and even here on Vytal, none of the leading operatives were from my branch. I don't have much of a clue what the higher-ups are thinking anymore, if they're behind all this pointless violence at all."

"Then…" Set turned and looked up at him, "Then what are you guys even trying to do? What could possibly warrant bombing Vale or making some giant Grimm attack Vytal…? What's in it for you?"

Gavin shook his head, "Honestly, I don't even know anymore, but I do know I don't like how they're going about it and keeping a lot of us out of the loop. That's why I've decided I'm going to do something about it before it gets worse. The Grimm Brotherhood I joined doesn't seem to exist anymore. The goals we had. Gone. Instead of sharing our ideas to control Grimm in hopes of protecting the kingdoms, all it seems we're doing is using Grimm to destroy them. This isn't the group I joined, and I want to take it down."

"You…" the tension inside Set eased up, "You mean that you're not the same as them?" Gavin was the same as when he met him. Even in the black and red of the Grimm Brotherhood, he still had that same grin, "So you want to recruit me in that way…? Like, to help you bring them down? A man on the inside?"

" _Exactly!_ " Gavin walked back over and slapped Set on the shoulder, "Now you're getting it!"

"I… I can't, Gavin," Set stepped away, "Listen, I'm already a disappointment to my family as is… I ca-"

"That's just it, Set. When I heard you spill your guts to your brother, he didn't _care_. I don't know what your family would say, but if you're that doubtful, then you're probably right that they won't give you that support either. If we take down the Grimm Brotherhood together, you don't _need_ them. You'll be a savior. A hero to all of Remnant. Either they'll have to accept you for who you are, or you can turn your back on them forever. You're into dudes? So what? You saved the _whole world!_ Anyone who is so unaccepting as to turn their backs on you don't _deserve_ to be around you."

"Why not just…" Set stopped. He was going to ask why Gavin didn't just report everything he knew to the authorities, but what good would that do if the Grimm Brotherhood had such a far reach? Who would stop them if anyone high up in the academies or law enforcement were in on it too? Someone inside like Gavin was the only one who could really do anything in any case.

"Okay…" he nodded, "What do we need to do to stop these creeps from doing anything else?"

"That mean you're in?" Gavin looked to Set expectantly.

"I… yeah… I am…" he agreed hesitantly.

"Great!" Gavin pressed another chain of commands into his scroll. His armor returned to the normal color scheme Set was used to seeing, "Let's get going then. We don't have much time before your match!"

.

"You almost there?" Gavin's voice came through Set's scroll.

"Yeah," Set kept his scroll close to his ear as he strolled through the halls towards the announcer's booth. If there's anything that his many pranks at Beacon taught him, then it was that acting natural makes any onlookers assume that you were supposed to be there. Sure, this was a faculty only area, but the person on the other end of his scroll was probably a teacher that asked him to retrieve something for him as far as anyone else was concerned, "The announcer's booth is just up ahead."

"Good. So when you get there, just plug the flash drive into the announcer's board. Carmen and Professor Wells shouldn't be there, but if they are, just say that you took a wrong turn. Knowing Carmen, she'll probably just think you're there to cause trouble and make you leave before you do anything 'too bad'," Set could hear shuffling on the other end, "Once you have it in, just log into your school profile and I'll take everything over from here. I'll need you to stay there until I'm done so you can remove the flash drive. Hopefully nobody decides to show up before I'm done doing what I need to do to shut down whatever those maniacs are planning."

"Right, got it," Set reached down to his pocket to double check that the flash drive was still there. For the sake of not being too inconspicuous, the device was nothing more than the average blue plastic flash drive that a student might have on a keychain. The door was just ahead, its knob within reach. The announcer's booth was empty. Gavin was sure of that, and he could trust that. Still, there was a hint of doubt in him as he pushed the door open.

The lights were off, the control board wasn't lit up, and the two chairs were completely empty. Perfect. Carmen's spot was clearly the one with the scuffs on the edge of the counter just below the window overlooking the arena. Her fancy footwork in dusty hiking shoes had left little piles of dirt near the mic. Vivian's spot was clear, but that could have just been the work of Shirley. She certainly did seem like a neat freak. Sitting just next to where each announcer's feet should have been were two computer towers, each with two USB ports on the front.

He shut the door behind him and turned the latch. No one would ever know that it was left unlocked, which was likely just due to Carmen being Carmen.

"Does it matter which one I get into?" Set whispered.

"Both are the same. The announcer's booth is all tied to the screens and audio in the arena, which is what I need to hit first. That's just one sub-component of all the systems that runs this thing. From there, I should be able to get all the way in and mess with the hidden files and scripts the Grimm Brotherhood's put in there. If I do this right, I should be able to change everything without them realizing I've undone all our work. The ability to let them control things like biome selection was just a test and more than likely one of the many uses of whatever code they already put in the system."

"Why can't you just delete all the code then?" Set knelt and inserted the flash drive into Carmen's tower. It wouldn't look nearly as bad if something weird happened from her end, "Okay, it's in. Now log in?"

"Yeah." Gavin could be heard typing, "I can't delete it because then they'd get suspicious of it being gone. I'm just reworking it so it still looks right, but fail when they try to do anything bigger than just making the Floating Islands appear a bit more than expected. I'm going to make it to where if they try to run a script that would put people in any real danger, they'll get a big fat error message."

While he didn't know how any of it worked, he was happy to take Gavin's word for it. He flicked on the announcer's control board. All that came up was a blank blue screen asking for his username and password: SetL9033 and dontcallanuanu, respectively.

"I see that instead of taking your brother's advice, you turned it into your password."

"Hey, I remember it, and I doubt anyone's gonna guess it," Set grumbled. He leaned against the counter, "This gonna take long, man? I know this is for the good of the world, but I _seriously_ don't want to get disqualified."

"Depends how much there is, but I know this coding pretty well. Pretty uniform across all the branches, it seems. I can get through it quick, but if there's a lot of it to get through, you're just going to have to bear with me for a minute or two."

"Awesome…" the match was in forty-five minutes, and Set was getting nervous. Carmen or Shirley would probably be in there early, and there wasn't anywhere to hide in the relatively small announcer's booth. He only had one way out, and it just happened to be the only way in, "Just please hurry as much as you can, dude."

"I'm trying. I'm trying. Just stay calm, bud," the sounds of furious typing filled Set's ears, "I should… almost… got it!"

The screen on the announcer's board went from blue to red, then faded back to normal at Gavin's apparent joy. It had taken much less time that Set had expected, but maybe Gavin was just that good. Whatever the Grimm Brotherhood was teaching, it covered a _lot_ more than the curriculum of the academies.

"So… pull the flash drive out and log off..?" Set whispered.

"Yep. We're all done. The additions they made Amity's code would've caused _big_ trouble during the closing ceremony," Gavin muttered in quiet amazement, "Looks like you just helped save a _lot_ of people, Set."

"Wh-what would it have done had they activated… the… stuff?"

Gavin went silent, "I honestly think it'd be better if I didn't tell you, but once I expose the Grimm Brotherhood and the psychos at the reins are brought to justice, you bet your ass you'll be in all the headlines with me. 'Infiltrator and Class Clown Take Down International Terrorist Group From the Inside'. It'll be amazing won't it? Knowing that we saved so many people?"

"Yeah…" All Set could think about was the smile that his father would have on his face when he found out. Maybe it didn't matter that he wasn't who his family wanted him to be, "Yeah. It will be! We ac-"

The tumblers of the lock clicked.

"Yes, I'm really surprised you have so many students that share ice-based abilities all in a team. Must make melding their abilities together that much easier!"

Set recognized the voice as the headmaster of Haven, who was standing in for Vivian Willows as co-announcer with Carmen. He scrambled to grab the thumb drive and shoved it into his pocket.

"They're great, aren't they?!" Carmen's chipper voice rang out in the hall, "Hey… I swear I left the door unlocked…"

"You what?" Shirley asked accusingly.

"N-nothing. I was just- SET?!"

"Hey, teach!" Set tried to not look so wide-eyed as Carmen and Shirley stood in the doorway. He just had to play it cool. He could do this. Everything would be fine, "Just wanted to check out the view from up here! It's nice!"

Before Carmen could say anything, Shirley shot forward, "Students are _not_ allowed up here! Only school faculty and Amity staff! Wh-why are you up here?! Who even are you?!"

"Set Luna, nice to meet you!" Set stepped forward to meet Shirley halfway, "Like I said, just checking out the view! Gotta say, though, I like this one much better! That red armor/dress combo looks great on you, Professor Wells."

"Luna?" Shirley snapped her head towards Carmen, " _He's_ a Luna? I thought they frowned upon breaking rules and causing trouble?"

"I mean, their family does. Team ASHS, not so much. Remember that time I climbed the CCT Tower at Beacon?" Carmen tried her best to save face in the situation, "Team ASHS pulled that off too last Fall. Set likes to cause more than his fair share of trouble… but this is a first."

"Set Luna of Team ASHS…" Shirley pinched the bridge of her nose, "So not only is he one of yours, but he's also participating in the fight that's supposed to start in thirty minutes?" she threw up her hands, "Honestly, I should be saying he's gotten his team _disqualified_ from the fight that's supposed to start in forty-five minutes."

Set's heart sank, "I-I-I… what…?"

"Woah, woah, woah, hold on," Carmen ran her fingers back through her hair. Sure, this breach of security couldn't go unpunished, but she knew Set well. She knew that he was probably just pulling another prank. He meant no harm, "I am sure that his intent wasn't to cause any damage."

"Then why is he logged in to the system?!" Shirley snapped. She began tapping at the controls, "If he-"

"Check the buzzer…" Carmen rolled her eyes.

"Check the buzzer…?" Shirley tapped the icon to sound the buzzer that normally only was to go off when a student was taken out of the fight.

For the next thirty seconds, the announcer's booth was filled with the ripping sounds of a symphony of flatulence. By the time the audio file was finally done, both Set and Carmen were both biting back tears and giggles.

"Oh my god…" Carmen put a hand over her mouth to keep from completely losing it, "Yup… Set's just recycling an old prank. He snuck into my office last year and replaced the sound effects in one of my slideshows to this. It's fine, really."

 _So Gavin really did think of everything…_ Set let out a sigh of relief and continued with his act, "You caught me… Gotta admit, that would have been _hilarious_ had it gone off."

Shirley looked far less than pleased. She stood back up straight, her arms flat against her sides. Her clenched fists trembled. Behind that veil of blood red lipstick, her teeth were clenched. Had Set's little 'prank' worked, she would have been the laughing stock of all of Remnant, "This is completely unacceptable."

Set took a step back. Just the sight of her going so rigid made his heart pound inside his chest and his blood run cold. While Shirley normally seemed so put together, that wasn't the case anymore.

"Come on, Shirley. It's not _that_ bad," Carmen put a hand on Set's shoulder, "We'll just have a talk with Alabaster, Khidna, and V real quick and sort this out. No need to make this a big deal. We can sort this out."

"Get... him... out... of... here… now…" Shirley ordered just above a whisper.

"Will do!" Carmen tugged on Set's arm, "Come on."

"Sure thing, teach!" he stepped out with Carmen.

She shut the door behind them. After pulling him a little way down the hall, she stopped, "Okay, that was incredibly stupid."

Set tried to keep his composure, "But my team isn't disqualified…?"

"I don't know, Set. That was a really, really, really, really, _REALLY_ stupid stunt to pull. If we're following the policies of the Vytal Festival Committee to the dot, then you just kicked your team out of the tournament, but…" Carmen sighed. She was going to have to kiss up hard if she was going to keep him out of too much trouble, "I don't think your team will be disqualified this close to your match. It'd completely screw up the schedule and make a _lot_ of people made for sticking around all the way up here. I'm sure I can talk Alabaster and V down at least," she paused for a moment, "If it really was just the farting buzzer, that is…"

"It was! I promise!" he held up his hands, "Dude, I don't even know how to do any of that computer stuff hardly. I swear!"

"Okay…" she nodded for him to leave, "Just go before Shirley decides to have you actually speak to all of the headmasters."

"Right! Understood!"

.

Set poked his head into the locker room. No sign of Anubis, Hati, or Sköll yet. That was a relief. With only fifteen minutes until the fight, he hoped that he and Anubis could just walk in and get it over with. Carmen would fix everything. She always did. It would be fine.

"Hey."

He jumped, leaping straight up and banged his head against the top of the doorframe. As the stars cleared, he turned to see Anubis standing perfectly still behind him, "O-Oh! Hey, bro! What's going on?"

Anubis looked concerned for a second. _He's… jumpy._ "I wanted to say this before we went out there. I'm... sorry," he felt horrible. He could barely look his twin in the eyes, "You were doing something as difficult as coming out to me, _me_ , your own brother, and I couldn't think of anything but us using that to just… you know, throw Dad the middle finger. I was a jerk. I should've been more supportive and actually _listened_."

"Oh…" Set watched his brother carefully. _Gavin was wrong about one thing… Anubis does care…_ he thought as Anubis just stood there waiting for a response. He never expected this out of his twin, but he also hadn't expected it of Sköll, or of anyone else for that matter, "Uh… It's fine, bro. Really, but… thanks. I really needed to hear that," he did his best to wipe the tear growing at the corner of his eye, "So… we're cool, and you're cool with me being… this way… or…?"

"Like I said, I don't care who you're into," Anubis looked at his watch and hurried to his locker to get his weapons. After shuffling around with ammunition and Dust vials for a moment, he stopped,"That's why I'm going to stop obsessing over taking down our family traditions."

"Wait, what?" Set's mouth fell open, "Anu, you don't have to-"

Anubis hooked his khopeshes to his shendyt and closed his locker to cut his brother off, "No. I've already made up my mind. I have been so caught up with trying to take down over a _hundred_ years of what has made the Lunas… Lunas. I've never read about a Luna being gay in the past, but I'm sure you're not the first. Being the Huntsman is the only way for you to slip through the cracks and live at least a semi-happy life," Anubis turned to Set, grabbing him by the shoulders, "I will spend the rest of my life in Menagerie if it means you don't have to be miserable living a lie. You're right. I'm a fool for trying to go against my family. I'll either end up outcast or dead if I keep on the road I'm on. That's why I'm willing to become patriarch. You can tell Dad when, or even if, you ever become ready to, but I'm leaving that up to you," he let go, "I won't use you as a tool in my vindictive revenge against our family name."

Set couldn't believe what he was hearing. Every conversation with Anubis had turned into taking down the family traditions ever since their fight before prom, but now he was just throwing it all away for the sake of his brother. As selfless as it was, he couldn't help but feel a little guilty. He didn't want Anubis to be forced into a marriage he didn't want. He wanted him to be happy too, "Listen, we don't have to make a decision like that right now, bro… It's fine. Really. We've got a while until then, and we'll have more time to think about this. I just… I'm just happy that you're here for me, man… That's more of you than I could ever ask. Right now, we can just wait… besides, we might have more present problems to deal with…"

Anubis cocked his head as he looked to his watch, "Wha-what do you mean? You scared about our fight or something?" the clockface showed that they had only ten minutes, "I mean, a fight is a fight. We'll be fine. That's the least of my concerns right now to be honest."

"Yeah, about that…" Set twiddled his thumbs, "I… uh… pulled a little prank earlier…"

"Set… how _little_ of a prank?" Anubis knew his brother. There was no such thing as a 'little prank'. His earlier compassion was immediately replaced by his usual state of annoyance, "We're at _Vytal_ of all places, right before we go into the doubles, and you pull a _prank?!_ "

"I did-"

"That can fly at Beacon, but at Vytal that can get us in _big trouble, Set!_ "

"I mean, it already probably did… Professor Wells was pretty pissed…" Set threw on a grin, "but it's cool! Professor Maple said she'd do what she could!"

"Set. What did you do? You _never_ get this defensive over your pranks."

"Remember what I did to that slideshow that Carmen had?"

Anubis went dead silent. He stepped over to the side of the room, sat on a bench, and cupped his face in his hands, "You wanted to play farting noises to _all of Remnant_ … during the centennial celebration of the end of the Great War?"

"Every time the buzzer sounded…" Set lied. How could he tell Anubis what he was really doing? Working with a Grimm Brotherhood agent wouldn't fly, and saying that it was to take the Grimm Brotherhood down from the inside wouldn't be believable. He had to stick to what Gavin intended him to if anything went wrong, "I mean, it's okay! Carmen said we probably wouldn't get disqualified!"

Set suddenly found himself being shoved against the lockers.

" _Probably_ wouldn't get disqualified? After a _year_ of training for this, we _probably_ won't get disqualified?" Anubis was nearly snarling at his brother as he held him against the cold metal of the locker, "All because you wanted to play _fart noises_?"

When Anubis started apologizing, there was a glimmer of hope that he might take things well, but that had completely disappeared, "In my defense, Carmen laughed pretty hard!"

" _That's because she's just a grown child!_ " Anubis let go of Set and began pulling at his ears, "That means _nothing_ , Set. _She's_ not the ultimate authority around here. You said it yourself. _Shirley Wells_ , the _headmistress_ of Haven Academy is pissed at you! What are the other headmasters going to say, Set? What?! What if we get out there, beat READ, and tomorrow morning they call us and say 'sorry, you can't continue because one of you _got into the stadium's secure audio systems to play fart noises?!_ '"

"Would it have been better if it was something else… like a kazoo or something?"

A buzzing noise came from Anubis's pocket. He pulled out his scroll, and began nodding as he answered.

"Wh-who is it?" Although Set already knew the answer.

"Who do you think?" Anubis snapped back, not even looking to him as he answered the call, putting it on speaker so Set could hear, too, "Hello, Professor Maple."

"Heeeeey, Anubis!" Carmen sounded far less chipper than usual, "So did Set already tell you about-"

"Yes, he did," he glared up to his brother.

"Hey, teach…" Set could feel beads of cold sweat forming on his brow.

"Hey, Set!" the sound of a door shutting came from Carmen's end, "So the headmasters just finished up discussing what to do about the whole buzzer thing. The good news is that Team ASHS isn't disqualified since nothing particularly harmful was done. The buzzer was an easy fix."

Set let out a sigh of relief.

"You're about to say 'but', aren't you, Professor?" Anubis asked flatly.

"...but you need to get Hati or Sköll to replace Set…"

"I'm sorry, what?" Anubis began to pace, his sandals slapping loudly against the tile as he did so. His blood was boiling, "We have less than _ten minutes_ before our fight! We don't even have time to strategize!"

"I'm sorry, guys… Even Alabaster said that this couldn't go completely unpunished," Carmen tried her best to ease the blow, "It's better than being completely disqualified. Anubis, you can still fight well with either Hati or Sköll. It'll be okay!"

"That wasn't the problem…" Anubis tugged on one of his wolf ears with his free hand, "Have you already messaged them? I don't know if they're even up here."

"I just did…" Set waved his scroll in front of Anubis, "They're on their way… I…" he looked down, "I'm so sorry, Anu…"

"Just tell me that again after the fight," Anubis shut his scroll, turned, and went down the hall, "I have to try to figure something out with Sköll or Hati before we get our asses handed to us."

"Anu, wait!" Set began to run after him, "Hey! Hold on!"

Anubis spun around and looked his twin dead in the eyes, "Don't talk to me right now. Please. I'm really trying not to go off on you right now," he turned and continued down the hall, "And for the last time, stop calling me Anu."


	65. V3Ch12: Raked Over the ASHS

Things had gone rather well in Vytal as far as hair care went. For a girl with oily hair like Dante's, having the saltwater and the seabreeze to dry it out a little was absolutely wonderful. Unlike at Beacon, she was actually able to run over to the Mistral quadrant of the island to pick up her favorite products. Not only did this give her time to read in the mornings, as she had found she loved even with school in session, but it also allowed her to actually socialize with her brother, friends, and even her teammates. The reserved, shy, scary girl that everyone knew at Haven had begun to grow into a sociable, caring, but still scary woman after seeing a little bit of the world outside her bubble.

To her partner, the Deer Faunus by the name of Eden Green, that was just simply wonderful. Finally, she could take Dante to movie nights with other students, get her to join in on study groups, and even drag her along to the salon to talk about girl things with the hairdressers, though the subject of boys never lead anywhere much to her dismay. Dante finally seemed like a typical girl in her teens.

"So," Eden paced around the Mistrali locker room whilst twirling a thick hemp rope around in circles, "I've seen those ASHS boys in action. These guys _are_ Lunas. To Faunus as a whole, they're famous for their fighting ability and their history in Menagerie. For a Faunus like _me_ ," She pointed up to her antlers, a blatant sign that her animalistic tendencies were that of prey, "this is like fighting… well, a couple of wolves. I'm not exactly thrilled about going up against them."

Dante looked up from where she was sitting on one of the benches. In her left gauntleted hand, she had an apple. In her uncovered right hand, she held _The Complete Fiction of H. E. Loverust_ open to its last ten pages. Over the course of the semester, she had read it occasionally, but would take breaks in between to reread some works from her favorite poet: Edgar Allen Doe.

"I'm not worried. They're nothing too special," she said before taking another bite of her apple. She had thought about her strengths and weaknesses against nearly all of her temporary classmates. In relation to Team ASHS, she believed that her Semblance would help her counter most things, especially elemental affinities like the ones that Hati and Sköll had. Anubis and Set would have her beat at a range, but she could just buff herself to quickly close the distance. The equalizing effect of her own Semblance is what brought her to the doubles round, and she had faith that it would take her to the singles.

Eden snorted, "Someone's sounding confident!" she reached up and tightened the knot holding her bandana to her head. She parted her mossy green hair around her antlers, then made sure that the end was tied off. With her mint tank top, cropped khaki vest, matching khaki shorts, pair of worn hiking boots, she looked better suited for a day hike than a battle against a pair of werewolves. However, the various Dust crystals, saw blades, rocks, and other small objects fastened to her belt told a much different story.

While it was hard to set the book down, especially when she was so close to finishing it, Dante mustered up the strength to lay it down on the bench, "I enjoy fighting just a little bit. I don't feel as shaky when I'm in the ring. If we can flatten an Atlas team like we did in round one, then I doubt a Vale team is going to cause us too much trouble. It'll just be more exciting is all."

"Homeland has nothing to do with skill level, Dante. All it tells you is what _kind_ of training someone may have." A deeper, quieter male voice came from the doorway leading into the locker room.

Looking over, the two girls saw a tall and lanky young man. He was mocha-complected, and his shaggy black hair was marred by a streak of sky blue leading up from his forehead. While his black pants were patched up with a myriad of cloth scraps of every color and pattern, his giant dull blue fur coat was obviously not cheap. The coat _was_ his pride and joy, after all. He lazily chewed on a piece of straw as he watched the two girls chatting. "Beacon's just as good as Haven and Atlas. Who knows, maybe that extra training back home in Menagerie might just give them a leg up on you two."

"You're right, I shouldn't be so prideful," Dante chided herself. She passed a glance over to her leader. As much as she hated how vain he was with that stupid coat, she respected him as a leader. If he was telling even her to pull on the reigns a bit, then she was seriously stepping over her bounds, "I do think that my Semblance will do wonders, though. As long as Eden keeps them off of me…"

"Which I will!" Eden smiled, poking her temple with her index finger. "Don't worry about that!"

"...then we're golden. I can handle two buffs and two debuffs for the duration of a short match."

"There's your problem." Robin shook his head, his expression staying serious and solid, "What if it's not a short match? What if ASHS makes it last longer than you expect? Last time I checked, you're not exactly an endurance fighter."

Eden stepped up behind Dante and wrapped her arms around her neck for a hug, "Then I can take care of the Witch of Team READ! Take out one, then gang up on the other. Come on, Rob, just have a little faith in us!"

Having someone so close made it a little hard to breath, so Dante hesitantly slipped out of Eden's hold to stand up. She brushed the wrinkles out of her cloak, "I will analyze the situation, and perform as necessary. I'll limit the use of my Semblance. No need to go all out immediately, right? I would guess that's what you wanted to hear?"

Robin considered her words for a moment before nodding slowly. "Not saying you can't use it. I just know how you get when you go overboard. I'd hate to see you get knocked out of the fight by ASHS, but I'd hate it more if you did yourself in." He looked around the locker room, "Ahab been in to wish you luck?"

"You know him…" she rubbed her arm anxiously, "He warned me to not fail and make Mother look bad. That's all he cares about in that regard, I guess."

Robin sighed, "Same old Ahab then."

"Unfortunately…" she picked up her borrowed book and laid it down in her temporary locker, "Let's get on with this, okay? I'm getting jumpy just sitting here."

.

" _ **WELCOME TO THE FINAL MATCH OF THE DOUBLES ROUND OF THE FIFTIETH VYTAL FESTIVAL TOURNAMENT! IN JUST A FEW MOMENTS, TEAM ASHS OF VALE AND TEAM READ OF HAVEN WILL GO HEAD TO HEAD IN A BATTLE FOR THE AGES!"**_ Carmen shouted into her microphone. Just below the foot that was planted up on the counter was one of the IT guys who was performing a full system check after Set's antics, " _ **WHO'S READY TO SEE THESE FANTASTIC STUDENTS DESTROY EACH OTHER?!"**_

As the crowd roared, Carmen looked down to the IT guy, "So, is everything good, or…?"

"I… uh… fixed the farting buzzer…" he crawled back out, "You should be good now. I didn't find anything that would cause any problems."

"Great!" she shooed him out, then went on as soon as the door was shut, "See, Shirley? Nothing to worry about."

Shirley sat rigid, elbows on the table in front of her as her eyes stayed locked on the battlefield. "I still think ASHS should be disqualified for attempting to make a mockery of the tournament." She began clenching her interlocked fingers together, "Before Dante's fight, for crying out loud. How humiliating would it have been if she had beaten one of them, only for it to be followed by… those noises?" She looked over to Carmen, an incredulous look spread across her face, "Would that not have been _humiliating_?"

"I mean, it would have been pretty funny, to be fair. A good fart joke never hurt anyone…" Carmen watched the combatants take the stage, "And you can't go playing favorites, Shirley… or do… I mean, I'm pretty guilty of it, but I don't let it affect my judgement up here! Then again, I don't have kids in this…" she sat back in her seat, "Whatever, just don't stress over it! It's fine, dude. Everything is fine."

Shirley scrunched up her nose, "D… Did you just call me… dude?"

"I call everyone that," Carmen raised an eyebrow, "I can call you dudette, if that makes you more comfortable. Dudeira? Dudie? Dudella?"

"Forget I said anything."

.

"Hey, Anubis, you _really_ need to calm down. We'll do fine." Hati clapped his brother on the shoulder. "We're used to winging it!"

Anubis pushed his arm away, "We're only used to winging it because every time we try to have a plan for anything, someone ends up screwing it up."

Hati went quiet. Obviously, nothing was going to quell Anubis's anger for the time being. "Well… we may not have a _real_ plan, but we have our strategy. That's something, right?"

No response.

"Right… Hey! Eden!" Wanting to get out of the awkward tension with his brother, Hati waved to his friend from the Faunus clique. "How's it hangin'?"

"Oh, you know, just chilling!" Eden spun her rope around and around at her side, "What about you guys? Heard on our way here that you ran into a little trouble before the match!"

Hati began slicing his hand horizontally across his throat in an attempt to get Eden to change the subject. "Yo… ix-nay on the ouble… tray?..."

"I can hear you, moron." Anubis said bluntly, not taking his eyes off of the two girls standing in front of him as the biome randomizer began cycling through the potential battlegrounds.

"Right… forgot about the ears for a second." Hati winced.

Already at his breaking point, Anubis had to clench his fists around the handles of his khopesh pistols to keep himself from smacking Hati on the back of the head. "Or…" He began to say through gritted teeth, "it's because I'm standing _right next to you_."

Dante looked her opponents over. Anubis was clearly angry, so maybe he wouldn't be such a hazard. Hati, however, would likely keep her from getting any words out. Even though the plan that Team ASHS originally had was out, that didn't mean they were harmless.

"Is Abby always this upset…?" she asked her partner.

"Abby…?" Eden stared at her for a few moments, "Okay, that's one of the worse ways you've screwed up a name yet. How do you get Abby from Anubis?"

"I'm sorry… I just thought I heard Abby. His name is Nuisance. I get it. It's fine…" Dante opened her Dust infused book in her left hand, "Is everything okay, Nuisance?"

Anubis didn't answer.

 _At least she didn't call him Anu…_ Hati thought to himself. _We'd definitely get disqualified for attacking before the countdown ends_. "Keep cool, bro. We got this."

Around them, the biomes began to rise up from the ground. Behind and to the left of Eden and Dante came a sprawling field of ice dotted with towering ice spikes, and to their back right came a marsh filled with vine covered trees which sprouted up from the water. To the back left of Anubis and Hati came a mountain with an accompanying patch of grass at its base and a thundercloud at its peak, and to their back right came a rocky stretch filled with geysers and steam. The final biomes for the 50th Vytal Festival Tournament were set. The countdown began.

"Well then," Dante flicked her cloak back to show off her monochrome plate armor. She drew her Fire Dust infused fire poker and held it out to the ASHS boys. She couldn't show even a hint of fear now, for she would risk them calling her bluff. Her grip tightened on the book clasped in her left hand, "Shall we?"

Eden yanked a saw blade from her belt and tied it to the end of her rope. It whizzed through the air as she spun it, "No hard feelings after this, right? You guys are super fun, and I'd hate to lose such good friends over a little butt kicking, you know?" she smiled as she stared them down. Showing the fear brought from her Faunus trait, that which was based in an animal of prey rather than a predator, could be her downfall, but having her partner at her side made it a little easier.

Anubis crossed his khopeshes in front of him and spaced his feet apart, ready to run right for his opponents the moment he saw an opportunity.

Hati was worried about his brother. Anubis had a temper, but the rage in his eyes as he stood in the ring ready to attack Team READ was a new form of anger altogether. Hati couldn't blame him, though. Set screwed up and put them at a big disadvantage. _I don't want to take sides… but that can wait until after we win_. He raised his shield and readied his gunblade as the counter grew closer to zero.

"Three! Two! One!" Shirley counted down with the timer. As the loud buzzer rang out, she yelled "Fight!" Enthusiastically into the microphone in front of her.

 _Wow, Mother seems a lot more excited than I expected- "AH!"_ Dante yelped as Anubis' curved swords smashed against her fire poker. Thankfully, her reflexes took over soon enough to have her weapon crossed to catch the swords, but her wrist buckled under the force of him pushing. Aggression was the name of the game, apparently.

Clangs rang out and sparks flew as Anubis made wide and quick slashes with his weapons. Each hit knocked Dante back bit by bit. He raised one weapon high above his head, the other back and behind him. He brought both blades towards Dante. Both caught her fire poker. With extreme force coming from above and below, the black rod was launched from her grasp. It flew across the field, impaling itself into a tree in the marsh.

Dante had lost most of her defensive capability, and Anubis wasn't letting up as he began pulling the triggers at the base of each blade as he swung. Bright flashes and gunshots accompanied his strikes now.

So much for saving her Semblance, "Let wind weave and flow!" Dante shouted as she backed up from each swipe, "Through my words, body, and soul!" she ducked to avoid an incoming shot, "And bring vi-" the white haze gathering at her feet disappeared as she was slapped across the cheek by the flat of one of Anubis's swords.

"Get off of her!" Eden shouted. She spun her rope overhead, then brought the saw blade at the end down towards Dante's attacker, but it merely bounced off of wood and iron. Hati was already standing between her and her partner, "Really, Hati?!"

"Sorry 'bout that, Deary!" He ran for her, blade raised. As he pulled the trigger at the hilt, bullets shot towards Eden. He had to keep her away while Anubis took care of Roland's sister. He jumped, sword raised to strike. He brought it down on the Faunus girl, but missed, his blade clanging against the ground before he went for another strike. "Can't have you interrupting my little brother." She held her rope taut in front of her. To Hati's surprise, his blade didn't cut through the rope. _What is that thing even made of?!_ "You probably don't want to anyway. He might just turn and start attacking _you_ instead." He flashed a grin to her. "Wouldn't want that now, eh?"

"Okay, listen," Eden yanked her rope back towards herself, the blade at the end threatening to slice Hati had he not let go. In a flash, she replaced the saw blade at the end with a yellow Dust crystal. With a frustrated sigh, she cracked her rope like a whip, sending a bolt of lightning out at Hati, " _YOU HAD BETTER RUN BEFORE I ELECTROCUTE THAT STUPID TAIL OF YOURS."_

Hati's eyes widened as he turned and ran. Out of all the time the various Faunus students had spent together, all he had known about Eden's fighting style was "rope and stuff". He never thought something so simple could be so effective, but as he stood there, the fur on his tail standing on end, he realized he was very, _very_ wrong about that. Switching to a defensive tactic, he began running in a wide circle around Eden, hoping to get to Anubis to help him take down Dante. While he wanted the benefit of a 2-on-1 fight, he really just wanted to get away from Eden for the time being.

 _Wow, can't believe that actually worked…_ Eden followed Hati as he circled her. That gave her just the opening that she wanted. For a few seconds, there was nothing between her and Anubis. She cracked the end of her rope towards him, blasting him in the side with a bolt of lightning right when he was about to strike Dante.

Light flashed across Dante, leaving her standing alone and blinking away the blue blotches in her vision, "Well…" once her vision cleared, she could see Anubis tumbling over into the Swamp Biome, "Thanks, Eden!"

"No prob!" Eden grinned at Hati, "Good going, man."

"Dammiiiiiit…" Hati whined, "Sorry, Anu...bis! Sorry, Anubis!" He finished his brother's name, realizing that he probably didn't want to be called by his annoying nickname at that point in time. As another bolt of electricity surged past his face, he tried to figure out what to do next. "Does… does fire beat electricity?" He pondered as he kept absentmindedly dodging cracks from Eden's rope. "Hey, bro! Can fire beat electricity?!"

Anubis slid through the mud and shallow water of the swamp, leaving a sizable rut in the ground before slamming his back into a tree. He held his head and side in an attempt to shake off the blow. "What?!"

"Does fire. Beat. Electricity!?" Hati shouted as he blocked shots with his shield, occasionally swinging if Eden got too close.

"What kind of stupid question is tha _-oof_?!" He was forced back against the tree by a heavy armored boot. Looking up, he found Dante looking down at him, her grimoire open. She reached her hand over his head. Apparently, the tree he was currently sitting under was the same one Dante's fire poker had been embedded in. With a quick yank, a shower of tree bark fell onto Anubis as Dante retrieved her weapon.

"I'm talkin' Lunacy, bro! Should I?" Hati yelped as he was caught off-guard by a strong kick to the chest. He fell to the ground as Eden advanced.

Dante passed a quick glance to Hati and Eden, "He's asking you a question. It'd be rude not to answer," she turned to a green page in her grimoire, "Terrible maw gasping from below. Thou must bow to that wretched abyss, for there is no escape from its tow. Thou will die under earth's crushing kiss."

A stoney smell filled Anubis's nose. His arms and legs sunk down into the mud, weighed down by the grey pebbles growing across them. A faint green glow shimmered around his body. A crushing feeling weighed down harder and harder against his chest, as if he was going to suffocate.

Divina, Dante's trusty fire poker, collapsed down into a black iron flare gun with a glowing red muzzle, "I haven't used Earth Dust in a long time, so thank you for the opportunity… Anu, was it?"

Anubis began snarling. Hati, he could forgive, but this girl standing above him, she didn't understand the anger he had towards that name. "Don't. Call. Me. _Anu!_ "

At first, Dante was confident that her Earth Dust debuff would keep Anubis down for a while, but that certainly was not the case. She could only watch as the Luna family Semblance took effect on him. Shadows curled around his body and nullified her debuff on him. All she could do as black fur and golden eyes appeared from the mass of shadows was back away. A pitch black jackal with bared teeth gleaming white took Anubis's place. She noticed that the light pattern around his eye was now blatantly visible against his dark fur.

Her reaction to Anubis's canine form wasn't that of fear, but of something much more humiliating, "Awwww… you're adorable, Anu…" she cooed at him.

Anubis bared his teeth as he let out a loud snarl. He lunged at her, teeth ready to snap down on her arm.

His teeth caught the full gauntlet holding her grimoire. He began shaking it back and forth, nearly pulling Dante's arm out of its socket until the book finally flew from her grasp.

Nearby, Eden had Hati pinned against a large boulder that was a fixture of the mountain biome. Seeing Anubis disarming and squaring off against Dante, his confidence returned tenfold. "I'll take that as a yes, then!" He looked up to Eden, "Might want to back off." Fire began to burn around him and, by extension, Eden's exposed calves, "Don't want you to get burnt, Deary."

"Great…" Eden leapt back. She could feel a tingling sensation in her core. Fear seeped its way into her mind. Hati was becoming something that she couldn't help but fear with her Faunus nature. As the vortex of flames faded to reveal a hefty golden wolf, something in her mind trembled. Even though he wasn't a wild animal, she couldn't help but feel like she was in a life or death situation.

 _No, chill out. He wouldn't hurt you too bad. That's still Hati,_ she forced herself to remember that dumb smile as she watched the snarling wolf slowly pacing towards her. The fires puffing out from around his fur weren't helping matters either. Why Robin thought it was a great idea to send her to the doubles round was anyone's guess. She couldn't do anything alone.

"Dante!" she called. Her feet moved without her thinking, sending her bolting across the arena to her partner, "Help!"

Anubis still had a thrashing hold on Dante's arm, but he was finding it more and more difficult to actually do anything substantial. Then he caught the red hot muzzle of her gun out of the corner of his eye.

"Having fun using me as a chew toy?" Dante slammed her finger down on the trigger to send a flaming ball of Dust into the side of his chest.

Anubis went sprawling to the ground, but quickly got back on his feet. He watched as the girl in the red cloak went to group back up with her partner. Further back, he saw Hati chasing after Eden. _Gotta get a plan together_. The black jackal reared his head back and howled to the sky above before yipping a few times.

 _Aw damn, Anu..._ Hati thought to himself as he slid to a stop. He barked a few times to Anubis. ' _Come on man! I almost had her!_ '

' _That's not the point, Hati. They're trying to keep us separated and set up a plan._ ' While they were no longer speaking and instead making typical canine vocalizations, they could still understand each other perfectly. Having a second language that was characterized by only whimpers, howls, barks, and growls was strange, but it was an added perk that came with the Luna's "Lunacy" Semblance.

' _So… shouldn't that make us want to take them out_ now _before they get a plan together?'_

' _Too dangerous with Dante and her Semblance._ '

' _But you have her book… over there.'_

' _Doesn't matter. Roland told me she can still do stuff if she has Dust. She doesn't_ need _the book_."

' _Okay… so what are you suggesting?'_

' _Just follow my lead. Circle them. Try to divide them and then attack them from both sides. If it comes to it, lead them to the mountain and heat things up. We can get around those rocks better than they can._ '

Hati made a strange rolling grumbling noise before continuing with barks and yips, ' _Coolio. Let's do it._ '

' _Stop trying to make new words in Wolf, stupid.'_

' _Spoilsport.'_

Dante stood beside Eden on the edge of the Ice Biome. All she had on her was her trusty flare gun. Anubis still stood between her and her precious book, "Anubis isn't going to let me get my book for a bit, I don't think. I think they know I can counter them more effectively while they're like this…"

"Yeah, they do," Eden nodded. Hopefully she could conceal her own Semblance for long enough to throw them off guard. Having the wonderful ability to interpret animal sounds into her native tongue was a strange Semblance, but it was really handy when dealing with a Luna. Looking back, that was probably the exact reason Robin put her in. There was no way he could've known that Team READ would go up against Team ASHS, but the possibility alone was enough for him to make that decision, "I'm kinda freaking out a bit, but I can get your book back if you hold Anubis off. We can finish this quickly."

"Sounds good," Dante agreed, "What's the plan?"

"Just give me covering fire. Stab the little bastard if you need to," Eden pulled a jar from the back of her belt. Golden fluid stuck to the inside rim of the jar. She screwed off the top and dipped the end of her rope in, "Tree sap is a valuable resource. I got this off of that really pretty maple tree on campus back at Haven. Smell it!" she waved the sticky end of the rope in front of Dante's nose.

"Just try not to get too much sap on my book, okay?" Dante swatted Eden's weapon with the side of hers, "But that does smell really nice…"

"I know, right! Now, let's get on with this," Eden spun her rope at her side, "Hey! Anu! You too scared to take us on by yourself?! Is that it, _Anuuuuu?!"_

Anubis snarled and charged for Eden.

' _Stop calling me Anu!'_ He growled as he ran.

"Not a chance, buddy." Eden mumbled under her breath as she braced for the black wolf to attack.

Red rippled through the air as Dante whipped around in front of Eden. Her flare gun straightened out back into its fire poker form as she brought it up to brace between two clenched fists. Anubis's teeth slammed down against black iron, sending out a ear splitting metallic ring. Just the sound of his teeth slamming against metal made her cringe. She couldn't imagine how it actually felt.

Anubis recoiled, whipping his head from side to side to try to quell the burning sensation in his mouth that was somewhere between eating extremely spicy food and drinking coffee while it was still too hot, all while being stabbed in the mouth with a fork. _Dammit_. He thought to himself as he watched Eden snap her rope towards Dante's book.

"I believe _this_ ," She handed the 'spellbook' to her partner, "is yours."

Dante held her book in her hand, a smile playing at her lips despite the back cover being slightly sticky, "Retreat back into the Ice Biome?"

"Oh yeah. Hati won't be happy in there. Speaking of which…" Eden threw a knot around a blue Dust crystal on her belt. She flicked it to the side, sending an icy gale into the wolf that thought he was actually sneaking up from behind, "Nice try, Hati! I've got the whole prey thing going on! I'm too on edge for you to surprise me!"

Before her eyes, the icy gale turned into a thick fog. In an explosion, the large golden wolf came barrelling towards the two girls, its entire form wreathed in fire.

Eden and Dante turned, hearing snarling from close behind. Anubis was only a few feet away, cornering them and limiting their escape routes. Apparently, he had mostly recovered from biting into solid steel infused with Fire Dust.

"Think they're going to let me get a poem off?" Dante watched them both circle them, snarling and inching closer.

"Bet it's what they're waiting for…" Eden tensed up as each made laps around them, "Looks like we're screwed…"

' _On three, Hati._ '

' _Gotcha.'_

Eden smirked, "Or not... Start reading. Just listen close and do what I say."

' _One…'_ Anubis lowered his head and barked, eyes not leaving the two girls as Dante began to read. ' _Two'_ he barked again.

"Let wind weave and flow," Dante watched as they both readied themselves, "Through my words, body, and soul…"

" _DUCK!"_ Eden shouted as Anubis let out the third bark.

She and her partner fell to the ground, huddled against each other.

The two canines slammed into each other, their heads cracking loudly as they collided above their opponents.

"And bring victory!" Dante shouted, sending a white pulse out from her book. Both her and Eden were coated in a white haze of Dust. Finally, they had a real advantage, "Now run!" she shouted, "We have the wind at our backs!"

"Don't have to tell me twice!" Eden ran at Dante's side into the Ice Biome. She smiled back at the Luna boys, "Step it up, boys! Especially you, Anu!"

Anubis's pupils dilated from the pure rage surging through his mind. Wisps of shadows curled off of his body as he snarled. ' _I'm going to kill them.'_

Hati watched his brother carefully, ' _Hey… Anubis… maybe you should break Lunacy. It's not good to be so mad when you use it.'_

' _Shut up!'_ Anubis snapped towards him, ' _Shut up and chase them down. We're winning this fight! I'm not going to be taken down that easy!'_ Anubis started running in the direction Dante and Eden had ran. His paws slapped loudly as the tile below him was slowly replaced with ice.

Coming to a clearing amongst the massive swirling ice structures, Anubis looked around, scanning the area for his enemies. He sniffed the air, but couldn't find anything. ' _Dammit'_ he growled. He looked to Hati, who had just come to the same clearing. ' _Melt it. Melt this whole damn thing to the ground! Those cowards can't hide if there's nothing to hide behind.'_

Hati was startled at Anubis's manner of speaking… barking. Before he was about to protest, he figured it was safer to just do as his brother said. He spaced his legs apart and tensed up, the golden frills of fur standing on end as the air around him began to heat up.

' _We'll get them. I'm not losing because Set screwed everything up.'_ Anubis kept watch on the structures around them as they began to drip and melt.

"Is that what's going on, Anubis? Seriously?" Eden slid to a stop in the center of the Ice Biome. Dante was nowhere to be seen. She stared at the black jackal before her, "I get it. He did something stupid, but is that really a reason to get this bent out of shape?"

Anubis continued to snarl, but immediately stopped, petrified. ' _You… you can understand me?...'_

"Uh, yeah. I was going to keep it under wraps until after the fight, but… I honestly can't believe that you're that upset over Set. Like, seriously?" she held out her arms, "You're being unreasonably angry in a match that could decide your reputation across Remnant, and it's all because of something that happened outside of the ring. Come on. This isn't like you, Anu."

Anubis ran straight for her, snapping his teeth towards her as he lunged. ' _He's already ruined Team ASHS reputation. Everything I've worked on for a year has gone to waste! We had a strategy and he threw it away for a stupid prank!'_ He dashed and smashed his head into Eden, making her fly back. She landed with a light splash in the shallow melt water. Shadows consumed Anubis for a moment. When they dissipated, he was back to his normal, familiar self, but it was obvious his anger hadn't faded a bit. His khopeshes, which had apparently melded into the shadows during his transformation, were back in his hands as he charged towards Eden again, "And I'm tired of you two reminding me how much I've failed as a leader!" He pinned her to the ground, khopeshes crossed over her face, "I can't even control my own brothers most of the time! Every. Single. Time. They _screw_ something up for me, it's 'Sorry, Anu' this and 'We'll do better next time, Anu, we promise!'" He pushed harder against her, "I'm. Sick. Of. It."

Heat pounded against them like an open oven from a freshly melted ice spire. While Anubis was hoping that it was Hati ready to pounce. He wasn't so lucky. While Hati was locked down trying to melt the entire biome in accordance with Anubis's orders, Dante had the golden opportunity to buff both herself and her weapon with Fire Dust. The switch on the side of her weapon was flipped, leaving the crystal inside primed to eject itself at the pull of the trigger.

"That's the problem with you, Anubis. You want to control your brothers so bad that you forget that they're still your brothers," Dante's body glowed crimson red. Searing flames burned along her body harmlessly. Just hearing the last few words of his barking rant hit home to her. Maybe he would have had a chance in the fight had he controlled himself. Maybe he wouldn't have given her an opening, "but what do I know? I could never understand the feeling of having my brother go out of control, could I?"

Anubis whipped around, raising one khopesh to fire if he needed to.

It was too late. She had already pulled the trigger. Flames condensed around the barrel of her flare gun. A single Fire Dust crystal shot out of the end, red flames coating it like a meteor. Fire erupted around her to add to the raging inferno that slammed into Anubis.

A brilliant explosion hit Anubis in the middle of his chest, sending him flying backwards into a tall pillar of ice nearby. Due to the growing heat in the biome, it was brittle and weak, sending it shattering apart as he collided with it. A buzzer rang out as the large chunks of ice crumbled to the ground.

Hati stopped focussing on his thermal field upon hearing the buzzer. His ears perked as he tried to figure out who it was for. Upon looking at the screen, his heart sank as he saw a big red 'X' over his brother's picture. He let out a surprised whine, ' _Anubis!'_ He took off. Mid-run, he was absorbed in flames, returning to his normal self. He raised his shield and gunblade. He hated the idea of a 2-on-1 battle, but it was obvious there was no other option. He wasn't going to have any help for the rest of the match.

Eden stepped over to Dante, "Hate to make you do all the work, but…"

"No, no, it's quite alright. I am more than happy to," Dante watched Hati sprint towards them, "Thou needest lightly tread, for thy ignorance shall only spell dread."

Hati felt his feet fly out from under him. He slammed into ground, losing his sword and shield as he began sliding uncontrollably. Friction seemed to be nonexistent for him. "Yo! I didn't think I made this ice _that_ slippery!" He desperately clawed the ground, trying to stop his crash course for the edge of the ring, but no matter how hard he tried, he kept going and going and going and going…

A second buzzer sounded when Hati went flying into the dirt ring lining the battlefield.

.

" _ **AND TEAM READ FINISHES THE FIGHT IN ONE QUICK SWOOP AT THE HANDS-**_... er… _**AT THE WORDS OF DANTE WELLS! THE WINNERS ARE EDEN GREEN AND DANTE WELLS OF HAVEN!"**_ Carmen sat back as the crowd cheered, and then looked over to her co-host, "There. You happy they lost?"

"I'm never happy about someone losing. As much as I wanted Team ASHS disqualified for one of their member's antics, I never wanted them to lose because I didn't want them in the ring in the first place. But… since they were, it means they may have learned a valuable lesson in defeat. Defeat only means you have room for improvement." She smiled to her co-host, "It's one of the main points I use to encourage students back home." Shirley stood and turned to leave, "I'm going to go down and congratulate my daughter and her team. Would you like to come with me?"

"I'm actually going to be a bit tied up after this, so I can't," Carmen stood from her seat, "Oh, and I say this as her teacher, you might want to give Dante a few minutes before you go meet up with her."

Shirley gave her a confused look, "And why is that? I'm her mother. I want to congratulate her and Eden on their victory."

"It's just something I picked up in my class, but she has a bit of anxiety problem, right? Panic attacks occasionally?" Carmen tossed her empty coffee cup into the bin below her counter, "It'd be good for her to have a few minutes to calm down after that. It freaked her out a little to fight in front of so many people in my class, but she does hide it well at least. I can't imagine how it must feel to be out in front of all of Remnant. Having time to collect herself would do her well."

Carmen was right. Shirley shrunk back a little, "I mean… she does have her… _moments_ , but she has the support she needs to help her cope with it." She reached for the doorknob, but stopped. "Okay… fine." Disgruntledly, she returned to her seat and crossed her arms in a huff. "I really hate those eyes of yours, you know."

"Hey, a teacher's work is never done. Gotta watch my student's backs while I can. I won't be able to forever," Carmen kicked back, "Besides, you have a calm enough voice to go through the script to close down Amity Colosseum for the day. Have at it."

.

"Dude, that was awesome! I mean, you guys lost, but you did awesome! Hati throwing out those flames, Anubis jumping around, it was freaking _awesome_ , dude!" Sköll threw a couple of punches into Anubis and Hati's shoulders. The silvery wolf tail behind him wagged back and forth in excitement.

Anubis threw his arm up to prevent Sköll from landing another playful hit, "Don't touch me." He growled quietly.

"Woah, dude," Sköll stepped back away from him, "You alright…?"

Anubis continued walking past him.

Sköll looked to his twin, who just shook his head gravely.

Just behind Sköll was Set, who was clearly trying to make himself as small as possible against one of the locker room's lockers, "N-Nice fighting out there, bro!"

 _Is he really_ mocking _me right now?_ Anubis flew towards, Set, forcing him to back up against the lockers even more. "You know how it would've gone better? If the two of us that went out there actually had a _strategy!_ That, what Hati and I did, was a pitiful, uncoordinated, pathetic _mess_." Anubis got up in Set's face, "We're just lucky that we weren't humiliated further by having fart noises play after we were both eliminated."

"Hey, that's a little harsh, Anubis." Hati stepped up and separated his younger brothers. "We did the best we could given the short notice." He gestured towards the battlefield on the other side of the locker room wall. "Dante and Eden are talented fighters. We probably would've lost anyways if Set had gone in instead of me."

Anubis nodded solemnly as he stood alone, away from the rest of his team. "So that's it, isn't it? You had _no_ faith that we could've won? _No_ faith that we could've moved on and potentially _won_ this whole tournament?" He looked between his three brothers, "We could've _made_ something of ourselves _outside_ our family name!" Anubis was breathing heavy now. He was panicking. His back pressed against the lockers before he fell to the ground, defeated. "All that training… this tournament…" for a rare moment in his life, he felt hot tears streaming down his face, "it was all my last chance to prove to our dad that I could do something outside what's expected of me… of _us_ …"

"Anubis…" Set rubbed his neck. It hurt him to see that his actions were what was making his own brother feel this terrible, but he had to remember that what he did with Gavin was to save a lot of people. A little sadness on the part of his twin was a fine price to pay for Remnant's safety, "I don't think Hati's saying that he didn't have faith in us… We probably would have lost to them either way, man. They had the advantage with their Semblances… Eden would hear everything we said, and Dante could have done anything as long as she had the time to speak… We were going to rely on Lunacy either way, and that would have screwed us over if it was me or Sköll in there instead of Hati."

Anubis didn't say anything. He just sat there against the lockers, his head hung low between his knees.

"Seriously, son, you shouldn't beat yourself up so much," said an incredibly deep voice from the doorway. There stood a lithe old man who was nearly a head shorter than Hati and Sköll, and had the same golden eyes as all of Team ASHS. His salt and pepper hair was neatly trimmed and parted atop his head to match his perfectly shaped beard, and his arms and the patch of his chest that was exposed were covered in the same black and grey hair. His white dress shirt was tucked neatly into the waist of his faded blue jeans, which were held up by a set of black suspenders. Despite his slightly well-dressed appearance, his sleeves were rolled up and the first two buttons on his shirt were undone. Coffee brown loafers clacked against the tile as he stepped inside.

"Dad?!" Sköll and Hati's tails stuck straight out. "What the heck are you doing here?" They spoke in unison. That, combined with the limited space of the lockerroom and their limited attempt to hide their surprise, made their voices echo much louder than intended.

"Good to see you too, my sons. Nice moves out there, Hati. You're seriously getting the range down on your… what was Sköll's name for it… your heaty bubble?" their dad, Fenris, grinned to show off a set of razor sharp canines. Most people wouldn't think this man to be a Faunus at first glance, but one look at his set of less-than-completely-human teeth made it blatantly clear, "Nearly melting the entire Ice Biome was impressive to say the least."

Hati scratched the back of his head, "Come on, Dad. It wasn't _that_ cool. You make it sound like I won the whole fight or something."

"I mean, you certainly didn't, but it was a well fought loss," Fenris chuckled. He turned his attention to Anubis, who was still huddled up against the lockers, "Anubis! Get over here!" he waved his arm, "Let your old man congratulate you!"

Anubis was petrified. Here he was, a young adult, 18-years old, tears streaming down his face as he sat on the ground like a child throwing a temper tantrum. Hesitantly, he stood, exposing his dampened red face to his father as he approached.

"Hey, hey, hey now…" Fenris reached out and planted his hands on Anubis's shoulders. He looked his son up and down to make sure he was okay, then brought him into a tight hug. He pat the back of Anubis's head and his back gently, "It's alright, buddy... A loss isn't anything to be ashamed of. You put up a fight. We're all proud of you. _I'm_ proud of you."

Anubis felt another wave of anger pass over him. It wasn't towards Set, or Hati, or Sköll, or even his father. It was at himself. "But… we lost. _I'm_ the leader of our team." He looked down to the ground, "That failure's on me…" This man, his father, was the one he wanted to stick it to, the one he wanted to convince that hundreds of years of tradition was a waste and a setback. He wanted so bad to repeat his earlier statements to his father. He meant what he said. He wanted to make a name for himself outside his family name and its traditions. _You told Set you gave up on that. That's a promise you can't break now._

"A failure? Yes. A catastrophic failure? Not at all," Fenris held Anubis out at arm's length, "I came by to tell you boys that what you did out there was show the world that the Lunas still mean business, and I cannot begin to express just how much that made every last one of us smile. You should have seen your uncle when you about tore that girl's arm out of its socket. Ol Lyc about jumped out of his seat!" he chuckled as he replayed the fight in his head. His smile started to fade soon after, "But I also saw a little bit too much of myself in you while you were out there. Guessing it has to do with Set's antics that almost got you guys booted out of the tournament?"

"S-Sir, I-" Set's interruption was only met with a firm, open hand held out to tell him to hold on.

"But didn't I also make the newest head generation of the family look like… failures?" Anubis chose his words carefully. He felt like he needed everything to be about the family name and the world's view of it. He said he'd give up on dismantling it all, so that's how he had to think from now on. "We're supposed to be one of the most influential Faunus families… we're one of the founding families of Menagerie… and I just…"

"You showed the world that we aren't perfect, and that's what we need the world to know if other Faunus are going to be able to relate to us. A defeat at the hands of a worthy opponent is something to be proud of. It serves as a reminder that you still have plenty of room to grow, and I hope that you never forget that lesson," Fenris reached up and tossed Anubis's hair, careful to avoid the sensitive ears. He was always a little jealous that his sons got much more desirable traits than him, "I watched you lose your cool, and that is something that I've always worried that you might pick up from me. Set pulled an incredibly stupid stunt, but you need to remind yourself that that's just how your brother is. That knowhow that he has when it comes to things like pranks could make him a damn good Huntsman, or a vigilant father. I know that you want to be able to control how that skill set of his is used, but you can't. You can help guide him, though. You're still his leader, and you are still his brother. Patience is something that didn't come naturally to me, and it doesn't come naturally to you either. That is something that your uncle taught me to have, and it's also something that your own brother could teach you. Yes, this could have ended worse, but it didn't. We move forward with what happens, and we learn from what does not."

Anubis looked over to his twin brother, who just shrunk back again. Looking at the grander scheme of things, both of them had things they wished to keep quiet to this man, their caring father, things that could destroy that relationship forever. As he thought about it, Anubis realized they still had two full years to figure everything out. Why worry about all of it now? For over a year, he'd been badgering his brother to help them figure out how to either fit the mold or break it completely. _He's right. I am impatient._ "I guess… but that doesn't mean we can't try again next tournament… right?" He looked to Set, but found himself unable to even fake a smile, "with no stupid interruptions."

Set nodded, daring a step forward, "Of course… this year I was just… stupid." He knew he needed a better apology. "I really am sorry, Anu...bis. I really do need to start taking these things more seriously. I don't want to be the reason we're torn apart." _We have two years to figure this out_. He thought to himself, just as Anubis had. "I mean… we're not kids anymore, so I guess I better start acting like it, so we can kick ass right before we graduate." He glanced over to his father, "Maybe we'll have everything together by then."

"I'm glad that you two aren't stressing over things too much, then," Fenris reached out and pulled Set into the hug with Anubis, "Despite a few bumps, you boys really all made me a proud father today. I mean that from the bottom of my heart," he let go, then put his hands on his hips, "Now, then. I figure you young men are hungry after something like that! You guy's mother is at a restaurant in the Vale quadrant with Yamuna, Uncle Lycaon, and Cerb. It's a buffet, so you boys can eat to your heart's content! How's that sound?"

"Cerb's here?" Anubis's ears perked up.

"Big surprise, huh?" Fenris grinned, "When I told him that you guys won your team match, he asked me to arrange an airship to pick him up from his shack in the mountains! Took my pulling a few strings, but we got him here just half an hour before the match! He told us that he wanted to see you boys, especially you, fight! Poor holo-signal wasn't going to cut it for him."

"Guess we're about to get an earful, eh, Dad?" Hati clapped his father on the back.

Anubis looked to Set. The odd tension between them was still there, but that one bit of brotherly understanding had started to weaken it. He nodded to the door, "What do you say? I'm starving."

Set laughed weakly, "Bet you are. Lunacy always takes up a bunch of energy, huh?"

Hati scoffed, "Right. Little shadowy dog-boy's the one that needs energy." He held his hand over his stomach as it rumbled loudly, "He isn't the one that has the added fire effect to his Semblance!"

The four sons and their father laughed as they left the locker room. Set and Anubis lagged behind.

Set grabbed his twin brother's sleeve. "Hey… I really meant what I said," He looked up to make sure the other three had moved ahead, "In more ways than one. I want to figure out everything for the next tournament _and_ whatever we decide to tell Dad after we win it."

Anubis nodded, "I know. I meant what I said, too. You may be an obnoxious, troublesome, ignorant…" he stopped, realizing how negative his words were becoming, "but you're still my brother, and while you do things that piss me off to no end most of the time, I can't change that." He looked back to his brothers and their father, who were quickly getting far away down the hall, "Dante told me something in the ring."

Set let go of the sleeve of Anubis's black jacket as they started walking, now that they had some distance to talk. "Yeah?..."

"She said I'm so concerned with controlling you, Sköll, and Hati that… I forget that you're my family and not just my teammates, and, honestly… she's right. We'd get so much more done if we used that family synergy better instead of just following my orders because, I have to admit, that gets us in more trouble than when I let you guys have free reign." Anubis stiffened up, seemingly regaining his stone-cold composure, "That's why I don't want any more secrets."

"What?" Set was confused and scared. "What do you mean?"

"Think about it, Set. You hid a part of yourself from not only your brothers, but your _twin_ brother. We've been on this planet together for 18 years, we're connected on a much deeper level than just brothers, and I never had any idea you are…" he realized that, even though their father was ahead of them, and the echoey halls may be more echoey than they sounded, "the way that you are. That's why I want no more secrets. We're brothers. We need that trust. I admitted that I've been… probably not the best leader and _definitely_ not the best brother, but I meant what I said when I told you I was done trying to go against our family name. You meant what you said when you trusted me enough to tell me something so personal. From now on, if you get in trouble, you tell me _everything_ before I learn it from somewhere else. Understand?"

"Yeah… I will. Whether I'm stuck in an elevator door, or I'm wrestling with… you know, you're there for me," Set tried to keep a smile on his face. Maybe he could tell Anubis about what he was actually doing in the announcer's booth, but then he thought about what he would say. Helping a Grimm Brotherhood member, no matter the reason, wasn't something that Anubis would just accept. That would be different.

He nudged his brother with his arm, "I'll lean on you, and you lean on me. No exceptions."

Anubis nodded, "No exceptions."

"Ey'!" Sköll shouted from down the hall, "You slowpokes gonna come get food with us or are you gonna sit here in the hall playing patty-cake and starve to death?!"

Set cocked an eyebrow, "Food?"

Anubis nodded again, "Food."


	66. V3Ch13: Last Chance

Under her arm, Carmen toted a bright pink box dotted with baby blue spots. Sweet air followed her on her way through the street of the Vale quadrant of Vytal. Not even the sun had come out to greet her as she passed the towering brick buildings lining the sidewalk. Had she not known better, the gothic and urbanized architecture would have led her to think that she was still back home. After all, her favorite donut shop even had a branch here.

Just beyond the next right turn sat a patch of grass nestled between two buildings with a couple of picnic tables inside of it. The man she was supposed to meet already sat there with a two of bottles of milk out in front of him.

"Wouldn't have expected you to want to see me at a dinky little park, Vince," Carmen stepped into the seat and put the box down in front of her, "I did expect you to ask for the donuts, though… not that I'm complaining. Don't think your teeth can afford to get any worse… so I should probably just eat these apple fritters by myself."

Vincentas immediately reached over and dragged the box closer to the middle of the table, "No. I'm gonna need at least half of these. I've had a crappy night and I need someone to listen, not give me a lecture about dental hygiene," while Vincentas usually tried to keep his appearance more on the mysterious and dangerous side in his Huntsman attire, he looked like any old average tourist as he began scarfing down one of the pastries. Crumbs began to dust the torn and then repatched shirt he usually wore under his cloak. With the last of the apple fritter filling his cheeks, he wiped his hands on his jeans and slumped on the bench, anxiously eyeing every single person that walked within his line of sight.

"Fatty…" Carmen plucked out a pastry. She looked ready to fight or teach, as she did on any day, but her coat was left unzipped completely. If she were going to stain something, then it would be something she could cover up, "Orchid seemed frustrated last night. What happened?"

"That's why I wanted to talk to you," he reached for the box, "You vented to me at the bar. I get to vent to you here."

She bit a chunk off her donut. Although she never knew Vincentas to come to her for help, she wasn't going to question it, "Okay, so vent, dude."

"It's about that kid I found in Oases fifteen years ago. He tried to attack me yesterday."

"I mean, that's not entirely unbelievable. Namib isn't at all vocal about what happened, and he's been through a lot more than most of my students. Stuff like that tends to… make you a little less open," she grabbed a bottle of milk to go with her apple fritter.

"Orchid didn't know about all that yet, Carmen. I panicked when I took him to the Tamils. At the time, I thought I was giving the poor kid a chance at a normal life… where he wasn't forced into either side. I thought he'd get better if I just didn't stay around. He blames me for his village getting destroyed, Carmen, and after all these years… I think he's right."

"Vince…" she watched as the cold, callous man that she knew as nothing but for years slumped his shoulders. The mark of a Huntsman, the burdens that they carried in their memories, was showing through as he stared at the table, "Look, there were just too many Grimm to deal with. Nothing about that went well," the burn scars on her stomach felt fresh once more, "but none of it was our fault. It certainly wasn't yours."

"You should've seen him. One of his teammates, the girl with that rainbow Semblance that was in their doubles fight... he broke her aura to try to get to me," he sighed, "He remembered me, Carmen, and I don't know what to do about that. I've stayed away from a decent job at Shade to try and stay away from Vacuo. I've wanted to leave ever since that mission, but I don't have the heart to tear Orchid and Ivoros from their home."

"Listen, I don't like the idea of you keeping that all inside, even from your wife... but I get it. He represents what you see as a failure. Believe me when I say that mission left me with more than just physical scars too." Part of her wanted to parrot him by saying 'Sooner or later, you'll have to tell them the truth,' but she couldn't bring herself to say that. This was different, "You saved him when you went back, though. Yeah, he's still scarred too, but he's alive because you dug him out and brought him to the Tamils. You did the right thing then, and it's understandable why you would try to forget it… You remember how even CiCi and Shirley shut down after that."

Vincentas reached for the box again, but stopped halfway, returning his hands to his lap, "Then let me ask you one thing."

"Go ahead," she said, taking a sip of milk.

"How do I explain what happened during that mission to my wife so she doesn't end up hating me, too? I didn't _want_ to lie to her, but I just couldn't let her know that a _kid_ was the only survivor of that disaster. I mean… honestly, he wasn't going to come out of that okay either way, but it was better to hide him away than forcing him into the Nexus just because he was unlucky enough to be the only one in his village that didn't get torn apart by Grimm," he shook his head in disgust, "I still remember half of the things he was screaming when I found him. The older Tamil girl told me he was waking up screaming every night for months afterwards. I didn't want to throw him into you and Orchid's line of work after what he saw, but I don't think she'd accept that as an answer. I've made a bunch of mistakes in the past, many of them at Orchid's expense, but I don't want this one to be the last straw for her. I love her, Carmen, I really, really do. I just don't want her to end up getting hurt like everyone else who ends up trusting me."

"She loves you, Vince. She really does," Carmen reassured him, "I don't think that anything could change that. That's the only reason you can actually use your Semblance on her over and over. She hurts over what happened then too, but apparently not as bad as you. If she knew what you were going through, then she could help you…" she shuddered at the thought of dozens of molten red eyes zipping around her, "but I'm here to talk about it if you're not ready for that yet. You aren't alone, and you aren't the only one who lost something that day. I get that it still hurts. It does me too."

Vincentas went quiet for a moment. He wanted to ask Carmen to maybe say something to Orchid about what they were discussing, but that was cowardly. He needed to talk to his wife himself. But was that the real issue?

"What about the kid? Do I need to say anything to him?"

She thought for a long moment. On one hand, talking to Namib to explain what exactly happened might help, but Vincentas had never been the most sensitive man in Remnant. On the other hand, leaving him alone came with its own set of problems.

"I…" she sighed, "I don't know. I think it'd be best to talk to Orchid about that. She knows Namib better than I do, but that would mean you would need to talk to her about what happened…" the burn in her middle was becoming worse by the second. She moved her hand over her stomach and winced, "But I want you to know that none of it was your fault. Really."

"Right… sure it isn't."

Carmen tried to bite her tongue, but she couldn't after that, "You weren't the one that lost half of their team after already losing Trish."

Vincentas shrugged, "Kinda did, considering I've never been able to bring myself to stay in Vacuo for longer than it takes to say hi to my wife and son. It's like Team Video doesn't even exist anymore. I don't even know if I could call Yialli and Dorimizu my friends anymore. We've drifted so far apart. Yeah they're still there, but… well, you know how hard it is to trust me. They trusted me to stick around after graduating, to be one big happy family…" The dejected sigh that escaped from him made it sound as if he just wanted to be alone, "well, you know how that went..."

"You have a wife and a son that love you," Carmen's hand tightened over her middle. Images of Grimm flashed through her mind. She couldn't hardly look Vincentas in the eye, "I'm sorry… I just…" she stood, "You're not alone in this, Vince. You can talk to Orchid about it, or Yialli, or Dorimizu, or even Shirley. Hell, talk to me about it. Just… someone, and preferably someone who gets it."

"Right." he swiveled on his seat and stood to leave, "Thanks for breakfast… and the advice," as he began to walk away, he stopped, "Hey, I'm sorry I've been so combative recently. Sometimes I forget you were there, too."

"No, no. It's… it's fine. Let's not make this about me. I'm okay, as always," she closed the donut box, "Heads up."

Vincentas barely managed to raise his hands in time to catch the half-empty box. He looked to her quizzically.

"I'm not too big on apple fritters, but I know that you and Ivoros like them. There's also a couple of chocolate-filleds in the bottom for Orchid," she began walking away with her hands over her middle, "Now go have fun with your family while you can. I've got to get up to Amity with V now that he's finally off the toilet. We've got to set up for the singles round tonight."

Vincentas couldn't help but chuckle, "He finally over that food poisoning? Bet you're glad Wells isn't your co-host anymore, eh?"

"She's not that bad, but V's more fun in my opinion," she managed a smile, "I'll see you around, Vince. Don't be such a stranger to me… well, just as long as you're not being a complete jackass."

.

' _What do you mean McGouran is coming by to check on me before the singles round? I'm fine!'_ Sepia sat on the couch wearing her full battle attire in the hotel room that Team ARTS had begun growing accustomed to during their time at Vytal. CDs, colored pencils, books, and DVD cases were scattered about the living room of their suite, as well as empty soda bottles and take out food containers. Despite this paradise of clutter, she was absolutely livid.

"Hey! Hey, Sepia. Calm down," Arty held his hands out towards her as he spoke slowly, as if he were a lion tamer at a circus, "I'm sure he's just worried about that one hit Damascus used to take you out of the match. It _was_ pretty gnarly. I'm actually more surprised we haven't already heard from someone like Carmen or Alabaster by now."

She shot up from her seat. Though she was still almost a half foot shorter than Arty, she still tried to get up in his face. With her hands between them, she began signing, ' _I have had much worse and you know it! I am fine! I do not care what anyone says! I am going into that ring one way or another!'_

"Yeah, I know you don't care what anyone says, but it's better for the school to play it safe. It'd kinda suck to pass out in the field just to get clobbered some more. Would you rather chance that, or let McGouran make sure you're as okay as you say you are, give you the Beacon seal of approval, and let you be on your merry way to beat the crud out of someone else?"

' _Fine. Whatever.'_ she slumped back down onto the couch, ' _When are Roland and Timbre supposed to get back with that Mistrali takeout? I need my shrimp fried rice…'_

" _Who wants chow meeeeiiiiin!?_ " Timbre sang giddily as she and Roland came into the door with four bags full of food, one in each of their hands. The smells of rice, seafood, and grilled meat immediately filled the room.

Roland sighed, "You're the only one who got chow mein…" he placed both of his bags on the counter, then reached back to grab the bag hanging from the end of his tail, "Oh, and sorry for taking so long, guys. I went ahead and picked up some more Satsuma's Sweets on the way back. Got some of those orange gummies Sepia likes and those caramel hard candies just for you, Arty. Had a feeling you might be craving them."

Timbre humphed as she began unpacking her bag, "You didn't let me finish… I was going to finish that thought with ' _Meeeeeeeee!'_ " She sang out again.

"You're obviously in a good mood," Arty stated as he began unwrapping a caramel candy from the Satsuma's Sweets bag. He reached over and grabbed his box of sweet-smelling stir-fry chicken and a box of rice, "Thank you."

Timbre smiled, "Yeah, well, how can I _not_ be?!" she snapped a pair of chopsticks and grabbed a large bundle of noodles before ravenously shoving it into her mouth. In normal Timbre Forté fashion, she began talking, despite her mouth being full of food, "We're moving on to the singles, so we're enjoying ourselves," she gulped loudly and raised her arms above her, "And my birthday's coming up!"

Arty nearly choked on a piece of chicken. "You're birthday?!" Arty hit his forehead with the palm of his hand, "I completely forgot!" he looked sheepishly over to her, "Uh… when exactly is it again?..."

"Tomorrow," Timbre smiled, not even phased by her leader forgetting her birthday, "Don't worry about it Painter-Boy, it's okay if you didn't get me anything," she kicked her foot to the side, hitting him in the shin playfully, "I'm really just excited to see the finale of the tournament. It'd be pretty awesome if Sepia won."

"I still can't believe you were born _during_ the festival," Roland mused as Timbre hummed to herself, "Must feel like the whole world is celebrating with you."

"Eh," Timbre disregarded the comment, "It's never been a huge deal. Made it easier to celebrate though. But yeah, it wasn't just _during_ the festival. It was also _at_ the festival. Here. At Vytal."

The other three members of her team could only stare at her.

"Yeah…" Timbre thought back to how her dad had described it all, "Mom never missed the opportunity to go to the host kingdom to see the tournament in person. Twenty years ago, the tournament was here in Vytal, Mom wanted to be here in person. Dad tried to stop her, pointing out that she was nine months pregnant, and she said 'pff, I'll be fine'. They were at a restaurant watching the finals match, the winner threw the last punch that won the whole thing, Mom jumped up to cheer and _boom_ , water broke right then and there," she chuckled, "Good thing the restaurant was near a hospital."

' _Cool!'_ Sepia dug out her box of shrimp fried rice and a pair of chopsticks. She popped open the box, shoveled what she could into her mouth, and then stabbed her chopsticks into her rice, ' _If you and Turf have a baby, can you plan it a little better than she did?'_

Timbre went beet red and nearly choked, "Not planning _that_ far ahead right now!"

"Yeah. He should at least propose to her first," Roland picked Sepia's chopsticks out and laid them across the top of the takeout container. He didn't want bad luck coming their way later that night, "but if you guys do have kids, then they'll at least be cute. Maybe you'll even have a litter."

"Roland… I _will_ murder you." Timbre looked to Sepia before smirking back to Roland, "What do you call it with otters? Is that still a litter, or is it something weird like a gaggle of geese? An ottle of otters, maybe?"

"It would be a bevy, family, lodge, romp, or, if the kids were all swimming, it would be a raft of Otter Faunus. I don't think we'd have too many until we retired. Maybe two total. Wouldn't mind a little boy or girl," he shrugged, seemingly not phased by the question, "The real question is what Arty and Curie's kids would be called."

Sepia began signing as the pink faded from her cheeks, ' _A gremil of gremlins?'_

"I think Curie'd prefer a pack of pipsqueaks," Timbre joked.

Arty cocked an eyebrow, "Nah. I think you just call them 'kids'."

' _Guess they don't have jokes in Atlas…'_ Sepia rolled her eyes.

"We do. They just aren't any good," Arty sighed, thinking to all the times he or Midas tried to be funny and just got awkward glances if they weren't just flat-out ignored.

It was becoming exceedingly clear to Roland that Arty wasn't quite getting what was being said, "Let's just… move on," he crossed his arms and leaned against the counter, "When's McGouran supposed to get here?"

There was a knock at the door.

"Soon, I guess." Arty put his food down and went to answer the door.

"Hey! Arty!" Their teacher, who appeared barely any older than the teens before him, greeted them warmly. Despite being away from campus, he was still dressed in his typical vest, suspenders, and even his bronze multi-lensed goggles that none of his students had had the chance to fully figure out the use of. Victor McGouran stepped into the room, heading straight for Sepia, "And there's the little damage sponge," he joked as he held her jaw and turned her head side to side to examine it, "That was one hell of a swing you took from that Damascus kid, eh? Heard a lot about him and his team. Super skilled for being only in their second year at Shade and being practicing archaeologists and all."

"Paleontologists." Timbre corrected.

"Whatever. All the same. You dig a hole, you find old stuff, it gets put in a museum. Only difference is one digs up dead things and the other digs up things that were made by people who've been dead for a while," he reached up and lowered his goggles over his eyes, adjusting the number of the multi-colored lenses he was looking through as he examined Sepia's head further, "You don't see me complaining about titles. Tinkerer, inventor, Huntsman, teacher, biker, plumber, birdwatcher, electrician, librarian, medic, geocacher, and a damn good cook, all of them describe me. Just as long as you don't try to pass anything off on me in a negative light, I don't care."

Roland, Arty, and Timbre passed glances to each other.

' _Are we sure Carmen's really the biggest scatterbrain at Beacon?'_ Arty signed.

' _Carmen's definitely scatterbrained._ ' Timbre watched as McGouran began looking at Sepia's teeth and throat with every single lens down in front of his eyes, giving him an odd cone-eyed appearance, ' _McGouran's just… weird._ '

' _At least medic was on his endless list of hobbies,'_ Roland commented before throwing his hands back to his sides, keeping them from McGouran's sight as he raised his goggles and turned around.

"Welp. That about does it…" Victor made his way to the counter and picked up Arty's stir fry and began eating it.

"Um…" Arty raised a finger to object, but ended up finding himself unable to do so, "That's… my chicken…" he said too quietly to be heard by the man scarfing down his lunch.

He shoveled more into his mouth, then wiped his stuffed cheeks on his sleeve. Apparently Professor McGouran was a real slob at heart when he wasn't teaching a class, "You guys _seriously_ shouldn't have let her sleep last night."

The whole team looked shocked.

"Why not?" Timbre looked worriedly to her partner, "She didn't have any problem going to sleep."

"Yeah. She basically passed out in the ring before we even left Amity yesterday," Arty added, "After that fight, we tried to just let her aura do the work. The medics even said she'd be fine."

"Aura takes a bit longer with a brain injury, you know?" McGouran put down Arty's lunch, "She seems to have a pretty bad concussion. Pupils dilated, sleepiness, seems to be a bit off balance, which is weird for a girl like Sepia. Not a great sign. The only reason I'm not going to make you guys keep her in the infirmary is because it seems like her aura's helping enough… well, not enough to keep her in the tournament."

"What did you say…?" Roland's fists curled up at his sides.

"Sorry, but you guys are gonna have to send someone else in," McGouran shrugged, "My hands are tied, kids. I'm sorry."

Arty was dumbfounded. Less than five minutes before, they were talking about how excited they were to see Sepia in the singles later that night, but now one of their instructors was telling them she couldn't fight, "But the only other person we _can_ send in is…" he looked to Timbre.

"Me?!" Timbre was in disbelief, " _I_ was only in the doubles to help _Sepia_ get to the singles! Professor McGouran, surely she could still fight for us! O-o-or maybe there's a rule saying that Arty or Roland could go in instead?"

"I mean, you guys would have to have a talk with Alabaster about it, but it would hardly be fair if the other competitors found themselves up against someone who only participated in the first round," McGouran sighed. "I'm sorry. Really."

"Doesn't Professor Alabaster have the final say? What about Carmen?" Arty protested, "Couldn't we get a second opinion before we make any final decisions?"

"They're gonna say the same thing," McGouran began inching over towards the door. He still had plenty of business to take care of, "It's more than likely going to have to be Timbre. I can't let Sepia go in if she has a concussion… which she does. It's for her own safety. Imagine what would happen if all of Remnant watched a student pass out in the middle of their single's round."

"Well, I'm still going to call Alabaster…" Roland stood up with his scroll in hand. None of this was sitting well with him. McGouran might have been right to prevent her from going in with a concussion, but he still knew Sepia. She would almost certainly be fine either way, "She's been through worse, Professor."

"It's policy, man." McGouran stopped and quickly went back to the counter, grabbed Arty's chicken, and ran out, "Good luck to you guys. Sorry about the last minute substitutions!"

"After dropping that bombshell, he just leaves our door open?" Timbre shook her head, "Unbelievable."

"He took my chicken…" Arty stared at the damp spot where his food had steamed up the granite countertop.

Timbre quickly handed her chow mein to him, "Here. I'm not hungry anymore…" she threw her hands up weakly, "Yay! Happy early birthday to me!" she cheered sarcastically.

It wasn't too hard for Sepia to stay silent. She didn't know what to say. Maybe if she had just been paying attention, she would have heard Damascus coming. Her aura could only heal her so fast, and it wouldn't be in time to get out there for the singles round. Guilt sank down deeper in her chest.

She raised her hands, but her head still hung low, ' _I'm sorry… I failed you guys…'_

"Sepia…" Roland went to put a hand on her shoulder, but then his call to Alabaster connected. He pulled his scroll to his ear and went back to his room for a less than pleasant conversation with his headmaster.

"Hey," Timbre put a hand on her shoulder, "Don't worry about it. I'll manage tonight. We might lose, but, hey, how many first year teams are able to say they made it all the way to the last round of the Vytal Festival Tournament?" she forced a smile, "Wouldn't have made it all the way here without you. So what if our plan got a little… umm…"

Arty began counting off on his fingers, "Derailed? Destroyed? Side-tracked? Completely undo-"

" _Anyway_. If I lose, I lose. We tried our best, and that's all that matters, okay?"

' _It's not okay,'_ Sepia stood. Her fingers tugged at the edge of her choker as she trudged over to the hallway that connected their rooms, ' _I'm going to watch a few movies or something. You guys have fun watching the matches. I'll drag Roland to Amity to watch you fight later, Timbre.'_

"Hey! Sepia?" Arty called after her, but was only met with the door to her room slamming.

Timbre ran to the front door of their suite and yelled in the direction they'd watched McGouran turn down, "Thanks, _Victor!_ You made our good day _suck!_ " she slammed the door and stormed back into the living area, plopping herself onto the couch.

"Aaaand we're gonna get a noise complaint," Arty sat down next to her. Together, they sighed dejectedly, "You wanna borrow some of my Dust paint? Hope it blows whoever you're up against out of the ring?"

"With my luck, I'd end up blowing myself up in front of all of Remnant and go down in history as that one idiot that made it all the way to the final round of the tournament just to explode in front of millions of people."

"It'd bring our chances up a bit…" Roland grumbled as he stepped back into the living room. He grabbed his box of noodles, nearly crushing it in his frustrated grip, and began shoving food into his mouth. After a hard swallow, he slammed the takeout container back down on the counter, "Alabaster agrees with McGouran. So does Carmen."

Timbre nodded, "Awesome," she opened her arms and looked up to the ceiling, "Mom, forgive me. I'm about to embarrass myself in front of _the whole world_."

.

" _ **AND WE'RE BACK AGAIN WITH SOME STUDENT VERSUS STUDENT ACTION HERE AT AMITY COLOSSEUM TONIGHT! WHO'S READY FOR THE FINAL ROUND OF THE 50TH VYTAL FESTIVAL TOURNAMENT?!"**_ Carmen grinned behind the mic as the crowd went wild. Though her approach to announcing was unorthodox, the crowd didn't seem to mind it one bit. As the cheers died down, she went on, "So, let's lay down what's about to happen. Eight students are about to go head to head, one on one. Tonight will be the four semifinal matches. Since this is the hundred year anniversary, we're going to be doing things a bit differently! Tell 'em what's in store for tomorrow night, V!"

"That's right, Carmen!" Vivian sounded much more enthusiastic than usual. Apparently, he was _very_ excited about the slight change in the tournament's schedule, "To celebrate the centennial anniversary of the signing of the Vytal Treaty on this very island merely a couple thousand feet below our feet, the tournament will _not_ end with these singles fights here tonight! In fact, this year's tournament will be concluded tomorrow night instead!"

The crowd all murmured in excited whispers.

"Tonight is going to play out a little differently!" Vivian continued, "Instead of having combatants go one-on-one until only one remains, we'll instead have four fights. Tomorrow night, instead of having _just_ our closing ceremony, we'll be having _one last free-for-all battle royale_ with tonight's four winners as an explosive finale to the biggest tournament in Remnant's history!"

"For tonight's matches, we have eight fantastic students participating! These students have defied the odds to make it here, and they're going to have to again if they want to taste the sweet victory that this tournament has to offer!" Carmen flashed the names and pictures of each of the students standing in the center platform of the arena up on the screens. All eight of them stood in a line side-by-side.

She cleared her throat, "From left to right, we've got Ledning Coyle of Team MTLC from Atlas!"

Ledning stood as the first in the row. He kept his hands down in the pockets of his jacket. When the camera panned to show the world his scowl, he turned his cheek to it.

"Next we've got Khimera Léon of Team FNKS from Atlas!"

Khimera's coat shimmered yellow. She looked nearly on the brink of tears standing next to her peers. Her fingers curled up in the hanging white cloth of her toga. A downtrodden gaze at her sandals was all that the cameraman needed to tell him to move on.

"Third, we've got Ray Léon of Team RYAL from Atlas!"

Ray stood tall in his golden armor, towering over the seven other students. His mane of thick red-brown hair was pushed back to show off the chiseled jaw that he was so proud of. With his claws showing through the holes in the fingertips of his gauntlets, he waved to the crowd cheering onlookers, "And the victor here, no less!"

"Aaaaaaaand then we've got Dante Wells of Team READ from Mistral!"

As the fourth person in the row, Dante didn't have too much room to move around. Still, she managed to pinch the edges of her crimson cloak for a reverent curtsy to the camera. Haven's headmistress' daughter had to keep up a respectful appearance despite the growing panic in her chest.

"Then we have Tox Hazmatte of Team TCSC from Vacuo!"

Tox beat the front of his yellow rubber jacket like an ape, " _WOOO!"_ his cry of excitement sounded hollow behind their gas mask. His shotgun/sledgehammer was hostered to their side to be pulled out at a moment's notice.

"Next up is Rime Chione of Team FREZ from Vale!"

Rime waved enthusiastically to the crowd as they cheered. She reached up to her necklace and, in a whir of snowy wind, she pulled out a cartoonish heart made of solid ice and showed it off for the cameras as she flashed a big smile.

Carmen giggled, "Good show, Rime!" she went on, "Filling the seventh slot is Timbre Forté of Team ARTS from Vale!"

Timbre waved meekly as she was met with a thunderous roar of applause and cheers. _I swear most people forgot I existed…_ She thought to herself as she forced herself to look at least somewhat enthusiastic and confident like she used to do every performance.

"Last, but not least," _but definitely least…_ "we have Coral Matte of Team OCEN from Vale!"

"It's _Chris_ , Carmen!" He shouted, his face turning as pink as his hair.

From the stands, Lurida let out a loud, haughty laugh.

"Sorry, Coral!" Carmen bit back a laugh to match Lurida's, "Mind to get the randomizer going for tonight's first match, V?"

"Ladies and gentlemen," Vivian leaned into his mic, "Let the third round of the tournament, begin!" he pressed the button that activated the randomizer.

.

"Please don't be me. Please don't be me. Please don't be me." Timbre repeated to herself with her fingers crossed.

"Hey, T." Rime nudged her, "Calm down. I know you," She threw her friend a quick thumbs-up, "You'll do great out there!"

"Gee, thanks, Rime…" Timbre could practically feel her knees shaking, "You can keep saying it, but doesn't mean it's true…"

Rime's smile faded and quickly turned into a sour pout, "Fine then. Don't take my encouragement." She threw a playful kick into the back of Timbre's calf, "If our faces come up, I'll have to kick your ass for being such a Negative Nancy."

Student's pictures spun on the screens overhead. They flashed by one by one, then picked up the pace. Two columns were formed by the moving images, then one stopped. Up on the screen was a photo of Ledning Coyle with the white, spear-like symbol of Atlas behind him.

He was one that Timbre _definitely_ did not want to be fighting. She anxiously awaited his opponent's face to show up next to his, _Please don't be me. Pleeeeeease don't be me._

The second column froze. In front of the three inverted burnt orange swords of Vacuo's Shade Academy was the green-haired, gas mask wearing freak from Team TCSC, Tox Hazmatte.

"Well, V, looks like we've got one of General Léon's students going up against one of yours! How do you feel about that?" Carmen said for the crowd to hear as well.

Vivian winced as he turned off the feed from their mics for a moment, "Considering you threw a fit over Tox in Team TCSC's last fight… I'd say 'very worried about you trying to disqualify another student'," When the click signaled that their voices were being broadcast again, he returned to his jovial announcer persona, "I don't know, Carmen, I think we can expect an incredible show of skill from all _eight_ students if they were able to get this far!"

"No kidding!" Tox chimed as he held his sledgehammer up just below the head, "I've been seriously itching to kick some Atlas scumbag's ass!"

Ledning scoffed, "You sound confident in yourself. I'd be careful if I were you." Ledning was warned about Tox Hazmatte. According to Titian, Tox was, like them, in the Grimm Brotherhood. However, his true intentions, motives, and even his identity was questionable. Titian had made the passing comment about their Captain, Sanguwalker, dealing with the possibility of a splinter group going out with their own motives that went against the Brotherhood as a whole.

 _Tox has to be stopped. We're too far in for someone like that to screw everything up for us._

"How about you prove you're that tough then?" he thought back to the previous fights he'd seen with Team TCSC. The attack that ended Team GLXY's running in the tournament really stood out to him. Lurida was furious and upset that they were outmatched.

"Besides," he cracked his knuckles, "I've gotta make you pay for your last little stunt."

The other six combatants fled to the edges of the arena, leaving Ledning and Tox in the center platform alone. A ring of stage light hung above the arena like a giant halo, and the center platform began to raise up into the air. Ledning and Tox were left standing on a floating tile octagon for all of Remnant to see.

Tox rested the butt of his weapon against the tile and leaned against it to mock his opponent, "What? Hurting your girlfriend? What's the big deal, huh? You turning soft?"

Ledning clenched his fists. He could feel warm lead melting towards his knuckles as he tried to restrain himself from clocking Tox right in the gas mask, "Keep talking, buddy."

"Yeah, sure thing. No prob," Tox smiled under his mask. The fight was to begin as soon as the platform was raised, but Ledning was hesitating. That would make things harder, "I mean, this isn't going to be that hard if you fight as good as that Rhea chick. 'Sides, you've already sucked pretty hard in one on one fights. Remember how Cayenne wiped the floor with you in Maple's class?"

"She got lucky. You won't." Ledning suddenly remembered his and Midas's fight with the girls from Team STON.

 _Tox's trying to use those same irritating tactics. I could ignore that goth chick because I don't care about her, but this one knows who I am, and I know who they are… roughly._

"Just shut up, already. You're wasting my time along with everyone else's."

"Hmmm… alright," Tox bopped the handle of the sledgehammer out. He ran forward, grabbing to so it was already in its backswing, then slammed it down overhead towards Ledning. The rough metal flashed through in the gleam of the stage lights. It crashed into his metal covered palms.

After honing this form of his weapons with Titian to differentiate himself from Agent Kokonatsu, Ledning was much more accustomed to using weapon forms other than the arm blades. He pushed back against Tox and drove his other fist into Tox's abdomen.

Tox didn't even budge. Only a grunt passed through the mask as the pressed down harder towards Ledning. The barrel at the end of the sledgehammer finally opened towards his head. With the shot lined up, Tox cranked out a shot.

Ledning barely dodged as an explosion burst from the head of the hammer. Using his sideways momentum, he swept low, catching the back of Tox's heels. As Tox went tumbling, he stomped his foot onto his chest before kicking him towards the edge of the floating ring and the abyss beyond.

Tiles cracked under the head of Tox's sledgehammer. A trough was made as he stopped himself right before he would have passed over the ledge, "Nice try," he cackled on his way back up to his feet, "Think you're really gonna get me out of the ring? Come on. If you want to beat me, then you're going to have to hit me hard enough to make me stay down."

"Alright then," Ledning clapped his hands together. The lead coating his hands melted into a singular form in his palms. He rushed Tox, whipping a newly-formed chain towards him.

Three quick blasts exploded out of the end of Tox's weapon. Dozens of lead pellets sparked off of the whipping chain. Being so close to the edge meant that he couldn't afford to screw up. For everything to go as intended, Ledning needed to go down. He was far too loyal.

The chain slammed against his chest, sending him back a few inches. He dug his feet down against the ruined tile to stand his ground. Knuckles turned white against the handle of the sledgehammer. Tox brought it up from the side and into Ledning's upper arm. It took the rest of the breath left that wasn't knocked out from tanking a direct hit from that chain, but it did the job.

Ledning was sent flying, spinning across the ring from the hit, but he wasn't done yet. He kicked himself back onto his feet and sprinted towards Tox again. Jumping left and right, Ledning dodged blasts from his opponent's weapon. _I'll show the Grimm Brotherhood what I'm capable of. I'll take Tox down and be in the free-for-all._ He swung his chain down onto Tox upon getting closer. _I won't let these traitors ruin this for me!_

"Never seen the chain before…" Tox held his weapon close to take a little bit of the blow. He stepped back towards the center of the arena at each incoming blow. Lead clanked off the bulky, knurled handle of the sledgehammer. The shells inside rattled with each pound. Ledning was doing well. He'd be a promising addition that would only get better with time.

Tox raised the handle of the sledgehammer up to meet the chain in midair. They yanked it back towards him, then drove their fist over the weapon handle and into Ledning's cheek.

Ledning went sprawling, but he wasn't ready to give up. He got up and charged Tox again, the lead melting around his hands as he went for another series of punches.

His fists collided with Tox's weapon over and over, explosions and the sounds of clanging metal rang out with each hit. If he could just break through Tox's guard, then he could win. It seemed like he knew exactly where his fist would come in each time, and would used the handle of the sledgehammer to block.

"What's wrong, Koko? Getting a little rusty? Thought you were supposed to be the scary one on your team!" Tox laughed behind the mask. Playing on the defensive would let him wear the poor guy out. It didn't matter how long Tox had to last. He could go all day.

"Shut up!" Raising both fists over his head, Ledning slammed down hard on the handle of Tox's weapon, which he was holding out in front of them to block the blow.

Remnant needed to see who the boss here was. Tox couldn't go through with a good plan without making sure that emotionless gas mask was ingrained in every single witness's mind. Ledning would be the newest example of what happened when someone defied Tox.

The head of the sledgehammer dropped into Ledning's left kneecap to send a cold shudder up and down his leg. The swing came full circle, then slammed down between Ledning's neck and shoulder. Sure, none of it would do too much damage, but it had to hurt like nothing else. Another swing came before Ledning could even react to the first two. This one smacked him in the side, sending him tumbling across the arena.

Tox's steps matched each bounce that Ledning made across the tile. Lead had formed around his body to cushion the blow. It wasn't going to be nearly enough to block the hammer head coming down into his stomach. Tox could see him gasp for air for a moment before throwing the hammer down again.

It slammed into his crossed arms. Ledning tried in vain to hold it back, but his elbows gave out. His vision was already blurry from his tumble and the loss of air, but now he was feeling dizzy on top of it. In just a few seconds, Tox had turned the tides of the fight. Now, the hammer head smacked him again in the gut.

 _Get up. Just get up! Don't let this psycho beat you!_ He tried to lift his legs, but his left knee was locked up. He tried to push up, but his arms wouldn't obey, _There's too much riding on this! Get up!_

Tox looked up to the aurameters, then smiled wide seeing Ledning's bar teetering extremely close to the 15% mark, "You're not looking so good! Wanna just call it quits now, or what?"

A silver-metal clad fist wrapped around the handle of their sledgehammer. Ledning glared up at Tox, hatred bubbling inside him. _Not yet_ , he pushed himself, _there's too much riding on this, and I'm not letting you go on. You're not ruining this for us, traitor!_

"So no," Tox flexed their wrist to turn a metal ring on the handle of the weapon. The firing mechanism was unorthodox, but it always allowed for quick shots. Even with Ledning's hand over the barrel, the shot threw his arm back against the tile. The hot barrel was then pressed into the right side of his chest. The ring on the handle twisted. Another shot slammed into him.

The buzzer finally sounded.

A large portion of the crowd cheered, mainly from the Vacuo section. Despite Tox and the rest of Team TCSC being scary nobodies at Shade, the student body was at least thankful to have somebody to represent their kingdom in the last leg of the tournament. Seeing the only Vacuan student of the eight win their fight and confirm their spot in the free-for-all sent them all into a thunderous roar of excitement.

Tox sauntered around the ring with his arms out to soak up the thunderous roar of applause. He stopped by Ledning and held out a hand to him, "Nice moves. Too bad it wasn't enough to stop me, Led. Bit of a shame."

Ledning coughed and sputtered as he writhed on the ground, defeated. He rolled over, sore and holding his side. As Tox raised their hammer and egged on more cheers, Ledning sneered at the raincoat-clad scum standing over him. He slammed his fist on the ground before giving Tox his last words as a contestant in the tournament, "Don't mess this up for the Brotherhood, Tox. If you do, I'm sure there won't be any qualms about taking you out of the picture. You make this harder for us, and you'll pay."

Tox snorted, "Funny… I was gonna say the same thing to you."

.

"Yo! Led!" Midas ran alongside Titian and Curie to greet Ledning as the platform lowered back into place. He grinned as he slapped his cousin on the back, "Those moves were sick, cuz! I've never seen you fight like that! You holding back on us so you don't catch ol' General Lionbutt's eye and get drafted into her group of special ops zombies?"

Ledning looked to Titian, who just rolled her eyes in response, but quickly flashed a supportive smile when Curie turned to look at her, "Hey, don't worry about it, Led. We made it this far! Only eight out of thirty-two teams are able to say that!"

"Only eight of one-hundred-twenty-eight students if you prefer those numbers," Curie added, "You did good, though. Might've done better with a real weapon…"

Titian jammed her with her elbow.

"Ow!"

"What she means, Led," Titian's reassuring smile faded as she watched Tox walk alone back to the side of the arena, "is that we'll get them next time," she jostled him by the shoulder, "Right?"

Ledning understood, "Right. Next time."

"Ledning!" Lurida shouted from the corridor leading out into the arena. Instead of her combat attire, she was in the pair of skinny jeans and the purple tee that she wore on more casual days, "Hey! Are you okay?!"

His anger faded as she ran up. All thoughts of the Grimm Brotherhood and their objective pushed out of his mind as she hesitantly hugged him.

"Y-yeah… I'm fine," he looked to his team.

Titian rolled her eyes and gestured Curie and Midas away, "Come on, you two. Let's leave L&L to their pity party."

Midas chuckled, "Okay, okay," he nudged his cousin again, "You stickin' around here, or should we just expect to see you back at the hotel?" he wiggled his eyebrows, "Eh?"

"Shut. Up. Midas. "You'll see me when you see me." Ledning snapped back before looking back to Lurida, "I actually think I'm done with Amity for the night. Maybe I just want to go out on the town. Just you and me, a couple of losers both taken out of the tournament by a sledgehammer wielding gas-masked psycho. What do you say?"

"Yeah, that sounds fine. Heard that there's this candy shop in the Mistal quadrant. It's called Satsuma's Sweets, and they apparently have coffee flavored taffy or something," she smiled, a very rare thing to see to be sure, and brushed her arm against his, "It'll be fun."

Ledning grimaced for a moment, "Oh, I know that place well already. You know, Midas's Faunus girlfriend's mother owns that place. They talk about it all the time," he watched his team get back to the stairs leading back to their seats, "But without them around, maybe it'd be fun."

"They're not so bad, you know… Your team, Team ARTS, even Saffron… none of them are that bad. Or, at least I don't think so much lately," she led him along by the hand, "Maybe being around you makes me a little less cynical."

"Oh no. I'm corrupting you." He began to lead her away from the battleground as they talked.

"Oh noooooo… so sad. Whatever am I going to do? Being around someone I like makes me too positive!" Lurida laughed, then slammed her mouth shut, "That sounded a little too much like Xannie… didn't it?"

He held up a hand, his index finger and thumb barely spaced apart, "A bit."

There was a ding from Ledning's pocket.

Lurida rolled her eyes, her voice returning to its usual state of monotone and annoyed-sounding, "Your cousin being gross again?"

Ledning looked at the screen where a faded red box glared back at him.

 **Deathstalker: Last chance, loverboy. Purp and the Oracle are either with us or against us. Wouldn't want a nasty breakup, eh? ;)**

He closed the scroll and crammed it back into his jeans pocket, "No. Titian's just poking fun at me... like usual."


	67. V3Ch14: Fire and Ice

The center stage took Ledning and Tox up for their fight. The other six combatants walked away from the stage, each going their own separate ways. While Timbre ran off to join her team, Ray and Khimera went to join their mother, Dante went to do the same with hers, and Coral just sulked away, Rime found her way into the maze of hallways leading out towards the seating area and concession stands in the Vale section of Amity Colosseum.

Rime, in a fit of nervousness, began veering to the right towards one of the stands. She got in line and began scanning over the shelves of sweets and the fridge full of sodas behind the clerk.

"Don't go loading up on sugar. You'll make yourself sick before your fight."

Rime's shoulders tensed up as the wave of cold air hit her with a chilling voice. As always, she saw that it was just Zero upon turning around. She let out a slow breath with her hand over her heart, "You've got to quit doing that, Z!"

"Sorry," he shrugged, his hands in his hoodie pockets, "Can't help it. Besides," he looked over the snacks as well, "it's too much fun."

She giggled, "Oh, so you like scaring me, huh?"

"Not just you. Timbre, Arty, and Turf give some great reactions, too. Carmen used to be a primary target, but then she almost lopped my head off with one of her swords."

"And that didn't stop you from helping me get into her office last semester to get the fight matchups for the week?" she toyed with the dark blue Dust crystal dangling from her neck.

"Nope." he glanced over to her, "Because I knew if I didn't, you'd cry about it all week."

"I mean, it gets you to do things for me! Like that time you snagged me my favorite candy bar from Alice's stash because I whined about it for two days straight?"

"Yyyyep." he pointed to the stall, "You want it again… without stealing it this time?"

"Oh, you don't have to, dude. I've got money!" Rime couldn't help but smile whenever Zero let a little of his nicer side slip out, "Besides, what happened to not loading up on sugar?"

"Those are Frost's rules. You know how I feel about those." As they got to the front of the line, he pointed to a few desired snacks, "I know she means well, and she's gotten better about being a leader, but she's still a bit overbearing."

"We seriously need to find her a boyfriend or something. Maybe we could see if Ebon would take her out! They seem to get along pretty well!" she watched as he paid for the snacks without even saying a word about it. She began to pout, "Heeeey! I told you I had my own money!"

"Yeah… and?" he began walking off with two candy bars and two bottles of soda, "Who said any of it was for you, anyways?"

"But Zeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeerooooooooooooooooooooooooooooo!"

"I'm kidding… geez."

"I know," she snatched one of the candy bars and took her soda, "You really didn't have to, you know."

"I know, but you seemed a bit stressed."

"Me? Stressed?" she burst out laughing. Sure, she was scared of failing her team in the singles round, but she still felt relatively at ease with it all. She had already made her team proud, "Nah. I'm good."

He pointed to her hand as she raised her sweets up to take a bite, "Right… You might want to… you know, unwrap your chocolate before you start eating it."

"Riiiiight…" she passed her soda to him as they strolled through the corridors, "Hold please."

He took the other bottle gingerly, popping the cap open with the metal guards on his left hand.

As Rime struggled to open the candy bar, she and Zero passed out into the docking area for airships coming in and out. She bit off a chunk as soon as the chocolate inside was exposed, then took her bottle of soda back from him.

"So," she gulped, "Were you just wanting to wish me luck before my fight?"

He shrugged, "Potentially. You got some competition out there."

"Yeah, but I'm not too too worried, you know? We kicked some serious butt in the doubles round. We showed Remnant that Team FREZ means business," she took a seat on the ledge of the docks, then swung her feet over to hang off, "If I lose, we still made it farther than a _lot_ of other people. If I win, then we get a chance at being remembered as the greatest team in all of Remnant for the next two years."

"You'll probably end up in the news again."

"Hopefully it isn't for being scratched up by a maniac in a Venice mask again!" Rime set her soda beside her to clutch her necklace tight in one hand. The attack on Vale still sent shivers down her spine, "Or for being in a group of renegades that managed to take down a giant octopus Grimm that was supposed to just be a story… but I wouldn't mind standing up there in front of everyone, though. To hear everyone chant my name because I'm the baddest girl in all of Remnant doesn't sound too bad at all. At least it'd be for something fun and not… super sad or dangerous for once."

"That's not all though, right?" Zero slowly took a sip of his soda, "You were also in the news when it came to your home, Hillfjall-Yama."

"Oh…" her grip on the necklace loosened.

"A girl somewhere between the ages of five and ten found after the worst blizzard of thirty years in northern Vale with a boy around the same age in nothing but a loincloth… That's how you and Everest got your start, right?"

"Guessing you looked up the old newspapers after I avoided the topic?"

"More like Frost looked it up, and I happened to get my hands on a copy."

"Picked it off of her?"

"Whichever."

"Right… shouldn't have expected anything from Mr. Stickyfingers..." she lowered her candy bar, "But it's not a big deal, you know? I'm like anyone else. I celebrate my birthday on the day that I came into the world, do things that a normal probably-maybe-likely-seventeen-year-old girl does, and call home to check on everyone every once in a while. I'm pretty average, Z."

Zero couldn't help but watch as Rime began toying with her necklace, "Right. Average."

"Average for a Huntress in training. The only weird thing is that I don't really have a past. So what? I was just a kid. I've made plenty of good memories just by living the life I fell into! I've got Everest, the best big brother you could ask for, you, the coolest ninja in all the academies, and Frost, the most supportive girl I've ever met. There's Alice and Timbre, two of the best friends that I never would have had otherwise. Lurida and Xannie are fantastic mentors, and Gavin's the best role model I could ask for. Yamuna is someone that I'm glad to have been there for when she needed. I just… I wouldn't have this life if I had a past, so I'm happy that I don't, ya know?"

A puff of cold air escaped his mouth as he huffed, "Okay, so you have a life now, but don't you ever have the urge to know where you came from? _Why_ you're here?" he paused, "Why you even exist? What led to you having the life you have now? What led you to be sitting on the edge of Amity Coliseum and fighting in this tournament, or where you'd be if things had started… _normally_ for you?"

"I mean, there is that bit of curiosity, but it's okay that I don't know. I have everything that I would ever need. I've always had this ice-shaping Semblance," a icy haze began forming around her hand as she stretched it out towards the open ocean beyond Vytal, "I've always had my necklace. I've always had my name, even if it was given to me by the people who took me in at the orphanage. I even got to choose my last name! How cool is Chione? Like, at least I didn't get stuck with something stupid like Bulava or Brown."

"Careful. Show too much pride in something not many people have the privilege to do, and you might get bad luck. How many other people do you know of that actually got to choose their name?" he let out a stifled laugh before falling silent. The glass bottle in his hand clinked against the floor as he set it down, "But I'm serious. You don't have any want to know who you were before you were Rime Chione? _Why_ Rime Chione even came to exist in the first place?" he looked off into the night sky and the inky black ocean that stretched off into infinity in front of them, "To reunite with those that knew that little girl before she became Rime Chione?"

"Sometimes, but not so bad that it hurts. I'm really happy with where I am now. Even if there was a way to find out who I was," she clutched her necklace again, "Well… there just isn't to begin with. No one has any idea where I might have come from. It's not like Everest. He was just out and about with no real direction. He knows what he was doing, but I just… don't. No one does, and I don't think anyone could."

Zero nodded slowly before speaking again, "Do you know _where_ you got the name Chione?"

"It was always floating around in my head. Maybe it was just my name before I was found… but I don't really know," Rime shrugged.

"There used to be another village higher up in the mountains far above Hillfjall-Yama. It was so secluded and hard to get to that it never made it onto any maps. Only had a population of like… forty to fifty."

"Did you read that in what Frost dug up?"

"No. I know that because I was one of those forty to fifty that lived there. I was there when it all burned down."

"I'm sorry…" Rime pushed the crystal on the necklace between her fingers over and over, "So that's why you wandered around Sanus, isn't it…?"

"Partially," he sighed deeply, "You really don't remember Chione at all, do you?"

"I don't remember… Chione…?" she buckled away from him. Hearing her name used to refer to a place felt all too familiar, "You can stop joking around, dude…"

"I'm not joking, Rime. I was really hoping that you'd at least remember the village. If you remembered that, then maybe… just maybe… you'd remember me and understand what's led up to..." he opened his arms, gesturing to the lights of the city below them and the ocean beyond, "all this…"

Rime shot up and backed away from him. He was wrong. He had to be wrong, "I don't know what you're talking about, Zero. I really don't."

"Right…" he stood up and turned towards the arena, "Sorry that I bothered you about it. I didn't know for sure, but I wanted to check. I guess you just heard or read it elsewhere," he slowed down as he sulked into the crowd, "You should get going. The first fight's going to be over soon."

"Hold on! " Rime tried to run after him, but her legs felt as though they were locked in place. Never had she thought too hard on where her last name came from. It always seemed benign. It didn't hardly mean anything. Now, just thinking of the name 'Chione' felt like it was prodding at something she didn't know was in the back of her mind. She stood there helplessly as he left her line of sight, unable to process what he meant without sinking deeper into the fear welling up in her chest.

.

 _Gods, I hate being up on that stage…_ Dante clawed at the neck of her chestplate and yanked it out a little to get some air, _Just walk away and calm down. Don't go freaking out before you even get a chance to fight. Just stay calm,_ she hurried towards the Mistrali locker room so that she might get some peace and quiet as Ledning and Tox got their fight over with. The walls felt like they had grown closer with each clack of her boots against tile. The red cloak around her shoulders was the only comfort she had available for the time being.

 _Okay, you can let it out before you have to fight if you need. It'll be okay. Just get to the locker room so you can have some privacy…_ she put her hand against the Mistrali locker room's door. Her heart pounded in her ears. The door opened just a crack before she heard the metallic clanks of armor.

 _Please… Not now… Not right now, Mother…_ she pleaded in her mind to no avail. Then she heard the soft thuds of sandals, and the sharp clacks of loafers. Her mother, brother, and father were all just about to turn the corner and see her. All she had to do was slip inside and hurry to the bathroom.

She pushed the door open and put one foot in the door, but it was too late.

"There she is!" Shirley hurried over and dragged Dante into a tight hug. While it would've been uncomfortable normally, the fact that both of them were in armor made the embrace much more so as the metal breastplates dug into each other.

"M-Mother… hey…" Dante hastily returned the hug, then began pulling away. Just as always, her mother's timing was absolutely terrible. She leaned to the side to see her father and brother coming up from behind, _Just smile and act natural. You're okay. It's okay._

Henry slid past Shirley and clasped Dante on the shoulder. Unlike his wife, he could see that Dante was feeling a little off. Surprisingly, he didn't even smell like he'd been drinking, "Glad you didn't get chosen for the first fight. Otherwise I might not have gotten to see you before you went in!"

"O-oh, it certainly wouldn't be a big deal. I am glad to see you, though. Was Mrs. Sassafras giving you a hard time?" Dante relaxed at her father's kind touch. Seeing him sober this late at night actually lifted her spirits a little bit. He seemed just as he should have always been.

"Oh, you know," Henry chuckled, "She's always hesitant to open new stores. We're talking about three new locations in Atlas. Just a lot of planning when it comes to keep the candy from cooling too much while it's being made. I still need to talk to the contractor for a quote on that."

"If you manage to get those stores up, then Arty would certainly be happy. Roland told me that he's gotten his whole team addicted to Satsuma's Sweets," Dante tried to keep the panic in her mind from slipping through. She turned her attention to her brother, who was standing just behind her mother, "Ahab, are you well?"

"Oh, I'm fine, Sister," he forced a fake smile, "Just peachy."

"It was Robin's choice to put me in, not mine…" Dante could feel the beads of sweat building around her neck. Ever since Robin put her and Eden into the doubles round, Ahab had been far less than pleased.

"Strategically speaking, it was a great choice!" Shirley clapped her hands together, pleased with the example Team READ was showing of concepts and morals taught at Haven Academy, "You would've done great, too, Ahab, but only two could've gone on into the doubles," she put a hand on his shoulder, "So buck up. Your team wouldn't be in the tournament right now if it weren't for your help in the first round! That's something to be proud of!" she moved her hand from his shoulder and brushed it under his cloudy blind eye, "Going it alone at this point probably would've gotten you in _much_ more trouble than it did last time."

Ahab pushed her hand away, "Yeah… whatever. You're right, Mother."

"I would much rather be a viewer, though…" Dante rubbed her arm anxiously. The limelight certainly wasn't the place for her. She loved to fight, but not with so much riding on her ability to do so. Being so close to potentially being the winner of the tournament put on way too much pressure for this to be considered fun.

"Win, lose, it doesn't matter, Dante." Shirley smiled to her husband before turning to their daughter, "All that matters is that you've made it this far. As your headmistress, that's all I could ever ask, but as your mother, I'd love to see the beaming look on your face if you managed to be not just in the top eight of this year's contenders, but the top _four_!"

Dante tried to collect herself, "I… I mean, yes, that would be great, but…"

"Just try your best. Keep calm, and you'll do as good as you are able to. If you lose, then you take a lesson. If you win, then you move on further. We're proud of you either way," Henry tried to lighten the conversation a bit. Even he could feel the pressure building with the expectations being shoved onto his daughter.

"Right…" Dante looked over their shoulders, "Um… Where is Roland…?"

"I called and told him we were all down here, but he's with his team at the moment," Henry sighed, "He wanted me to tell you that he wishes you luck, though, but only if you don't go up against Timbre."

"Oh, well let's hope that I don't see her in the ring. I would hate to not have my brother's support, but I'm glad he's starting to find a bit of team spirit," Dante smiled a little. Knowing Roland, he was planning on coming to wish her luck, but decided against it when he heard that Shirley would be around. He didn't want to throw her off by getting into it with her mother, "Still, it still would have been nice to see him before…"

They were suddenly interrupted by a booming voice from overhead, " **AND WITH THAT, TOX HAZMATTE HAS TAKEN THE VICTORY FOR SHADE! WHAT A RIVETING FIGHT TO START OFF THE ROUND!"**

"I'm sure he'll be around somewhere in the sidelines," Ahab smirked when he was sure only Dante could see his face, "He always is."

"Yes… that's more than you were during Eden and I's fight," Dante smiled back brightly.

Ahab just sneered, "Try not to get your ass kicked, Sister. You might be up next."

Shirley gave a light smack to the back of Ahab's head, "Language, young man."

"I won't," Dante placed her hand against the door, "I'll let you all get back to your seats. The randomizer is about to select who is up next, and I should make a pit stop in case it's me."

"Right, then we'll see you on the stage!" Shirley began toting Ahab away by the ear despite his many pleading yelps.

Henry began to follow, then slowed his pace a little, "Good luck out there, Dante. You've come a long way from those days you spent in the library as a little girl."

"Thank you, Father…" Dante smiled as she pushed open the door, "That really puts me at ease…"

.

 _You really don't remember Chione at all ,do you?_

Rime continued staring off into space, still stuck in her own thoughts as the spotlights beamed down on her and the other five remaining fighters. Her hands were curled into fists at her sides, trembling ever so slightly.

"Hey! Rime!"

She snapped out of her daze and turned towards the voice yelling at her, finding Timbre looking at her with concern.

"Are you okay? I mean… that first fight was intense, but it's no reason to be afraid."

Rime shook her head, "N-no… I'm fine. Just… queasy."

"I know the feeling, Roma…" Dante murmured with her arms over her stomach. The stage lights weren't calming her in the slightest, "It's nice to be up here with friends, though."

 _Are you so sure about that?_ Rime thought to herself as she remembered the desperation in Zero's voice when he told her he was trying to jog her memory. _Do I really know him from somewhere before Beacon? We're such good friends… aren't we? He seemed so upset… no, he was disappointed. What was he trying to tell me, dammit?!_

"Is… is she alright, B…?" Dante looked over to Timbre. With Carmen still rattling on about how fantastic the last match was, she was thankful to have a little time to calm her nerves, "I've never seen Roma so distressed…"

Timbre shrugged to say 'Me neither'. She didn't understand what was going on with Rime, but one thing was clear, drama was everywhere in the final days of the tournament. First, Alice was beaten during her doubles match enough to force Ebon to forfeit, then the jerk of a Huntsman, Vincentas Saurus, was almost attacked by one of his wife's students, then Sepia was told she couldn't continue to the singles round, and now Rime, the bubbly and hyperactive go-getter, was barely talking and looking as if she were having the worst day of her life. She was about to prod some more, hoping that her status as Rime's friend would get her to talk enough to function long enough to last through the round, but she was interrupted by Vivian Willows announcing that the randomizers were starting.

The first image to appear in the scrolling columns was the smiling visage of Rime, her dull blonde hair looking just as messy as usual. Behind her were a pair of axes crossed in front of a laurel wreath all in lime green, the symbol of Beacon. The second column stopped spinning to show an image of Dante, her indifferent stare in the image contrasting the slightly anxious look that she gave the big screens. Behind her in baby blue was the winged lantern that was the symbol of Haven.

"Oh…" Dante sighed. She was really hoping to not be up next, but she hadn't ended up so lucky. She could, however, finally get this all over with.

"Damn…" Rime whispered to herself as she looked to Dante on her left. _Hopefully she doesn't beat me over the head with that book like her brother did with his typewriter during our first week of class…_ _Come on, Rime, maybe you can use this to get your mind off of things. A good fight always gets you in a better mood._ She nodded to Dante, her worried expression fading as she took to one side of the arena's center platform.

"Good luck, Rime!" Timbre called after her.

"Thanks!... I'll try!" Rime called back.

" _ **BEAT HER OVER THE HEAD, SIS!"**_

Dante whipped around to see Roland standing up in the crowd between Arty and Sepia. She looked between him and Rime, then took her spot on one end of the arena, "I… um… I'll leave my options open…"

.

"Yo… Roland. Can you cool it?" Arty had to raise his hand to prevent Roland's thick otter tail from smacking him in the head, "You're about to kill me with that thing!"

Sepia giggled, ' _That's what she said.'_

"Woah, girl," Roland sat back down, "Don't go freaking Arty out by saying something he doesn't need to know."

Arty sank back in his seat, "I really hate you two sometimes. You know that?"

' _You were the one who gave him the go ahead to ask me out,'_ Sepia shook her head, ' _You facilitated this.'_

"Seriously, though. You should have known what would happen, Arty. You'd think that after you read twenty six volumes of _Magical Girls of Mystic Mistral_ that you'd understand just a little bit on how couples and romance work. Then again, I guess you know it more from the girl's side…" Roland chimed in.

' _The magical girl's side, that is!'_ Sepia leaned across Roland to get a look at Arty.

"Like I said. I. Hate. You. Two."

"Oh, just shut up and watch my sister," Roland laughed, "Maybe you can get some ideas for your fanfic."

"Hey. Fan _manga-_ er- fan _comic_. Get it right."

Roland chuckled, "You first, bud."

.

 _Just keep yourself under control. You're fine…_ Dante thought to herself as the stage lifted up. As soon as it became still, the match would begin. Until then, each agonizing second ticked by as she watched her opponent, _Just get this over with. It'll all be okay. Father believes in you. Mother does too. Roland, even. Maybe Ahab, too. It will be okay._

Rime stood with her hands in her jacket pockets, her eyes fixated on Dante, _Keep your head in the game, Rime. Forget about Z for right now. You can get your answers later when you get back to the room. He's your friend, he'll talk to you._

The platform stopped in mid air. The stage lights settled overhead. Every person in the crowd stood waiting in anticipation for the coming fight.

Dante took a deep breath. She pulled the book off her belt with her metal clad left hand, and drew out her fire poker with the other uncovered hand. She wouldn't dare make the first move on someone that she considered her friend, "Roma. Are you prepared?"

"More than." She waved her arms out in front of her. Pointed shards of ice appeared in front of her and floated around her. She rushed Dante, launching projectiles one at a time, constantly making new ones as she continued her assault.

Dante whipped her fire poker in front of her to send out a wave of embers into the shards of ice. Only a few melted all the way, leaving her to side step and dodge the others. She took off, running in a circle opposite to Rime.

She flipped through the pages in her book until she found the bright red Fire Dust section, "Let the flames of chaos flow across thy keen blade," her fire poker began to glow with faint red flames, "Bring forth wild destruction in- _CRAP!"_ she dropped down into a slide to narrowly avoid a flying icicle that would have beaned her in the head.

 _Got you_. Rime reached up with both hands to the crystal around her neck and drew two large blades from its glimmering sapphire blue surface. She leapt, preparing to drive the swords down into Dante.

Black iron shifted around the fire poker, Divina, so it could collapse into its flare gun form. Dante lifted it and fired up at Rime while jumping up to her feet. The fire charge whipped through the air and slammed into one of the blades in Rime's hands.

Rime looked to her right hand, now dripping with water. _Why her of all people?... Team FREZ's biggest weakness has always been fire… maybe that's why I hate Raachs so much…_

"Snap out of it!" she hissed at herself as she took the remaining blade in both hands and ran for Dante again. Before Dante could get another clear shot, Rime took advantage of the previous one. Holding a hand down to the ground, the water dripping from her drenched side solidified underneath her. She ducked low and slid right under Dante.

Dante lunged forwards to get some distance, but she couldn't see Rime throwing her blade down to slice at her back. She felt the cold edge dig into her back, only being stopped by her aura and the armor underneath.

 _If only I could get a poem off…_ she thought while trying to regain her footing. Divina shifted back into its fire poker form to be used as a guard as she turned around. Embers curled around the hooked blade, "Would you consider fighting me from a range, Roma? That might be a little more manageable."

"Sorry, blades too much?" Rime reached up, moving her hands in a flurry of motion in front of her. From a whirl of snow and freezing wind, she drew a large warhammer, much larger than herself, "If you say so, I can _make_ some distance!" The hammer made loud whooshing noises as Rime began swinging it around herself. Using the frozen puddle of water beneath her feet gave her the momentum she needed to drive it into Dante.

 _Please let an improv couplet work,_ Dante steeled herself incase she was about to be knocked out of the ring, "Winds lift me up into the sky, so that I may not fall and die!" she shouted. A white haze collected around her feet, then a gust of wind shot her high up above Rime. At the apex of her flight, she settled into a hover above her opponent. Air spun around her feet, much like when Arty would use Air Dust paint in a similar manner.

"Let the flames of chaos flow across thine keen blade. Bring forth wild destruction in thou wake," flames collected around her weapon and arms, "No longer will such embers burn as fear in-"

"No. More. _Fire!_ " Rime summoned a solid ice boomerang from her neck, similar in shape and form to Opal's. Creating copies of other people's weapons wasn't something Rime liked to do often, but right now, she was having to move her hands faster than her head. She reared her arm back and threw the L-shaped hunk of ice at the floating girl in the red cloak.

 _Still not enough time…_ Dante kicked hard enough to send out a poof of Air Dust around her. She fell just under the boomerang. Her fire poker sent wisps of fire dancing around her cloak. The blade slashed around her, sending a disk of fire towards Rime once she landed.

Rime threw her arms up, creating a thick block of ice in front of her just in time to block the attack, but the explosion that followed the collision of fire and ice sent her sprawling to the tiles.

Being stuck in a one versus one situation with someone as reliant on melee combat as Rime was a nightmare for Dante. She couldn't hardly find the time to get a buff or debuff out to make this fight much shorter than it was already becoming. Never once did she think that ice could serve to be such a hindrance for her.

 _She's on the ground. You have a chance,_ Dante began reciting her poem for the third time, "Let the flames of chaos flow across thine keen blade. Bring forth wild destruction in thou wake. No longer will such embers burn as fear in thy mind..."

Rime saw the embers beginning to swirl around Dante, "Damn it… I can't let her finish that poem," her frustration faded as an idea came to her, "but that doesn't mean a little fire can't help me." More icicles formed a floating ring above her.

"Just gotta get the shot right," she held her arm out, her middle and index fingers out and her thumb up to represent the form of a gun. With one eye closed, she aimed down her makeshift sights towards Dante. She threw her arm up with a loud "Pew!"

The whole string of icicles surged towards Dante.

"for thou will let them grow-" icicles slammed down all around Dante, but melted instantly from the heat whipping around her. However, this was enough to momentarily break her concentration and the poem's effects with it, "Wha-"

Dante looked up just in time to see Rime dashing towards her and crouching low in front of her. The pull of a grin at the edges of her mouth mocked her.

"You need to cool it with the fire and just chill out, Dante," Droplets of water splashed out as Rime pressed her hands into the water pooled around Dante's armored feet. Frost creeped out across the shallow puddle as a torrent of chilled air spilled from her body. The water went through a near-instantaneous flash freeze.

"You've been hanging around my brother far too much…" Dante began to step out of the ice, but her boots rattled in place. She looked down, and, much to her horror, she was stuck in place.

Rime jumped and delivered a spinning kick to Dante's cheek. While Dante was freed from her icy restraints, it wasn't a painless process.

Icy shards tinked across the tiles that Dante slid across. She tumbled to a stop just in time to see Rime charging towards her again, _I don't have enough time to use a Fire Dust buff… but…_ she wildly flipped to the white section of her book, "Let wind weave and flow, Through my words, body, and soul…" white haze collected around her legs, "And bring victory."

Right when Rime brought down a pair of axes, Dante shot off in a white and red blur. She circled the arena while flipping wildly through her book. As long as Rime couldn't get a lock on her, getting a debuff off wouldn't be an issue, "Snuff out thy hope of victory! Hellfire rips across thine heart in a wretched claw of burning agony! Singed will be thy name, scarred by raging twists of fire!"

A wave of heat crashed into Rime and engulfed her in a vortex of burning air. Her axes fell and melted into nothingness. Her knees trembled as she fell to the ground. _I can't breathe. What the heck did she do to me? Why do I feel… so… weak?..._ She looked up at Dante, who appeared as nothing but a red blob through the heat shimmers and Rime's blurring vision. _Is my… aura… actually dropping from this? It doesn't even hurt… but it's… I don't even know how to describe this…_

"I refrained from using a Magma Dust debuff, for I think that would be cruel to do on a friend, Rime…" Dante shifted her weapon back into its flare gun form. It pained her to see her friend like this as a result of her own frightening Semblance. She couldn't even keep up tossing out the wrong name, "I hope that we can still be friends after this."

A chill swept over Rime as she clenched her fists against the ground, "Not like this…"

"How…" Dante stepped back as the flames surrounding Rime began to shrink into the icy haze growing around her. Snowflakes began to appear within the fire in spite of the intense heat. The Fire Dust debuff was certainly in effect, but that didn't matter all that much. A blast of cold air shot out around Rime, coating Dante and her weapons in a layer of frost and breaking the Air Dust buff she had given herself.

 _Focus,_ if she was going to win, Dante had to keep the Fire Dust debuff on Rime active. She couldn't let it disappear in the blizzard surrounding Rime.

Rime barely knew what was happening. She just wanted the suffocating heat to stop, and somehow, her necklace and Semblance were letting her put an end to it. She manifested a large polearm. The conversation with Zero came flooding back to her, repeating itself in her head like an old movie.

 _You don't have any want to know who you were before you were Rime Chione? Why Rime Chione even came to exist in the first place?_

She slammed the weapon sideways into Dante and knocked her to the side. The ice form shattered.

 _To reunite with those that knew that little girl before she became Rime Chione?_

She summoned another, slamming Dante in the opposite direction.

 _If you remembered that, then maybe… just maybe… you'd remember me and understand what's led up to… all this._

The attacks kept coming. Makeshift weapon after makeshift weapon shattered against Dante, sending her closer and closer to not only the 15% aura threshold but also the edge of the floating platform.

Smoke whirled around in her mind as she called out ' _Mom! Dad! Kelvin! Celeste! Where are you?!'_

Another voice, a deeper and gruffer man's voice, called back to her in the depths of her memories. ' _Gwyn!? Gwyn, where are you?!'_

The shock forced Rime to stop mid-swing, but her forward momentum combined with the water and ice storming around her kept her moving directly past Dante, who had ducked to the side to avoid another blow.

Red light split through the seams of Dante's flare gun. She turned back, leveling the weapon at Rime as she passed. A pit formed in her stomach as her finger became rigid on the trigger. The inhibitor switch on Divina had been switched off, and the crystal inside was primed to be fired. Flames erupted from the gun as she pulled the trigger. The Fire Dust crystal inside slammed into Rime's back and exploded.

Through the smoke and embers, Rime went flying over the side of the platform. Luckily for her, it snapped her out of her daze. As if by instinct, she reached to her chest and pulled a long loose form from her necklace. A hook on the end of a long chain, each link a frigid circle of frosted ice, came from within the crystal. At the last second, she threw it. The hook clanked loudly as it clamped on the end of the tiles, scraping hard until it finally caught on the metal framing at the edge.

Rime looked below her and panic filled her again as nothing but the empty black depths of Amity Colosseum stared back at her. Her attention was snapped back to the platform as a voice called from above.

"I'm sorry for this. I truly am," Dante pressed the sole of her boot against the icy hook. Watching Rime struggle to climb up made her heart sink. She couldn't bear to watch the girl continue her hopeless struggle. The ice cracked, fractures webbing out across the hook.

Rime fell down into the blackness beneath her. She almost found it fitting, as the sudden flash of memories faded back into obscurity in the back of her mind.

.

"Aaaaaaaand…" Roland's eyes followed Rime as she sunk down into the safety net suspended below the floating platform. The ropes gave way, lowering her down safely onto the ground below. He shot up from his seat, screaming Carmen's words as she spoke them, " _ **DANTE WINS!"**_

"Wow… that was…" Arty nodded as he finished a scribble in his sketchbook depicting the ice-storm enveloped Rime swinging ice polearms at Dante. He quickly scratched out the words ' _RIME V. DANTE'_ and ' _RIME WINS_ ' next to it, "Intense. I honestly thought once Rime did that… whatever she did, she was sure to win that. I've never seen her do anything like that before! Have you?" he looked to his teammates.

' _Maybe we've just never seen her go all out. That Dust crystal on her neck must be pretty potent, and,'_ Sepia pointed to the medics carrying Rime out on a stretcher, ' _it looks like it completely tired her out. Still… I didn't know a Semblance could do something like that…'_

"I've read of it in fiction, but never seen something that… strong. Looks like it's good we made friends with such a cool girl, huh?" Roland kept a grin on his face as he watched his sister fall back against the tile and huff.

"More puns, and I get mini-Rime and mini-Dante to stab you in the ankles," Arty said as he wagged his orange sketchbook towards his partner.

"Yeah, and I could just-" Roland glared at Arty as he realized the utensil that was used for the sketch, "Really? You drew that in pencil on purpose, didn't you?"

"I've learned my lesson, thank you."

Sepia dug around her bustle, then pulled out a bright pink miniature comic book that had to be at least three hundred pages thick.

"Thanks, babe," Roland took the comic book from her and held it up to Arty. The number 27 was clearly visible in the lower left corner of the cover, "I got ammo too now, bub. It'd be a shame if you did something hasty and never got to know what happens between Yuki and Satoshi, now wouldn't it?"

Arty's eye began to twitch. "I. Will. Kill. You."

' _Because he's threatening to destroy the next issue in the series that you haven't gotten to yet, or because he's waving it around in public?'_

"The first-NO! The second…." Arty grumbled and sank deeper into his seat, his face a deep red, "B-both…"

"That's what I thought, now," Roland passed the book back to Sepia and stood up, "Let's go congratulate my sister… and apologize to Rime. We haven't got much time before the next fight."

"What do we have to be sorry for? She lost… somehow… but that's not our fault," Arty snickered as they stood up and began making their way down to the Vale locker room, "Unless you think you did something to mess up her brain our first week after you bashed her in the head with Writer's Block."

"She's probably not going to be too happy about a loss, and she's our friend," Roland sighed, "And I imagine that losing after that doesn't feel too great."

' _Maybe we could give her some candy to cheer up. I've still got tons!'_ Sepia reached into her bustle and yanked out two handfuls of sour balls.

"Dude… me too…" Arty reached into his backpack and pulled out a handful of assorted Satsuma's Sweets, "I swear we'll be in our 70's and we still won't have gotten rid of all of this stuff."

"You're welcome…" Roland mumbled.

.

Zero stood at the rim of Amity Colosseum's docking bay facing the Vacuan quadrant of the island. The pale square facades and its dark archways looked back at him. A cold puff of air escaped his mouth and seeped into the air through his scarf.

"Zero!" He heard a familiar voice shout behind him.

He didn't turn. He didn't have to. He didn't _want_ to, "I'm really sorry about your fight, Rime."

"I don't _care_ that I lost the fight," she clenched her fists at her sides. She didn't know if she was more angry at him or herself for not giving a full story. The confusion was almost too much, "I told you I didn't mind that I don't know my past, that I don't even know when my real birthday is, or who my real parents are, or who I really _am_ ," she could feel tears welling up, but she didn't care, "Why did you plant that little bite that would make me feel like I'm going crazy over this?!" Drops fell from her face, clattering to the floor as they froze before impact, "Who even _are_ you? Do I even know?"

He didn't respond.

She stomped towards him, "Zero! Answer me!" Streams fell freely, falling away into frost as she cried, "I thought you were my friend… Why are you doing this _tonight_ of all nights?"

"I know you don't remember me, Rime. I thought that you would before now, but I was wrong. I thought you would remember Chione, but you didn't. I thought you deserved to know your home if you were going to stand up there and fight, you know? If it was your home, that is..." Zero stood deadly still while overlooking the buildings below, "I thought you could remind the world of home if you remembered."

"And why would I want to do that? Who cares if some nowhere town named Chione was my home? Why should _I_ care?!" she stomped her foot, "Look… I'm sorry if you think I'm someone you know… but I just don't remember. If you were really someone I knew years ago, don't you think something, _anything_ would've already tipped me off?!"

"Because we were friends, Rime. I just wanted you…" Zero sighed. His shoulders slumped, then turned to face her. His scarf was pulled all the way up over his nose, "I'm probably wrong. You might not have been her, and I pushed that on you because I just thought… I thought you were Gwyn all this time."

Rime's hands went slack, "Zero… I remember that name," she steeled herself, "If you're so sure that you knew me at one point, and Chione used to be my home, then why don't you just _explain_ what happened? Tell me why you're so sure instead of stepping around it in hopes I'll fill in the blanks myself," she stepped towards him, "I want you to stop lying to me. Tell me the truth. Why do you want me to remember so badly? Why have you never brought this up before? Why didn't you tell Frost? She could've helped you figure this out instead of putting this load on me during the tournament!"

"This isn't her business, Gw…" he caught himself, "Rime. You just… you look like her. Too much like her. When the Grimm attacked and the fire started… everyone got split up. Everyone scattered. I got separated from my friend, Gwyn, and I never found her after… Then I came to Beacon, and you were on my team," he looked down and away from her, "I didn't mean to put a load on you. I thought you would remember and be happy, but… you didn't. I didn't know what to say, and I'm sorry."

Rime remembered the rest of the sudden flare of a memory during her fight, "Who are Kelvin and Celeste? Were they other kids from Chione?"

"They were friends of Gwyn and I in the village. I still haven't found either of them. It's only by chance that I met you… if you're even Gwyn," he tried to reason out each possibility carefully. Even his memory had faded over the years since, "When I learned that you didn't have much of a past, I thought that maybe you were."

"Well… does that mean we can't be friends anymore?... I may or may not be the Gwyn you knew then, but I am the _Rime_ you know now. I don't know what happened in Chione, but that doesn't change where we are now, right?"

"Yes," Zero nodded quickly, "I mean, I still hang out with you because you're… more tolerable than everyone else. That might have been the reason I became friends with you, but it's not the reason I still am…"

Rime let a slight smile show, "Sorry I didn't meet your expectations."

"I'm sorry I didn't talk to you about this earlier," Zero pulled his scarf down to match her smile, "I didn't know if I'd ever have another chance to talk to you about it."

"Like I said, you picked a hell of a night to do it."

"I know, and I'm sorry for that much…" he thought back to Rime's freakout during the match, then lowered his gaze to the necklace around her neck. His smile faded, "and I'm sorry about what happened to your necklace…"

"Wha-?" Rime reached up and grabbed the crystal hanging from her neck, "What are you-?" her eyes widened as she saw a small but very prominent crack running across the previously flawless blue surface of the gem, "Oh no!" she rubbed at it with her thumb, hoping in vain that it would come off.

"It'll be okay. Dust still works the same regardless of a crack or blemish on it, right?" Zero leaned to get a better look at the crack, "You could have that woman at the Dust shop look at it when we get back to Vale."

"Ms. Perry?" Rime shook her head, "This is a very rare type of crystal. I doubt she'd be able to do anything to repair it."

"Either way, it isn't like you'll be using it anytime soon…" he put a hand over hers, "It'll be okay. We'll find a way to take care of it when we can, but right now we can enjoy the festival… you know?"

"Are you sure…?" Rime looked up to meet his gaze, "We can talk more about this, you know? Try to get everything sorted completely? Might be our last chance for a while. Timbre's birthday is tomorrow, and then we've got the free-for-all, and the closing ceremony and-"

"Sorry my sister gave you the cold shoulder, Rime!"

Zero and Rime were startled by most of Team ARTS walking up to them. At the front of the trio, Roland was beaming, obviously happy with his half-sister's victory.

"Geez, Roland!" Rime held her chest, "You about scared me to death!" she stomped her foot again and pointed at him as he drew closer, "You really should be more careful, especially so close to the edge. If you had scared me just a _teensy_ bit more, you could've become a big frozen purple chunk of hail!"

"That wouldn't be very _ice_ , you know," Roland halfway grinned back at her.

' _Okay. That one still wasn't good. Why is it always ice puns with you to Rime?'_ Sepia less than enthusiastically signed.

"It's like the bran muffins with Alice," he shrugged, "Rime likes the ice puns."

"I _never_ said that," Rime shook her head, vehemently opposed to the notion of someone even _uttering_ an ice pun in her presence, "In fact, I'm pretty sure I've told you the exact opposite on multiple occasions."

"Might want to put a freeze on them, then…" Zero mumbled.

Rime snapped her head towards him and pointed a finger close to his nose, "Don't you start now, too. After what we just went through-"

"What did you just go through?" Arty asked, not even considering the possibility that the conversation might've been private. He only got the hint when he noticed the few tracks of frost running down Rime's face, "Oh… relationship issues?"

Rime felt her face burning, "No! It's…" she looked to Zero.

"Yeah, sure. Relationship issues work…" Zero pulled his scarf back up to hide the pink in his cheeks.

"Right, so…" Roland tried to hurry the conversation along, "Rime, how did you break through my sister's Fire Dust debuff? It's one of her strongest…"

Rime glowered as she remembered the intense heat inside Dante's vortex, "I honestly don't know, Roland," she flicked her necklace, "Maybe since I work solely with ice, and she works with a bit of everything, I was just able to out-do it."

"Maybe…" he scratched his chin, "Hell of a Semblance you've got, then…"

' _No kidding! She could take down an Atlesian airship with that much fire-'_ Sepia hesitated for a moment to think, ' _that much icepower!'_

"Still have no idea what you're saying, Sepia. Sorry…" Rime shrugged.

" _ **AND AFTER THAT DAZZLING MATCH, WE MOVE ON TO THE THIRD FIGHT FOR THE NIGHT!"**_ Carmen's voice echoed through the intercom, " _ **WILL THE REMAINING COMBATANTS PLEASE TAKE THE STAGE?!"**_

Rime looked to Zero, "Looks like that's our cue to join Frost and Everest."

"I think I'm just going to head back to the room…" Zero shoved his hands into his pockets, "Might tie up my hammock in the living room and get some sleep. I dunno."

"Don't you want to see the rest of the fights?" Rime was worried about Zero. After the awkward combination of emotions, confusion, and tension, there was no telling what was going through Zero's mind.

"I can watch them on the holo-screen… no biggie," he turned to head back towards the ferry airships on the end of the docks. He could feel his scroll buzzing in his pocket, "Besides, I already saw you fight. That was the only one I actually wanted to see tonight," he waved as he began walking away, "I'll see you all later."

"You only… wanted to see _my_ fight?..." Rime muttered quietly as she absent-mindedly waved back.

' _Go for it, girl. You get that boy!'_ Sepia frantically signed. She had seen enough romance movies to know that the best kisses happened right before the airship was supposed to take off. If only she had her camera.

"Woah, girl, chill," Roland nudged her with his elbow to remind her not to meddle. It wasn't a script to be critiqued, after all, "Anyway… we've still got Timbre to watch. You're welcome to sit with us if you want, Rime. Frost and Everest too… well, as long as it's cool by the orange domestic terrorist."

"Can you stop calling me stuff like that… especially up here?" Arty watched a few Atlesian guards walk by with their rifles ready to aim and shoot at the first sign of trouble, "I don't want to get thrown in jail and or miss the rest of the tournament because you were taking jabs at me for something I did _once_ and have gotten over."

' _Wouldn't you only get thrown in jail if you did it a second time…?'_ Sepia looked up at him carefully, ' _You planning something, Dust Devil?'_

"No! But you two are certainly making it _sound_ like I am!" Arty shook his head, "It wasn't even planned the _first_ time!"

"One, I don't think that Sepia can make anything sound like anything," Roland passed a glance over at her, "No offense."

' _None taken.'_

"Okay," he returned his attention to Arty, "And two, can you really call what you did an _accident_?"

" _Mostly_ an accident then. The graffiti was intentional… the explosion wasn't…"

' _But you made the Dust paint that exploded… and put it in a spray paint can… that didn't look different enough to tell apart from the others…'_

"Shut up. Just shut your hands!" Arty snapped as he turned on his heel to go back to the arena, "Come on. Timbre could be next, and we should be there for her."

' _Right!'_ Sepia ran along behind him.

"Sounds good," Roland followed close behind, "You coming, Rime?"

"Yeah…" Rime watched as the most recently departed shuttle gently floated down and disappeared into the Vale quadrant near their hotel, "I just _gotta_ be there to see Timbre kick some ass!"


	68. V3Ch15: Soothing the Savage Beast

"Yeah…" Rime watched as the most recently departed shuttle gently floated down and disappeared into the Vale quadrant near their hotel, "I just _gotta_ be there to see Timbre kick some ass!"

"GUUUUUUUUUUUUYYYYYYYYYYYYYYYYYYS!" Someone screamed from down the corridor leading into the arena's seats.

Arty smiled upon seeing his teammate running towards them, "Oh, there she is now," he noticed the panic on Timbre's face and her wild frantic motions, "Hey… she looks a little frazzled."

"Well, yeah. Both Léons are still in the running," Roland waved at Timbre as she sprinted towards them from the exit of the stadium, "She probably thinks she's gonna die."

"I'm gonna die!" She yelled.

He looked over to Arty with his hands out, "See?"

"Huh… she _does_ think she's gonna die," he was caught off guard by Timbre suddenly launching herself towards him and gripping the collar of his shirt tightly.

"Arty… literally all but _one_ of the people I'd be okay fighting are already out." Timbre panted, "Ledning, Dante, and Rime were the only ones I knew I wouldn't die against. Coral, I know I can take him out in a heartbeat, but that's a _one in three chance of_ …" Timbre noticed Rime standing behind her team, "Hey, Rime! You did great out there!"

"Thanks!" Rime bucked up at the sight of Timbre. She jumped to give her a quick hug, "You don't have to worry too much, you know? Even if you go up against Ray or Khimera, you still stand a chance! Elimination by ring out is still a thing! I should know..."

Timbre nodded. She had been surprised to see Rime get knocked out of the ring like she had. One minute, Beacon's ice witch was bashing Dante with polearms, and, in the next, she was falling into the dark innards of the colosseum, "Yeah… maybe I could throw whoever… or keep hoping it's Coral. I'm sure Lurida'd enjoy that."

' _But if it's not Coral, you can probably still take them! Sure, they're tough, but anyone who made it this far is!'_ Sepia tried her best to keep positive about the situation. She knew without a doubt that she could take on someone like Ray, but Timbre was iffy. If only she had been more aware of her surroundings, then she could have been the one to go in, ' _You've got this. I know you to!'_

"Yeah, I do too, that's why I'm worried…" Timbre let go of Arty, much to his relief.

"Hey. If you lose, you lose. If Team ARTS doesn't win, so be it." Arty pat her on the shoulder, "We're only first years, after all. Thinking we'd win our first Vytal Festival Tournament is just crazy!"

Timbre glared at him, "You're saying you have no faith in me winning this fight, then?..."

Arty gave her a confused look, "Is that what I said?" he turned to Roland, Rime, and Sepia, "Is that what I said? I don't think that's what I said… was it?"

"You'll be alright, T," Roland lightly punched her in the shoulder, ignoring Arty's lack-luster attempt at comforting a teammate. After everything that happened in their arrival to Vytal, he had far more faith in her abilities. Sure, he was frustrated that Sepia wasn't going in, but he was glad that Timbre had the opportunity to do so, "You'll make your mom proud. I'm sure of that."

Timbre looked out to the night sky, "Mom! I'm gonna try my damndest, but just remember that _he_ said it! Not me!"

He groaned, then placed his hand on her shoulders, "I'm serious," he looked her dead in the eyes, "You've got this. We're all rooting you on. So is your mom. So is mine. I can tell you right now what Mom would say right now, and that's: You can't lose the fight before it starts, or else you can't win the fight to begin with. Got it?"

Timbre was truly shocked by Roland's show of support. While they'd learned to understand each other since arriving in Vytal, they'd also started to become much closer friends. While it had become the new norm for them, it still felt strange after a year of butting heads constantly.

"Okay… Right… I can do this…" her lip quivered and her knees buckled, "I'm more than likely going to fight one of General Léon's kids!" she suddenly remembered something, "Out of all of our time hanging out with Khimera recently, do _any_ of us know her or her brother's Semblances?"

"You forget about Chrissy Coral?" Rime piped up.

Timbre waved her off, "I don't care about him. What about Ray and Khimera?!"

Arty, Roland, and Sepia thought for a moment.

"Nope." Arty responded first, "I never actually went to combat school with her, so I never got the chance to see. Also didn't bother to ask since I didn't think it was too important... despite what Titian thinks."

"She's never used it… even during the attack on Vale," Roland tapped his chin. That only narrowed what Khimera's Semblance could be down by a little, but it made a few possibilities stand out, "It's likely either a passive thing, or it has a large area of effect… I say the second one because she didn't seem to use it while in the warehouse. If it's passive, then we might not have known… Or it's just not damaging or inhibitory in nature since, so it might not have been useful. Ray, on the other hand, probably has something that reflects his personality. A trump card, if you will."

"You think Khimera's Semblance is tied to her whole…" Arty rolled his hand in a repetitive circle as he thought of the best choice of words, "broken… aura… multiple personality… thingy?"

"Well, you know what Carmen says about Semblances," Roland noted.

' _Your personality is connected to your soul, soul to aura, aura to Semblance,'_ Sepia recalled.

"I don't think it's her _soul_ that's broken, though…" Arty pondered, "Or… would it be? Is it even possible to have a broken so-?"

"Arty!" Timbre clapped her hands in front of his face, "Focus! If you guys don't know, it's fine. It's not like she knows mine, so we're even in that regard. I'm more worried about her brother… You guys saw what he did to Alice…"

' _Couldn't, you know, just tell Ray to walk off?'_ Sepia signed.

"Not how it works, Sepia…" Avoiding any and all discussion about her Semblance for so long had prevented her from explaining the finer points of its effects, "I can't tell people to do something they explicitly _don't want to do_. It's easier when it's a completely new thought. That's why it was easy to work with Damascus. He _wanted_ to shoot me. I just gave him a bit of direction."

"So _that's_ how you did it!" Rime laughed, "I knew Siren's Song had _something_ to do with how weird he was acting, but I didn't think you blatantly told him to shoot his rockets too close to himself!"

"Hey! Shhhhhhh-sh-sh-shhhhh…" Timbre clapped her hand over Rime's mouth, "I let you and Alice in about my Semblance because I thought it'd make things a little easier with me starting to… you know… _use_ it again. That doesn't mean shout it to the world."

Rime pushed Timbre's hand away and shrugged, "Sorry… I just got a bit excited. To think, I've known you a _year_ and I never knew you could do… _that_."

Timbre winced. She was scared Rime would've taken it as bad as Arty and Roland had, but surprisingly, both Rime and Alice had reacted fairly tame in comparison, "Yeah, but say if he was actively _thinking_ about _not_ shooting his rocket launcher, then my voice would've had little to no effect on him, even if I put a lot of force behind it," she began to pace, "But none of that matters because, no matter what, I _refuse_ to use my Semblance in this fight no matter who I'm up against."

Arty and Rime were taken aback.

"What?!" Rime called out in what sounded like a mixture between surprise and annoyance, "But, Timbre! You got the whole… _you_ thing going for you! Why not?!"

"Yeah," Arty spoke up, "What she said. Besides, didn't you _just_ say you used it in the doubles against Damascus? Why not against Ray… or Khimera… or even Coral?"

Timbre stopped pacing and stomped her foot, "I only _did_ it because I was trying to get Sepia to continue…" she looked to her partner, who stood meekly behind Roland, "I used it to get _her_ further. I wasn't even planning on going out into that arena again for at least another two years after that fight. But now that it's left to me, I refuse to do it again. Not for my own gain," Festive music began to play over the speakers throughout the stadium, signaling that the next fight was starting soon, "I'd rather lose because I was truly outmatched than win by using my Semblance. I'm _not_ cheating Remnant like that. Not again."

Sepia started to sign frantically. She couldn't just let their ace in the hole fall because she had a little concussion. If Timbre lost, then it was all her fault for not going in in the first place, ' _But T, that's a gift that you have because you're you! You can't just-'_

"Guys, she doesn't have to use her Semblance like that if she doesn't want to. She can win either way," Roland scowled at the others with his arms crossed tightly across his chest. All he could think about was how Timbre performed in the fight with Lieutenant Hulud. She would be okay with or without Siren's Song, "This isn't like Animation, or Rime's ice manipulation, or Inkheart, or Sepia's video orbs. Do any of you think that it wouldn't cause some bit of guilt with every use? It's a scary ability to have, and it's one that can be used unintentionally."

Arty and Sepia sunk back a little, appearing to feel somewhat ashamed.

"Well, hey!" Rime grabbed onto Timbre's hands, "If you lose, you lose, and you'll be in the losing losers' club with me!"

Timbre rolled her eyes, "Gee… thanks, Rime."

"Come on. _Join us_. Alice and the Rheas are waiting for ya, too!" Rime swung Timbre's arms back and forth, as if trying to start dancing with her friend. "We can go get tons of junk food and ice cream and just wallow in our own self-pity for your birthday while we watch that free-for-all match!"

Before Timbre could point out that Rime sounded a bit too hopeful that she'd lose her fight, the intercom buzzed to life.

"Just another reminder for the _**FINAL CONTESTANT TO PLEASE GET UP HERE! TIMBRE THAT MEANS YOU!"**_ Carmen shouted over the intercom.

"Oh crud…" Timbre jumped, breaking free from Rime's grasp to fan herself. It was obvious to her friends that she was panicking, "Oh crud…"

"Looks like somebody's a little late," Arty snickered, "Go. Stop making us look bad!" he pushed her towards the corridor.

"Okay! Okay!" Timbre began making a mad dash for the arena. She only hoped she could make it before Carmen sent out another call for her.

Rime and the rest of Team ARTS began walking back to their seats in a much slower and calmer manner than Timbre.

"Yup…" Roland let out the breath he was holding, "She's screwed."

The others turned and stared at him.

"Didn't you like… _just_ tell her you had confidence in her?" Arty asked as they entered the large bowl of seats.

"I told her she'd be alright, and that she would make her mother proud. She won't die, and stepping into the ring is enough. It's also entirely possible that she'll win… if she goes up against Coral," Roland found his seat and sat down, "Lying when you don't have much confidence in your friend is part of being a friend, right?"

Arty paused for a moment to consider it. "Yes?... Maybe?..."

' _It's like when I told her I was putting that poster on the ceiling because it was just from my favorite concert, and it wasn't because I thought she's hot,'_ Sepia plopped back down next to Roland, ' _Not that I'd want to be with her so much anymore. Way too emotional for me…'_

Arty could've sworn he knew enough sign language, but did Sepia really say that? "Man I gotta brush up on some hand motions…"

"No, you got it right," Roland put an arm around Sepia's shoulders and leaned back to watch the fight.

Arty paused for a moment and thought back to the fight with Team SPCE. He hadn't thought twice about Saffron's Semblance working on Sepia considering how entranced he already was. That mixed with the heat of the fight made him nearly completely forget about their first fight in the tournament, "That… you… Attraction… How did I not piece that together…?"

' _I mean… probably because I'm in a stable relationship with a guy…?'_ Sepia scrunched up her eyebrows, ' _Does it really matter…?'_

"No. I honestly don't care. It's just that I'm realizing, despite being on a team with you guys for almost a full year now, I'm still finding out new stuff every so often… even when it's right in front of me..."

"I mean, you are pretty dense… and you have a short attention span…" Roland mumbled while watching Timbre run across the stage to join the other three students.

.

Khimera stood beside her brother in the center platform of the arena. Seeing him stand so tall in the bright stage lights made her stomach do somersaults. There was a one in three chance that she was going to be fighting him, and even she was horrified of what might happen. All she could do to keep from falling out of control of her fractured aura was to look ahead. Timbre was running up, so she was at least able to take some comfort in seeing her friend. At least a fight with her would be enjoyable.

"It took you long enough…" Ray growled as Timbre fell into line, "Do you think all of Remnant is just going to wait on you?"

Timbre was surprised by the rudeness of the towering Lion Faunus, "I'm sorry, I missed the first announcement…" _What did I ever do to you, bub?_

"Do you honestly think that's an excuse when someone like _me_ is up on the stag-"

"So, Vivian!" Carmen's voice echoed across the arena, "Wanna hit that switch and get the randomizer going?! Please?!"

Vivian pressed the button on the console in front of them.

The big screens flashed to life around the arena. Two columns appeared and began spinning. Pictures of the four students on stage flashed by in rapid succession until the first column froze. Displayed was an image of Timbre's ever photogenic smile with the emblem and color of Beacon Academy behind her.

" _Smile and wave Timbre just smile and wave,_ " she whispered to herself. As if on instinct, she matched the expression shown on the screen and waved to the crowd around her. The resulting cheers and shouts were thunderous in volume with many people chanting her name.

The second column slid to a halt. All Timbre saw at first was the name 'Léon'.

 _Oh no_. Was all that filled Timbre's mind. Had she not used Siren's Song on herself, she would've dropped the pop-star celebrity act and begun actually screaming.

Up on the screen was an image of a familiar olive completed, dark haired woman whose eyes seemed in mid shimmer between bronze, red, yellow, and blue. The white spear of Atlas was stamped behind her.

"I see…" Khimera looked over to Timbre, "I'm thankful that I'm fighting a friend."

 _I'm not_ , Timbre passed a wary glance to Khimera, _I know what this friend can do… and I'm sure I only know a small fraction._

Khimera stared up at the windows above the seating area of the Atlesian side of Amity. Her mother was staring down in anticipation for the match to come. As long as Khimera was in the tournament, she would be safe, or at least according to her mother.

 _I have to win,_ Khimera looked between Ray and Coral as they left the stage, _and so does Ray… but that probably won't be an issue._

The two girls made their way to the center of the arena, leaving Coral shaking in his boots next to the other Lion Faunus.

Ray flashed a cocky grin, "What's the matter? Scared, Coral?"

"It's… it's Chris…" Coral shrunk back away from him. He'd seen this guy in action twice already, and he didn't want to be the third time, "Please don't… eat me…"

With a quick flick of his hand, Ray revealed his claws. He didn't say anything more, he just chuckled and he turned to his seat as the floor began to retract.

Coral covered his face and retreated back into the corridors behind the arena.

.

Timbre could only watch the crowd as the platform rose higher. Row upon row of people passed below the edge of the white panel until it finally came to a stop, suspended in the middle of the entire structure. A floating ring of spotlights slowly sank down above them to illuminate their bout. _Carmen never told me it was this terrifying being up here._

The bright stage lights made the panic grow inside Khimera's mind. Her yellow persona was going to pop out at any instant if she weren't careful. It wouldn't be a great way to start off the match. She grabbed the rim of Tartarus to pull it off in its shield form, then let herself fall into either red or blue.

The weapon shifted until a lion headed cannon was attached to her forearm. Her eyes, nails, headband, pants, and the fur on her coat burned red. Flames burned in the open mouth of the cannon, " **WILL YOU JOIN ME IN GLORIOUS BATTLE, TIMBRE FORTÉ?!"**

"Still not used to the whole… _red_ you," As for every fight, Timbre drew two wires in preparation for the first attack, "But…" she knew all of Remnant was watching. Realizing what had to be done, she felt her sudden bout of stress and anxiety melt away, "Yeah. Let's give everyone a show, shall we?"

" **PERFECT!"** Khimera raised her cannon and fired a volley of fireballs towards Timbre. She ran towards her, firing off a spewing flame from the mouth of her cannon.

Timbre ducked and rolled to the side before kicking backwards to avoid the last of the volley. She slid on her back. The tile disappeared from under her head. Turning slightly, she could see down into the black abyss of the arena's interior. Small red lights far down made it seem like a savage beast was awaiting her deep in the inky blackness.

" **RAAAAAH!"**

Timbre snapped back to attention just in time to see Khimera falling towards her, fire cannon ready to drill into her face.

Timbre rolled to the side. She felt cinders burn against her back as Khimera slammed her fist into the ground where she had previously been. Seeing an opportunity, she pushed herself up with her hands and drilled her boot into Khimera's side, launching the Faunus girl sideways. Back on her feet, Timbre held her fists up and spaced them apart, ready to throw punches once Khimera came in for another attack.

Blue flashed across Khimera. Bronze plates shifted into a segmented sword with a snake's head at the hilt. Blue glowed from every crack in the weapon as the blade extended into a whip. She stood tall with her sword ready. Segments of blade flashed around her. The chain clanked, and then shot towards Timbre's face like the piercing maw of a viper.

Timbre tried to duck out of the way like she had the first time, but something stopped her, sending her face-first into the ground. Looking back, she found her foot caught in the segmented blade of Khimera's sword.

" _If you think you can deal with me in just one way, then you are a fool,'_ Khimera yanked Timbre across the tile, " _Don't insult me by flailing around like a child."_

Timbre struggled as Khimera pulled her closer, "Well then, let me change my strategy!" she aimed a fist towards Khimera's face and fired. A thick cable shot out from the underside of her wrist and slammed into Khimera's forehead, forcing her backwards and, in turn, loosening her sword's grip on Timbre's ankle.

' _That… really…'_ yellow faded into Khimera's clothes. Tartarus began to shift again. The head of a ram sat on the end of a thick metal column. She grabbed it by the handles on its side, "H-h-hurt!"

She swung the battering ram towards Timbre, her eyes squeezed shut to avoid the sight that might come.

Timbre crossed her arms to block the punch. It hurt much more than if Khimera had been using only her fists and pushed her back a bit, but she had prevented most of the blunt force from damaging her. She returned the punch.

With Khimera's eyes closed, she didn't even see Timbre's fist coming as it slammed into her cheek.

"Wha-?" Khimera was suddenly knocked back by another punch to her other cheek.

Timbre kept up the series of jabs until her fist collided with solid metal.

Khimera held up the battering ram and, with her other arm, punched Timbre in the nose and drove a knee up into her stomach.

The two girls continued exchanging punches and kicks, occasionally blocking the other's hits.

"E-enough of this!" Khimera palmed Timbre's face and pushed her back. She reeled the battering ram back, getting low to get as much force behind the punch as possible.

Timbre dug her foot into the ground and went back to continue their hand-to-hand brawl, despite Khimera having the weapon advantage.

That's when Khimera swung her arm forward, driving the battering ram right into the middle of Timbre's corset.

Timbre gasped and coughed as she felt her feet leave the ground.

"I-I-I'm so s-s-sorry!" Khimera shouted as she threw her up through the ring of stage lights and towards the starry night sky above.

Timbre rocketed upwards towards the shattered moon. She couldn't even open her eyes with the wind rushing by. There had only been a few times since attending Beacon that she had been thrown this hard, and she hated it every time. Air exploded out of her lungs as she slammed into the top of the invisible dome. Bright blue rippled around her from the force being absorbed by the field.

 _Oh, this is way far from over…_ Timbre opened her eyes as she began her descent. She held out her hands, a wire shooting out from each knuckle so that ten piano wires formed a cage around Khimera. She reeled in, clipping the wires at the last moment and driving her fist down into Khimera's face.

Her boots slammed against the ground while Khimera stumbled backwards. The momentum of the fall made it feel as though her legs were going to be sucked down into the tile. She pushed up and released the woven cords from under her wrists. Both slammed into Khimera's sides with the added momentum from the fall.

Falling to her knees, Khimera tried to block with the battering ram, but it just didn't have enough coverage to block the assault from Timbre's wires. _If only I could return to normal…_ Wire after wire slammed into her, "W-why can't I control it n-now **OF ALL TIMES?!"**

 _I guess I don't have a choice but to use it, then…_ she thought despite the burning red around her. Crimson haze began seeping out around her as if her aura had taken physical form around her. The roar of a lion shook the arena.

Timbre stumbled back as the red glow around Khimera grew larger and larger. When it finally stopped, it took up nearly a quarter of the platform.

Shimmering red light sparkled along the form of the massive lion. Suspended in the middle was Khimera. Every action she made, the solid-light lion mirrored it.

Timbre fell to the ground, pushing herself back as Khimera and her giant avatar stepped calmly towards her. _What the hell kind of Semblance is_ that _?!_ Over the past year, she felt like she'd asked herself that question a million times over, _Calm down, Timbre. So what if it's new? That's still Khimera, and you know how she works_.

" **I WILL CRUSH YOU!"** Khimera shouted from inside her lion avatar. Each syllable was mimicked with snarls and growls from the illuminated beast surrounding her.

A paw slammed down just in front of Timbre, only missing because Khimera was still adjusting to the titanic form of her Semblance. The other flew towards Timbre's side like a cat swatting a mouse.

Timbre was launched sideways. She knew she would be launched off the platform if she didn't do something. There wasn't much to grab on to, and the lights were already too far away. She needed a better angle, and there was only one thing in sight that would help her get it. _Hope that thing's solid enough_. She aimed a fist towards the red lion's flank and fired a coiled wire. Just as she had hoped, it jammed a few feet into it's holographic frame and held.

Khimera jerked to the side in an attempt to break Timbre's hold on her avatar. She slid around to face Timbre as she came reeling in, the maw of the giant red lion ready to snap down on her.

At the last moment, Timbre clipped the wire. Narrowly missing the snap of the lion's jaws, she went flying and bounced along the ground, _At least I didn't fall, right?_

The red glow began to shift to blue. The lion began to shatter like glass around Khimera. She fell back to the ground as bits of blue shards clattered to the tile. Each vibrated with the residual energy of Khimera's aura, then shot back into place around her. Before long, she was lifted back up inside the head of a snake, the sprawling body of it coiled up on a quarter of the arena.

Bright blue fangs dripped with a similarly blue substance that steamed upon contact with the air. Inside, Khimera leaned forward to bring the head of the snake slamming down towards Timbre, fangs bared to strike.

Timbre jumped and landed on the snake's head. It actually reminded her of fighting a King Taijitu in a way, only this wasn't a Grimm, it was another person.

"You know, I don't know what else I expected," Timbre held fast to the top of the snake's eye sockets to keep her balance. She looked down into the glowing blue eyes of her opponent, "Normally, I'd be shocked, but… honestly…"

The snake's head lurched. Khimera reared it back. The entire snake hissed as it threw its head forward. It jolted to a stop just inches from the edge of the arena.

Timbre aimed the wires down towards the eyes, one on each side of Khimera, and fired. "I'm not letting go that easy!"

" _You really think so?!"_ Khimera hissed as the snake's head reared up again. It slammed down against the tile, then reared back up. With Timbre already thrown off balance, it threw its head down again. Then again.

Timbre's feet slipped, nearly entering the sharp-toothed maw of the holographic reptile. Each slam of Khimera's avatar's head lifted her up and slammed her into the hard surface of it's transparent blue scales. _If I hold on, I'm beaten until my aura's gone. If I let go…_ She looked down into the colosseum again. The red lights taunted her again. The snake lifted its head up and she slammed down into it again, _I don't really have a choice…_

While Timbre had ideas of going down, Khimera was thinking just the opposite. Before Timbre could make her plunge, Khimera whipped the head of her snake avatar up towards the frame holding the stage lights over the arena. She slammed into one of the lights headon, raking Timbre's back against the hot bulb in the process.

Reacting on an urgent whim, Timbre latched onto the light and swung herself up on top of the floating apparatus. She looked down to the snake slithering around the platform beneath, "Didn't think this was on par with the rules, but… okay. Since I'm already up here..."

The snake lunged and looped around the frame. The whole apparatus began to dip to one side as the body of the snake coil around the metal frame bit by bit. Finally, the tail slumped over the side, and the snake hissed its fangs at Timbre. Khimera's voice echoed out from inside, " _Did you think you'd be safe up here?!"_

"No… you kinda… put me up here." Timbre flipped backwards to avoid being smashed by the snake's head, "Wasn't really my decision!"

Khimera chased Timbre around the ring of lights, her avatar snapping and lunging for Timbre, who continued to flip and jump away.

 _This is getting me nowhere_. Timbre jumped off of the side of the lights. As she fell, she latched onto the side of the structure with a wire. The momentum of her fall looped her under the lights and flung her skyward. She looked down to the giant blue snake and aimed her fists towards its head. Once she was sure its eyes were in her sights, she fired.

Two silver wires shot down from the sky and directly into the dull azure eyes of Khimera's avatar. The whole head was lifted up as Timbre began reeling in. Khimera barely had time to process what was going on before the singer's boots caved in the middle of her avatar's face and hit her.

Blue shards exploded outwards as Khimera was forcefully kicked out of her Semblance.

"Now I'm getting somewhere!" Timbre drew two more wires and ran for Khimera, seeing her chance to end the fight.

" _Dammit!"_ Khimera punched the dark metal of the stage lighting, the aggravation from her blue side becoming more and more apparent.

The falling shards of blue stopped in midair and faded to a bright yellow. They shot back up and began collecting around Khimera once more, "I-I-I… I'm s-s-so s-s-sorry, T-T-Timbre!" she stuttered as a gigantic yellow ram formed around her. It dug its hooves down against the bars as Timbre landed in front of her. The ram lowered its head, and then it charged forward.

"Should've seen this one coming!" Timbre skidded to a stop. She wanted to repeat her evading tactic and jump off of the lights, but she managed to trip over a bar, _My luck, right?_

One of the horns of Khimera's ram avatar slammed into Timbre's gut before she had time to regain her footing. The ram jerked its head forwards to send Timbre flying off the side of the apparatus.

Timbre shot wires towards the lights, hoping to catch herself before she hit the safety net far below.

Khimera focused on what would help her most. She needed to bring some firepower if she were to win this fight, and yellow wasn't going to bring her much. The ram surrounding her faded, and she was left standing between two bars in red and with a fiery lion's head cannon aimed directly at Timbre, " **YOU DID WELL, BUT NOW YOU FALL!"**

Timbre watched in horror as twin fireballs melted through the wires before they could latch back onto the lights.

Khimera watched as Timbre disappeared over the edge of the arena.

She leapt down back onto the arena, a giant red lion forming around her as she slammed down against the tiles. The crowd began cheering all around her. With Timbre off the arena, she stood victorious. The roar from her lion echoed across Amity.

.

"Why's everyone cheering? The fight's not over yet." Arty sat back, pleased with Timbre's trick.

"I can't believe she's pulling that off… but I guess that's why Alabaster made it a point to call us the most situationally aware of Beacon's first years," Roland grinned while Timbre shot and reeled in wire after wire underneath the arena. As long as she didn't actually fall, it wasn't a ring out, "Guess I should have had a little more real faith in her."

' _Rime's gonna be sorry she missed this. Guess the line for snacks was longer than she anticipated…'_ Sepia looked back at the stadium entrance to see Rime running back over covered in cola and soaked popcorn, ' _Speak of the devil!'_

Rime's eyes were glued to her scroll, "Guys!?" she snapped her head up to look to the fight. A faint green shape flew under the central platform, "Is she really pulling that off?!" Despite being an absolute mess, she was grinning from ear to ear, "I was watching the whole thing on my scroll. When I saw Timbre fall, I just… dumped my snacks all over myself. I had to come see to make sure it wasn't true, but _holy crap look at her!"_

"That's our Pop-Star." Arty chuckled as he stood up, "Go Timbre!" he shouted, his hands cupped around his mouth.

"Cool it. It isn't over yet," Roland chided, "Khimera could still turn the tides if she catches on."

"GO TIMBRE!" Rime shouted along with Arty, the rest of the stadium erupting in roars as well.

.

 _I didn't think I'd make it this far, but if you think I'm going to just be simply knocked out of the ring, Khimera, you've underestimated me quite a bit_. Wind rushed past Timbre as she swung under the platform. She could hear a loud roar coming from above her as it reverberated throughout Amity Colosseum. The crowd was cheering non-stop. _Is that all really for me?_ She chuckled to herself, _I think I prefer to be cheered on much more when I'm fighting than singing_.

She fired another wire at the rim of the platform. She came swinging up from below, reimerging above the extent of her and Khimera's battleground.

The buzzer still hadn't sounded as Khimera's roar died down. Still, the crowd cheered wildly for some reason. She looked around, but didn't see anything. Then a streak of green shot up across her vision. She stared up in horror as Timbre shot high overhead.

Timbre came rocketing down towards Khimera. She shot through the lion avatar, sending red shards of light exploding in every direction. Her boots connected with Khimera's face and sent her slamming into the ground. A red shimmer passed over Khimera's body as her aura broke. Timbre stepped back, her steps crunching loudly against the fading shards of Khimera's Semblance.

A buzzer rang out, signifying not only Khimera's loss, but Timbre's victory. She held her hands up and waved to everyone around her as her name was chanted in a thunderous cheer. The prior stage fright she had was gone. Singing and playing music wasn't what she wanted to do for others, it was fighting. _That_ was a real show of skill, a skill that was actually important and helpful to not only herself, but everyone around her. _Yep, this is definitely the life I want to live_. She looked up to the sky above her and waved, "Not too bad, eh Mom?"

"Mom's going to be furious…" Khimera murmured as the arena began lowering back down. She stared up at the night sky, tears filling her bronze eyes. She wasn't going to be safe anymore. Laying there, hearing Timbre's name over and over again, she could only remember how angry Khidna was with her after she admitted to leaking information to her friends. If anything happened, she was a target and it very well could have been her fault, "I'm so sorry, Mom…"

Timbre kept smiling and waving until she saw Khimera crumpled over on the ground. "Hey, Khimera?" she walked over and held her hand out to help her up, "You were amazing out there…"

"Thanks…" Khimera reached up and took Timbre's hand, "You were too…"

Once she was hoisted up, she looked solemnly at Timbre, "You should be careful in the free-for-all…"

"Huh?" Timbre looked confused towards the other girl, "Wh-what do you mean?"

"Ray. I mean Ray," she stumbled a bit as the platform halted in its descent.

"Hey, I'm not worried about the free-for-all, Khimera," Timbre shrugged, "To be honest, I wasn't expecting to move forward in _this_ round, much less make it to the next one."

Khimera looked down as she began walking away, "I'm not talking about winning…"

Timbre was still confused. _Then what are you talking about?_ She called out, "Hey, Khimera!"

"What…?" Khimera turned her head.

Timbre suddenly felt awkward, seeing the disappointment plainly laid out on Khimera's face, "Y… you wanna come to my birthday party tomorrow? It'd be… fun." she fumbled for a moment, "I'd really like to have you there… that is, if you're okay with it."

"Yeah… if Mom will let me, then I'll be there… Just tell me where, okay?"

"The rec room in the basement of our hotel, probably," Timbre smiled meekly, "It's just going to be a small get-together. No paparazzi, no crowds, just a bunch of our little group. That okay with you?"

"Alright," Khimera continued on her way, already anticipating the lecture from her mother and her team. It was not going to be a pretty sight.

"Timbre!"

Timbre turned just in time to see Rime coming over from the stands before being tackled in a hug, "Woah!" she coughed, feeling choked in the smaller girl's embrace, "Nice to see you too, Rime… why do you smell like butter and soda?"

"Long story short, you were awesome and I spilled my stuff. But that doesn't matter!" Rime let go and began bouncing up and down, "That was _incredible!_ "

Sepia whistled, cuing Timbre to look behind Rime, ' _Nice moves! Where'd you get that idea from?'_

Timbre scrunched her nose, "You know," she playfully punched Sepia before poking her own temple, "from up here."

"Pretty sure Sepia did that at the beginning of last semester," Arty mumbled as he furiously scribbled in his sketchbook. Before someone could point out that that was the exact point of the joke, he held the book up for Timbre to see.

On the page was a heavily stylized comic-book-esque drawing of her flying through the air above a giant lion with the figure of a young woman inside it's torso.

"Thought it'd make a sick drawing," Arty began flipping through some other pages, "Tried to pick the best part of the fight, but honestly…" Half-finished sketches passed by, "Whenever I got started on one sketch, something else awesome would happen and I'd start drawing that instead. So in the end, I only got the final bit."

"Yeah. He was scribbling the entire fight. I thought he was going to burn a hole through his sketchbook if the fight went on much longer," Roland held out his fist towards Timbre, "You did good out there. It's something to be proud of."

Timbre nodded, "Thanks, Roland. That means a lot coming from you."

"I never should have doubted you," Roland commented as they began walking back to the stands.

"Wait…" Timbre wasn't sure she heard him right, "You _doubted_ me? Then what was all that you said to me before the fight?"

"You made your mother proud, you didn't need your Semblance, and you put up a good fight," he chuckled, "Aria would have been proud whether you won or lost, but I bet she's jumping with joy after a show like that. It was a nice surprise."

"In other words, you thought I was going to lose," Timbre punched him in the shoulder, "Jerk."

"Whatever!" Arty threw his arms up, "It's over and done until tomorrow. I'm hungry, let's go find a place to eat and watch the last fight!"

' _It's probably going to be short…'_ Sepia watched as Ray and Coral took the stage, ' _Let's watch from the arena entrance to keep from missing anything.'_

"But I'm huuuuuuungry…" Arty whined.

"Arty, we'll get food. We can beat the crowds from he-" Timbre, the rest of her team, and Rime stood in dumbstruck silence as the fight began and ended before their eyes.

Ray dashed forward and grabbed the terrified Coral.

Coral's weapon, an ornate staff, clattered to the ground as Ray's gauntleted hand clasped onto his face.

In a whir of motion, the gilded Lion Faunus slammed Coral hard enough into the ground to shatter more tiles in the platform's surface before throwing him off the stage.

The buzzer rang out before he even hit the safety net.

"Well…" Roland stared out at the arena trying to process what he just saw. Had Coral gone up against Khimera instead, then that would have been Timbre, "That's… I knew Coral didn't have a chance, but…"

Arty looked to Timbre, who was still wide-eyed in shock, "Hey… T? You okay?..."

Timbre grabbed onto Sepia and Arty's shoulders. "I… I have to fight _that_ on top of the crazy dude with the sledgehammer that took out _both_ of the Rhea twins, _and_ I have to take on your sister..."

"That's good for you, actually…" Roland thought over how Dante would handle the situation. With three people who were already at a disadvantage against Ray by his sheer power, there might have been a silver lining, "Tox is good at playing his opponent… and Sis is the perfect supportive fighter… As long as you three gang up on him, then you might have a chance… but I don't know about Tox too much…"

"Who's to say they won't all gang up on _me_ though?" Timbre felt like panicking, "I mean, I took down one of the _Léons_ , Roland. That's kind of a big deal!"

"Come on down there, Pop-Star. You're overthinking things," Rime tried to be the voice of reason, "Yeah… Ray is… pretty scary, but so what if you beat his sister? Like we said before your fight, so what if you lose?"

Timbre pointed to the medical ship flying up from the ground, "Because I don't want to end up in one of _those_."

.

Inside the Atlesian viewing room was a coffee table surrounded by four couches with a holoscreen facing each from the center of the table. The entire room was white, and the only thing that let in any color was the wall to wall window overlooking the stadium far below. Khidna already sat alone at the couch facing the stadium, and Khimera sat facing her with her teammates to either side of her and Fenix leaning over the back rest.

"Look, General," Fenix began, "It's not that big of a deal. We've had this planned out from the beginning. If Khimera got knocked out of the tournament, we take over and keep doing our jo-"

"She _should_ have won," Khidna said sternly, "Who's to say she won't run off like in Vale and get attacked again?" she looked to her daughter, "I've recently had to accept the fact that the three of you can't always keep your eyes on her. Like how she ended up on the beach, alone, with four near complete strangers, who, may I remind you, are also on the Grimm Brotherhood's _list_!" she pointed a finger at the beach bum-looking young man, "Don't let your feelings for my daughter cloud your judgement of the situation, Mr. Flare."

"I'm disappointed with my loss, but I'm happy that Timbre went on. She needs protection more than I do," Khimera held up her hand to get the attention of her mother, "Fenix is halfway right. Him, Navajo, and Scott can all protect me just fine, but I can handle myself too. I am more than capable of defending myself with my weapon and my Semblance. I am not a porcelain doll."

Khidna gave her an unconvinced look, "Are you sure you won't run away from them again before the festival's over? You've been on a… rebellious streak as of late."

"Well, the circumstances have changed, ma'am." Navajo spoke up. Despite his position as a trained bodyguard, he was dressed much more casually than one would expect. One had to blend into the crowd while undercover after all. His attire included a tan vest over a tight-fitting gray and dull-yellow shirt, black pants, and most notably, large metal apparati over his biceps and forearms. Bright yellow Dust crystals stuck out from various compartments jutting out at different points His hair made him look as if he'd been recently electrocuted, as it stood out every which way, "Khimera's out now. I'm sure she understands that she actually _needs_ us around just to be sure the Brotherhood doesn't nab her. Right Khim?" he placed a hand reassuringly on her shoulder.

She nodded, looking nervously to his hand. The electrodes and tubing from the Dust systems glowing slightly as they gripped her coat, "Right."

"If it makes ye feel better, General, we could make sure the lass doesn't leave the room until we get back to Atlas. No big deal. She'll be even safer than she would be out there!" said the red headed boy, Scott, sitting to Khimera's left. His deep green jacket hugged his torso closely, and sections of plaid elastic were sewn over his joints to allow for easier movement in a fight, but his jeans and tan work boots allowed for him to blend in, "And we'll be checking her scroll periodically to make sure she's not planning an escape or anything."

Khimera's eyes flashed through red, yellow, and blue, then back to bronze as her mouth fell open, "You will not be going through my personal-"

"I believe that's a wonderful idea, Mr. Ness." Khidna nodded approvingly towards Scott, "I really do hate to keep you away from the festivities, though…" A look of true regret flashed over her face for a moment, "Maybe… if there's anything you want, you can have these three go get it for you," she leaned forward in her seat, "I want you safe, Khimera. I hope you understand. Maybe… by this time next festival, things with the Grimm Brotherhood will have died down and you can enjoy yourself without so much worry."

Khimera tried to contain the anger growing inside her. She knew that her mother just wanted to protect her, but she just felt like she was suffocating, "Maybe I would have won that fight had I been on a real team to grow with others to become a _real_ Huntress. Maybe I wouldn't have to be protected if I were as skilled as the students of the other academies. I have Tartarus, one of the most powerful weapons in all of Remnant, but Timbre beat me with nothing more than piano wire and her skills in hand to hand combat. It's not that, though, is it? It's that you think I'm so weak that I have to be protected. You've always thought that because my aura is fractured," it took every ounce of strength in her to keep from shifting, "I don't care if I'll never hold the mantle of Pride, or if I do have something wrong with me. I am capable of taking care of myself, Mom!"

"But that fight proved it. You _do_ need protecting."

Blue finally won out. Khimera snapped her head towards the armored Lion Faunus standing in the doorway, " _I will not tolerate your piss poor attitude tonight, Ray. You disgust me enough already."_

Ray loved pushing his little sister's buttons. With someone like her, it was all too easy, "See? Right there. That's why you can never be Pride. You keep putting yourself down to the point where everything is everybody _else's_ fault," he took a step closer to Team FNKS, "You really think you have the skill? _Prove it_ and _believe it_."

Tartarus was resting against the couch in its shield form until Khimera went to grab it. It shifted into its sword form, every crack in the weapon burning blue, " _You want me to prove it?! I'll prove it!"_ she screamed as she swung the blade at Ray.

Ray grabbed the blade in his gauntlet and pushed it away, " _This_ is not pride and confidence, Khimera. This is pathetic desperation," he looked to Fenix, "Why don't you boys go ahead and take the little girl to her room and tuck her in before she embarrasses us any further."

"Ray! That is _enough_!" Khidna stood up, "I'm getting tired of _both_ of you tonight!" she noticed that Ray was alone, "And _where_ is your team?! In case you forgot, you're under watch, too!"

"Gave the girls a night off. Unlike her, I don't _need_ any extra protection," Ray smirked.

Scott and Navajo moved to grab Khimera, but they weren't nearly fast enough. Her weapon already shifted. A ram's head was held in Ray's hand.

"I-I-I don't care what y-y-you think, R-R-Ray!" she stuttered. Her grip tightened on Tartarus, then threw the whole thing into his gut. It clanged against his armor, but she drove it home to send him sliding into the wall behind him. Cracks webbed out in the drywall, and bits of ceiling dust fell to the floor like snowflakes.

"Children, _enough_!" Khidna stood, ready to end the squabbling.

"Don't worry, ma'am. I've got this," Navajo walked briskly over to the two Lion Faunus, rubbing his gloved hands together as the siblings pushed against each other. They struggled to get even an arm free in order to throw a punch.

Ray grabbed Khimera by the coat and threw her back towards the couch, but she quickly shook off the blow and charged him again.

Both of them felt their hair stand on end as jolts of electricity passed through their bodies. Both collapsed to the ground, completely stunned.

Navajo held up his hands, still arcing with electricity, "Should we just… take her back to the hotel now, ma'am?"

Khidna looked down to her paralyzed children, "Yes… please," she pointed to Fenix, "And please call your… associates to come get my son. _He_ doesn't tell them if they've got the night off, _I_ do."

"Yes ma'am…" Fenix went to pick Khimera up, "We'll keep closer watch on her this time. I can assure you of that."

"Yes… you'd better…" Khidna sat back down and began massaging her forehead. After Team FNKS had left, dragging Ray out into the hall as well, Khidna reached for her scroll. After a few rings, someone picked up on the other end, "Onyx? Cut the small talk. We need to have a very important discussion about tomorrow."


	69. V3Ch16: Celebration

Arty was still half asleep when he heard what sounded like gunshots. He fell out of his bed, instinctively reaching for Palette, which wasn't there. "Holy crap!" he shouted, panting from the shock. He waited for a moment, as everything had gone quiet.

 _Bam! Bam! Bam!_ His door shook as it was hit from the other side.

"Who's there?!" His hands were shaking as he stood from his bed.

"Umber! Wake up, lazy butt!" a voice shouted from the other side of the door, followed quickly by three more bangs.

"T-Timbre?!" Arty jumped over to open the door. Standing right outside was his teammate. Dressed in a t-shirt and shorts, she looked ready to go outside and enjoy the beautiful day just beyond the window of their suite's balcony.

"Morning!" she smiled at him.

"Timbre… I know it's your birthday and you're _really_ excited… but did you have to give me _that_ kind of wake-up call?" he nodded to the door diagonally across the hall from them, "Usually it's Sepia doing that… only a lot more violently and with less shouting… no shouting… at all actually."

"I _knoooow,_ but we've got a big day ahead of us!" she pushed him back into his room, "Now get dressed. We need to enjoy every minute before the free-for-all tonight."

 _I could really enjoy a few more of those minutes if I got to sleep through them._ He grabbed a change of clothes and went to get a shower.

A few minutes later, Arty came out into the living room looking less disheveled and ready for the day. Roland and Sepia were already seated at the counter enjoying some coffee.

"How come I was the only one to get the wake-up call?" he questioned as he grabbed an apple from a nearby fruit bowl.

"Sepia and I… got up early. Don't ask too many questions," Roland pulled his hat down over his face a little and leaned over the counter. He kept his shoulders hunched as he sipped as his coffee, "Happy birthday, T…"

Sepia wished that she had a hat like Roland's to cover her face, but she wasn't so lucky. Her skills as an actress would have to be enough, ' _He means that we just needed to get some stuff together for later is all. We've all got to make sure that Timbre has a great birthday!'_

Timbre cocked an eyebrow and smiled, seeing their poor attempt to hide their surprises, "Oh? And what kinda 'stuff for later' would that be?"

' _You know! Stuff! Stuff that is specifically for later!'_ Sepia signed frantically. Trying to hide too much would make it suspicious that she and Roland were already dressed and ready for the day. She didn't want Timbre catching on too much to the wrong things, ' _Don't worry your pretty little head over it! We just had some stuff to take care of, and we went for a nice little walk this morning too. Vytal's beautiful before the sun comes up!'_

"Please just stop signing, babe… seriously…" Roland put a hand over hers. He pried himself up off the table, "If we told you what we went and took care of, then you'd ask what took so long, and you do not want the answer to that. Understand?"

Timbre shook her head, "Oooooookay then!" she giggled to herself as she poured herself a glass of juice, "Tonight's going to be so much fun! Getting everyone together and just… hanging out! It'll be my first _real_ birthday in a while! No paparazzi. No mobs of people pretending to be there to actually wish me a happy birthday. Just me and all the friends I've made over the past year," she looked reminiscently out the window to the ocean beyond, "It feels like it's been ages since my farewell tour…"

"You sound almost upset," Arty commented as he crunched loudly on his apple.

"Ugh. _No_!" Timbre sneered, "I'm glad all that drama's over. Just… It feels like I've been with you guys a lot longer than just a year… I mean, we've been through _a lot_ given the time we've actually known each other."

"How many terrorist attacks? Two? Three if you count the first time with Oro?" Roland set his mug down on the counter. He could almost feel where Oro struck him with her weapon, "That's more than most students. I mean, Mom never mentioned anything like that, anyway."

"Not to mention massive groups of Grimm," Arty added, counting all the incidents on his fingers as he went, " _aaaaand_ the Maelstrom. Can't forget that one, but that kinda falls under the terrorist attack category…"

' _We've also got the happy stuff, though. Like making friends with Team ANTE and Team FREZ! Or having Team GLXY mentor us, especially back in Mikado. We got our first experience on a mission!'_ Sepia grinned as she signed, ' _And that was after we killed a Minotaurus. A. Freaking. Minotaurus. We could do it again now without an issue, but back then? Totally insane.'_

"Well, then we found out that five werewolves go to our school. I mean, not _actual_ werewolves, but… you know. We got to help get Yamuna under control through all of that. She still loves us for that," Roland sat back, an unusually warm smile phasing onto his face, "Those aren't the only crazy Semblances we've witnessed, either."

"That and we all are currently in steady relationships since arriving at Beacon…" Timbre giggled again, "Despite all the crazy stuff that's happened to us, I'd say we've all got it pretty good right now."

"Well, except for the fact you're fighting three of the toughest fighters in all of Remnant tonight…" Arty pointed out, "Hey! I just realized that each kingdom's being represented! Kinda like us, right?"

"Let's not talk about the free-for-all until we're done celebrating my birthday, Painter-Boy..." Timbre grumbled.

"But-"  
" _It's my birthday!_ " Timbre shouted.

"Bu-"

"No!"

"I-"  
"Zip it."

"Bu-"

"It's."

"Hey Ti-"

"My."

"Timb-"

" _Birthday!_ "

It suddenly became very quiet in Team ARTS's suite.

"You two done?" Roland slurped up the rest of his coffee and set his mug down, "We should get going soon. Carmen wants to meet us all for breakfast. Apparently the people who own the cafe down in Vale opened up another location here in Vytal last year."

"That's… convenient," Timbre found it extremely odd, but welcomed it. Not only could she be in the city she was born in for her 20th birthday, but she could also go to one of her most cherished places. "But I'm all for it!" she ran to the door and out into the hall, "Let's not keep her waiting, then!"

Roland quickly tapped something out on his scroll, then placed it back in his pocket. Once Timbre was just out of earshot, he leaned over to Sepia, "Alice is good to go. She's taking care of things. Xannie and Frost are on wrapping."

' _Yeah… Nice that Frost is finally warming back up to us, huh?'_ Sepia hopped down from her seat to follow Timbre.

Arty budged his way into their conversation, "Not meaning to interrupt, but… why am I the only one not in on this?"

"Because you have a big mouth," Roland put his hands on Arty's shoulders and leaned in close, "And if you ruin anything, then I will use Inkheart to gum up Palette. We wouldn't want that, now would we?"

"N-no… I understand. You made the right choice."

"Good." Roland let go, "Now let's go before Timbre gets lost."

.

After a long walk to the location shown on their map, Team ARTS found the location of the cafe's second branch. The brick patio was one massive open seating area tucked between two other store fronts. Customers mingled as they walked between the columns to the counter just behind a set of glass doors. It didn't take long for them to hear the incessant caws of their favorite instructor.

" _AAAAAARRRRRRRRTTTTTSSSSSSS! GET OVER HEEEEEEERRRRRE!"_ Carmen waved them down from a table with six seats, two already filled by her and Amadeus Forté, in the corner of the patio by the windows looking into the indoor seating area.

Timbre ran in and gave Carmen a hug, "Well this is a surprise! My team didn't mention you'd be here, Dad."

"Wanted to surprise you on your birthday, naturally," he hugged his daughter tightly, "Oh that fight last night was _incredible_ , Timbre!" he held her at arm's length, "You won against the _General's_ daughter?!" he ruffled her hair, "I swear, you're becoming more and more like your mother every day. Maybe you're more suited for this than singing."

"Gee, thanks, Dad. Not like I've been trying to tell you that for the past, I dunno, _year_."

"Aria would have been flipping a lid had she seen all of that! Like when you went up on the lights!" Carmen reenacted Khimera coiling around the lighting apparatus with her arms, "Which, by the way, I convinced Vivian to not count as a penalty because viewership shot WAY up! It really helped that we already let one of his students bounce off the top of the dome."

"Wow… thanks, Carmen." Timbre rolled her eyes, "Glad you enjoyed watching me fighting for my life against a giant snake..." she scrunched her brow for a moment, "Wow… my life makes me say a lot of weird things, doesn't it?"

"You're not alone in that." Arty said, walking up with Roland and Sepia to join them, "A lot of weird things happen in our lives."

"Like shooting a giant octopus with an artillery gun full of Nova Dust and supercharged by a guy with a golden touch," Roland chuckled while pulling up a chair.

Sepia slid in next to them, just like she had when they just got their team name, ' _Or killed a T-rex with the fire power of a star after fighting off a lunatic?'_

"Okay, you guys can stop," Amadeus said nervously as he stepped in the direction of the service counter, "Breakfast is on me, today. What do you all want? I'll get anything you kids like."

"Usual for me, Dad." Timbre smiled as she pulled up a chair.

"Mocha and a cinnamon bun," Roland glanced at Sepia's hands, "And a vanilla frap with a chocolate turnover. Two of them if you're feeling generous."

"Grilled cheese and a latte for me, sir." Arty grabbed a seat on the opposite side of the table from Timbre.

Carmen hummed while she thought, then held up a finger, "Just coffee for me. You know how I like it. Oh! And a blueberry muffin too! With butter because my doctor can't tell me what to do."

Amadeus nodded and went to pick up their breakfasts.

"Thanks, Dad!" Timbre shouted after him.

"So, with him gone…" Carmen pulled a shoebox wrapped in bright red-orange paper with a massive hand tied bow made from white ribbon out from from between her legs. She handed it over to Timbre, "I know Amadeus goes a little crazy with the camera, so I thought I'd spare you that. Happy birthday, sweetheart!"

Timbre took the box carefully, "Carmen... you didn't have t-"

" _ **SHUTUPANDOPENTHEPRESENT!"**_ Carmen shouted with a mad smile on her face. If there was anything that she considered a hobby, it was gift giving.

"Okay… okay…" Timbre carefully pulled the ribbon until it unravelled from around the box. After removing the paper, she took off the top. She raised the gift that was inside. "It's… awesome, Auntie Maple..." Timbre didn't know what to say as she looked at the sky-blue sweatshirt jacket in her hands. "Keeping up with tradition, eh?"

"Nope! I just thought the color really suits you. I just had to get it for you when I saw it," Carmen passed a halfway shameful look at the jacket, "And money's a bit tight right now. Alabaster's making me pay for my hotel room because he thinks it'll teach me a little humility. That's where he's wrong."

"Yeah, you need a sense of shame to be taught humility," Timbre ran and hugged Carmen, "Thanks, Auntie Maple."

"I'll let it slide this time…" Carmen leaned her head against Timbre and returned the hug, "You've grown up too fast. Glad I retired when I did, you know? I might not have gotten to see you grow into such a fantastic woman had I not."

Timbre could only smile. The tender moment was interrupted by her dad coming up carrying multiple trays of food and drinks.

"Kinda reminds me of my days as a waiter!" he laughed as he set them down on the table. "Gotten a bit rusty over the years, but I don't think I spilled anything!"

Sepia leaned and started making grabbing motions at Amadeus.

"Manners, babe…" Roland sighed, "Can we help you with any of that, sir?"

He smiled and shook his head, "I think I got it. Thank you, Roland," he stood back, winded from carrying so much at once. It was obvious he hadn't done any heavy-lifting in a while, or any lifting for that matter.

"Alrighty everyone. Breakfast is served!" As they sat down to eat, Amadeus noted the blue hoodie in his daughter's lap, "You go shopping on your way here?"

Timbre looked down, realizing Carmen's gift was in direct line of sight to her father and clashed so horribly with her dark green clothes that it was no wonder his eyes were drawn to the horrid sky-blue color, "Oh… yeah… I wanted to try… some new colors."

Amadeus nodded, "Did Carmen teach you how to lie, Timbre? Because you're not very good at it," he passed a sly glance to his old friend.

"Okay, you got me!" Carmen threw up her hands, "I just didn't want you overloading the girl with pictures!"

Amadeus rolled his eyes, "Please, Carmen. She doesn't need _more_ unwanted cameras shoved in her face. She's twenty now. We'll take pictures if she wants to take pictures."

Timbre was surprised, "Wow… Dad. Thanks," she put her fork down and wiped her hands, "I think I could allow you _one_ picture," she gestured to everyone around them, "Come on, group photo. I only turn twenty once."

"You're starting to sound like me," Amadeus laughed as he pulled his camera off of his chair. Apparently, he had it hanging from the strap just in case he had the opportunity to take pictures anyways.

Timbre laughed, "Don't _even_."

.

Sepia scrolled through the messages on her scroll. Her and Roland having taken up the rear as all six of them made their way to the hotel. Everything seemed to be in order. Alice sent the completed checklist, and said that everyone would be well hidden for the arrival. She even added Arty to the group text to get a full synopsis of what was going on. She looked up at Roland and nodded.

' _Perfect timing,'_ Roland looked ahead to the entrance to the hotel, "You know, guys, we could totally play pool down in the rec room. Three versus three? It'd be fun, and it'd be a relaxing way to kill time until the final match."

"Did you kids not learn anything last time?" Carmen whipped around and started walking backwards, "I am the _queen_ of pool. I will whoop every last one of you!"

"Carmen…" Arty spoke up, "I was the only one of us that played pool with you… and I was on your team."

Carmen's eyes narrowed, "You won't be this time."

Arty shrunk back down, "Oh…"

"Bring it on, old lady!" Timbre shouted, "I'm not afraid to take you down!"

"I'm only 46 years young! Geez! I'm not even over the hill yet!" Carmen put her hands on her hips, "And I look good for my age! Sometimes I'm glad I don't have kids because I can still _rock it!_ "

"Wow… that's lower than I expected…" Roland mumbled.

"Watch it, Otterbutt!" she snapped.

"C'mon." Timbre ran ahead and began skipping backwards down the sidewalk, "Let's go if you want to play me so bad, _Grandma_ Maple!"

"Ooohh… _Ouch_." Amadeus glanced to Carmen, "You gonna take that from her?"

"If it wasn't her birthday, then I'd smack her upside the head…" she grumbled, "I still look good…"

' _For 46? Oh yeah. Definitely!'_ Sepia put a hand on Carmen's arm kindly, ' _I hope I can look half as good as you at 46!'_

"Let's at least hope for double. I don't know if I could deal with just half…" Roland choked back a laugh.

" _ROLAND!"_ Carmen shrieked.

"Sorry! Sorry. You look good, Professor Maple. For a 64 year old."

A pop came as she smacked him upside the head. She wagged her finger at him, "It's not _your_ birthday, so I can still smack you."

"Duly noted…" he straightened his hat carefully. He didn't want to tank another hit from her.

Upon arriving at the hotel, Timbre was nearly jumping in anticipation. It wasn't from the prospect of playing a game of pool with Carmen, but because she knew about the surprise. _Sepia and Roland did a really bad job at hiding it from me_. She smiled to herself as she skipped into the lobby, "Come on, Carmen! If you hurry, I'll let you rack 'em!"

"Yeah! Sure thing! But if you make a joke about arthritis, then we'll be playing dodgeball!" Carmen cracked her knuckles, "Do we have an understanding, Timbre?"

"Yeah, yeah. Whatever." Timbre nearly smashed the button to call the elevator.

' _I think I saw a few grey hairs, actually…'_ Sepia filed in behind her when the elevator doors opened.

"Ha! I know that one's a joke! I just had my hair done yesterday!" Carmen scoffed as she filed in, "Just got it colored. How's that for-"

"So there _were_ grey streaks…" Roland leaned against the railing inside the elevator.

Carmen slowly raised her hand, "I didn't hesitate the first time, and I won't the second time…"

Timbre continued listening to them bicker as the elevator descended into the basement area. Her heart was racing in anticipation. She was expecting the surprise. The doors opened and she stepped into the large open rec room beaming.

There was nobody there.

Her smile faded as everyone else filed out.

"Well. Come on then," Arty pat her on the back, "Let's go shoot some pool."

"But…" Timbre stammered. "But…"

"What? Scared you're gonna _loooooose?_ " Carmen sauntered over to one of the pool tables.

"Come on," Amadeus smiled to his daughter, "You can be on your old man's team."

Timbre slowly walked across the tacky carpet of the rec room to the pool tables. _Was I wrong about the surprise? I know we weren't going to meet up until later… but still._ She looked to Roland and Sepia, who were busy chalking up their cues, _They were soooooo obvious about it_.

A ceiling tile across the room creaked. The one in the far right corner began to bulge. Dust puffed out as a crack shot through its length, then out came tumbling a dull blonde girl in her white tube top and light grey jacket. She peeled her face off the carpet to smile over at Timbre.

"Uh… hey?" she looked around at the crumbled bits of ceiling tile, "Sorry for… dropping in?"

"Rime?!" Timbre looked up to the ceiling where her friend had fallen from, "What were you doing in the _ceiling_?!"

"Hanging out with Zero," Rime pointed up to the hole in the ceiling.

Zero popped his head out and waved, "Hey, Timbre. Nice fighting last night."

"How many people are _up there_?!" She looked back to her team, confused.

" _ **SURPRISE!"**_ screamed the crowd of people that had seemingly appeared from nowhere while Timbre was distracted by Rime and Zero.

The room had somehow managed to fill with almost all of her friends and acquaintances. Besides her team, father, and Carmen, there was also Teams FREZ, SPCE, ANTE, STON, MTLC, GLXY, ASHS, and even Team DINO. Team READ minus Ahab was also there. The one face Timbre was expecting, but didn't see, was Khimera's. _Wow… so… pretty much everyone I know that doesn't hate me…_ She cupped her hands over her mouth as she smiled uncontrollably, "Oh my God! You guys!"

"Happy Birthday, T!" Arty shouted from within the crowd, "Got your whole little Beacon family right here in one place. Gotta say, it's grown a bit since you first talked to us during orientation, huh?"

"Huh, you _think_?" Timbre laughed as she began giving hugs and shaking hands.

"Haha!" Rime jumped up, still dusted in ceiling panel powder, "My distraction _worked!_ " she coughed weakly.

"That was completely unintentional, and you know it," Roland rolled his eyes, "Sepia thought that making it a little obvious would make the big surprise better. You know her and thinking out scenes."

' _That's why you let the director direct. This is what I do!'_ Sepia held out her arms and wrapped them around Timbre. She hoisted her up for a forceful hug.

"Ya gonna break the gal's back, puddin'!" Saffron broke away from the dissipating crowd. While everyone else got to talking and having a good time, she held a massive white ice cream tub that had to hold at least six gallons, "I wanted to get yer present to ya real quick like! Can't let it go too long without bein' chilled. I'm havin' them boys take it up to ya room, but I wanted you to taste it!"

Timbre hesitantly took the tub. She noticed that it had the Satsuma's Sweets logo printed on the top, "I didn't know your mom's business did ice cream, too," she popped the top off of the tub. Expecting ice cream, she instead found a bubbly, orange, lighter-looking substance inside.

"Nah, hun! That's Momma's special recipe for satsuma orange mousse! That there could sell for more Lien than yer best Huntsman makes in a month, but I pulled a few strings here an' there. It's what we's famous for! Better than any ol' candy we've got!" Saffron pat the lid of the tub closed, "Just don't let that Vincey-boy near it. He's been buyin' out entire _supplies_ of stuff from the Vytal branch, so I'm sure he'd steal this in a jiffy… it's because of people like him we don't make more than a quart at a time usually."

"Wow… Thanks, Saffron. That's really nice of you."

"Aw, it ain't nothin'. It's just my givin' ya a happy birthday… and an apology for callin' ya a hussey," Saffron gave Timbre a tight hug, "But I like to think yer a good friend now. I was happy to lose to ya."

"Well… that was technically Sepia… but thanks, Saffron. I'm glad we could move past all that."

"Well I did say it behind yer back before that… but it's water under the bridge!" she looked over Timbre's shoulder to see Midas waving by a poker table, "Well, I'll let ya get back to yer fun. I already got someone comin' down to pick the mousse up, so don't chu worry about a thang, aight?"

"Oh… okay." Timbre set the tub on a nearby table as Saffron ran off.

"You better hide that stuff well. I'd give an arm and a leg for six gallons of _that_. If I don't get into it, Arty will. If he doesn't, then Sepia will. If she doesn't, then there will be a mob vying for it. Satsuma makes that stuff by hand, and I can't imagine how long a whole six gallons took to make," Roland pat the container, "Protect that stuff like a mother does her child."

"Oh come on, Roland," she pulled the top off again and dipped her finger into the mousse, getting a small dollop on her finger, "It can't be _that_ good." she popped her finger into her mouth. Her eyes went wide, " _Oh my god it is that good_ ," She turned. To everyone around her, it looked like she was about to start scooping the treat into her mouth with her hand.

"You… alright, Timbre…?"

She had just rammed her fingers into the dessert when she heard him. Timbre turned towards the familiar voice. She gulped loudly, "Oh… hey, Turf," she felt her face turn a deep red. She waved to him, but then realized that her hands were smeared orange and quickly hid her hand behind her back.

"Yeah… Saffron seemed really excited to give you that mousse," Turf reached over and wiped a bit of orange foam from the her cheek, then held it up, "Can I? I mean, it's not chocolate, so I'm not allergic."

"Be my guest," she latched onto her boyfriend's wrist, "Just don't try to take the whole tub from me…" she snarled, but then let go, "Oh my god… I'm sorry… I'm telling you… that mousse… _did_ something to me."

"Aaaaalriiiiiight…." Turf popped the bit of mousse into his mouth. His eyes went wide, "Oh… my… gods… I… is this what love feels like…?"

"Gee, thanks, bud." Timbre laughed as she closed the tub.

"Hey, I don't need to say it out loud!" he reached behind his back to catch the box that Sepia was passing him. He held it out in front of him, the poorly wrapped forest green paper hung off the decent-sized box, "I let my actions do the talking. Thought I'd deliver this by hand, you know?"

"Turf… you shouldn't have…" Timbre began tearing up at the sight of how much effort he put in to just wrapping it. With so much tape holding creases of paper together, it was clear that it took more than a little while to get the paper on this gift. She tore it off, seeing immediately what the gift was through the clear side of the box. Inside was a pair of mint green headphones, her own emblem printed onto the sides in shining silver. The cord coming off of it was wrapped in nylon, and the pads were even custom made. Both pads had lyrics of her favorite songs printed in silver on the same mint green as the rest of the headphones, and seemed to be just cushy enough to block out all noise.

"T-Turf…" tears flowed down her face, "You… these… I…"

"I figured that your old ones got busted when I didn't see you wearing them after the Maelstrom attack. I just thought you might want ones that were more durable… and sentimental. I put in the order two days after all that. Those things can fall from three hundred feet and be fine, so there's nothing to worry about!" Turf smiled as she opened up the box and put the headphones on, "So… did I do good, or…?"

Timbre threw her arms around him and hugged him tightly, "You did amazing, Turf. Thank you."

He hugged her back tightly, "So," he held her at arm's length, "You've got plenty of other gifts and stuff," he pointed over to Lurida, who was floating out of the cleaning closet with a myriad of wrapped presents floating around her, "but I think your team wants to give their gifts one on one, too."

' _Got that right! Gotta show the girl how much we love her too!'_ Sepia signed from just behind him. She had a thin box wrapped in tan paper tucked under her arm.

Arty smiled and held out his gift for Timbre to see as well. His was wrapped in paper decorated in intricate patterns.

"Personal gifts really need to delivered in… well, person," Roland held out two gifts wrapped in black and purple paper and held together by a piece of twine.

"Trying to outdo the others, Roland?" Timbre chuckled.

"It's the same amount of content. You'll see," he grinned, "But you've got to get to opening them to figure that out!"

She nodded, "Fine, fine! So, who's fi-"

Sepia slammed her gift into Timbre's gut.

"Okay… okay…" Timbre gently tugged at the edge of the wrapping paper, "Sepia first then," As the paper fell away, a simple portable DVD player was revealed, "A DVD player?" she laughed and looked to her partner, "You giving me your entire repertoire of movies there, Movie-Maker?"

' _Turn it on! There's a good eight hours of footage, but give it, like, the first few seconds!'_ Sepia signed frantically.

"Okay…" Timbre opened the device and pressed the play button as soon as she found it.

Sand dunes stretched out in every direction, their orange hue being a reflection of the setting sun opposite of the camera. The night sky and all its stars were just starting to show behind the orange dunes.

"Yeah… yeah, that looks nice…" said a feminine voice from behind the camera. Sand shuffled as something was pushed into the shot, a roughed up director's chair held together by duct tape. The director herself plopped down into the seat. There Sepia sat in her usual sequin shirt, but without her choker. Even more surprisingly, her neck was completely untouched by the wound that took her voice.

"Okay, I don't even know what take this is, but I think this one's the last. Everything's juuuuuuuuust right," her voice was a little deeper than one might expect from a girl so petite, but it certainly fit the little Vacuan, "Tomorrow is the day that I'll finish my exams at preparatory school, and I don't exactly know if I'm going to go through to one of the academies. I really want to work on my films, but something inside me said to make this video anyway. Tonight just feels right for a shot like this."

She cleared her throat and took a deep breath in a concealed attempt to contain her emotions, "I'm making this video out to my future partner, if I do end up having one. Whether you're at Shade, Atlas, Haven, or Beacon, I want you to know that it means so much to be on a team with you. I know this is past me talking, but I also know that I'm just happy with whoever puts up with me. I also know that I might be a little too awkward to say this all to you directly. I'm good on screen, but talking to people face to face is a little… difficult, as you probably know," she wiped away what might have been a tear from the corner of her eye, "So, you might have seen me taking video up until the point we're at now. There gonna be tons of footage from my guns… and probably even more from my scrolls. I've collected all of it and edited it into this video. Think of it as a scrapbook with a much higher production value!"

She tapped herself on the side of the head to tell herself to get back on track. The light was starting to fade, "This is our team and our lives up until the point you're watching this. I can't wait for whatever it all is because I know that it'll be interesting. So, to my future partner that may or may not exist, I've never been so happy to fight by anyone else in my life. Whatever comes, we'll have each other. I look forward to the adventures that we have. Who knows? Maybe I'll end up with someone really incredible! Like, imagine if someone like Timbre Forté decided to be a Huntress, and she was _my_ partner. I mean, she _is_ doing that whole farewell tour... Not that you're not great! Just imagine how cool that would be in a different way, you know?"

With that, the shot faded into the Vale skyline. It was the view they all had of Beacon Academy on the airship that brought them all there.

Sepia reached over and pressed the pause button.

' _Sorry. It must be really weird to hear my voice.'_

Timbre wiped the tears from her eyes, "Oh my god… Sepia…" Timbre laughed, "I've seen enough of your movies since we became a team. I know what you used to sound like. It was more what you _said_ ," she hugged her partner tightly, "I can't wait to see the rest of it. Maybe after the free-for-all? Kinda don't wanna cry in front of… you know… _everybody_."

' _Oh, it's a lot. You'll have to break it up into sections… which I already did in the main menu of the disc. It goes month by month. Eight hours of footage, like I said. You get to see Navy get shot in the face pretty close to the beginning, though!'_ Sepia hugged Timbre back just as tightly. She had been waiting to give her this gift for so long, and here it was. She couldn't have asked for a better reaction.

Arty stepped up, "Guess I'll go next, then," he held his gift out to Timbre, "Don't think it'll come close to that, though… Hope you still like it."

Timbre took the gift. She went wide-eyed upon seeing the patterns on the paper, "Arty… did you… _draw_ all of this?"

"Yep. Personal touch."

"I kinda don't wanna tear it…"  
"Do it. Only took me a few minutes. I could redraw it all again later if you want, but seriously, it's _just_ wrapping paper. It's no biggie."

Timbre began tearing into the drawing paper turned wrapping paper, "I honestly don't know what else I expect from you anymore, Painter-Boy." In her hands, she held a small book. It was very familiar, "The sketchbook your sister gave to you?... You're regifting it to me?" she chuckled.

"Flip through it, smart-aleck. I'm giving it to you because I filled it up."

She opened it up to the first page, where a familiar scene was drawn out. Every detail of the Beacon cafeteria was laid out down to the crumbs on the tables. Timbre sat closest in the foreground watching on as Roland held out a paper blade from Writer's Block to match Arty, who held Palette ready to fire on his attacker. Just to Timbre's left was Sepia, who sat crouched on the table to watch the fight. In the background, Carmen could be seen in mid-hop between two tables.

On the next page was eight students with their backs to the viewer. Arty, Roland, Timbre, Sepia, Rime, Everest, Alice, and Turf stood defiant against a towering Minotaurus. Every detail was there. Every crease in every piece of clothing, and every hair on people's heads were there.

A few more pages in was an action shot of Carmen taking on the 9-tailed Kokonatsu in Mikado. Her swords seemed as though they were moving around her on the paper. The hyperrealism that Arty was able to pull off was shown off in each of the countless images in the sketchbook. Each page, front and back, was covered by a drawing of some event from their time at Beacon Academy.

"How… how many pages are in this thing, Arty…?" Timbre asked, holding the book away from her face to avoid wetting it with her tears.

"Well… originally 400, but let me tell you, I have a bad habit of tearing out pages when a drawing goes _really_ bad, so you got about…" Arty began counting on his fingers, tallying up the number of ruined pages, "385 left in there."

"That's like… 770 drawings…" Timbre stared down at the sketchbook, "Is this… everything we've ever done…?"

"Well not _everything_ , but everything that you could consider interesting, memorable, or eventful."

"Arty…" she hugged the sketchbook against her chest with one arm, then pulled him into a hug with the other, "Thank you so much… This is so _so_ sweet. I'll never stop flipping through it. Ever."

"Well, you have to eventually. You got big things to do tonight!" Arty laughed, "I'm kidding. I'm glad you like it, Timbre."

"Sooooo…" Roland tapped his fingers against his gift, "One more to go. You've got to open them both, of course."

"Two for the price of one?" Timbre took the two presents from him, "Holy crap! These things weigh a _ton_! You giving me bricks or something?"

"Open the top one first. Trust me. The sequel only makes sense if you read the first one," he chuckled, "You've got to build a story before you tell it, you know?"

Timbre nodded, "I think I see where this is going." She followed his instructions, tearing open the top present first. She was left holding a pristine leather-bound book. Etched into the cover in gold leaf was _Team ARTS: The Unravelling - Book 1_.

She opened the book and had to flip past the introduction to get to the page that read "Chapter 1". Described was their first few moments upon arriving at Beacon. It read just like a novel, each word having been specifically chosen to fit the scene. However, there was one detail that was more jarring than the content of the novel. If she squinted her eyes to look really closely at the text, she could see the occasional tiny slip up. The entirety of the novel was written by hand.

Immediately, she tore open the second gift. It was another book identical to the first, but its cover read _Team ARTS: Unification - Book 2._ She cracked it open to the first chapter, which began with a description of the explosion that started their second semester at Beacon. Just like the first, it was all handwritten.

"Roland… this is incredible… Is this seriously a novelization of our _entire_ lives the past year?"

"Yeah. Took a bit to get the formatting down, but I'm happy with the result. Heck, I might even keep the series going. It'd probably make a great young adult series for people going through what we have," Roland tried to hide his growing smile, "but those copies are yours and yours alone."

"First edition?" Timbre smiled as she held the books up to her chest, "Mind if I get them autographed Mr. Author?"

"I've got you covered… on the back cover. There's a pair of sappy notes in there, but it's whatever. No need to read those out loud," he passed her a nervous look, "Really."

"I'll read them later, how about that?" she stood and hugged him as well, "Knowing you, they're novels in and of themselves."

"Don't worry, I didn't give you the treatment that I give McGouran," he pat her on the back, "Happy birthday, T."

"Mind if I slide in before we get too into the celebration?" Carmen asked while putting on a mint green party hat. She stood just behind Arty and Sepia with a box almost a meter in length cradled in her arms, "I may have fibbed a little when I said that I wasn't keeping with tradition this year."

Roland let go of Timbre to get a load of the unwrapped wooden box that Carmen was carrying. The ornate gold latch on the side said on its own that this was Timbre's real gift, but he was still a bit stuck on the hoodie, "Uh… tradition…?"

"Every year, Carmen plays an evil mastermind with her gifts," Amadeus stepped up upon seeing Carmen talking to Timbre, "She always gives an 'eh' gift before her real one. Makes the surprise all the better." he folded his arms and pretended to be angry towards her, "She always makes me _look bad_ when she does it."

"That explains the hoodie." Arty commented, " _Definitely_ not her color."

"Buuuuuuuu _uuuuuuuuut_ , this year is a little bit different. The real gift is from me _and_ Amadeus. We couldn't pull it off with just one of us, but we got it just perfect between both of us… well, his money and my knowhow," Carmen laid the box down across on of the pool tables and motioned for Timbre to open it, "I think you'll be happy with it, my little rockstar."

Timbre was hesitant. She felt her heart racing. _She seems_ really _proud of her real gift this year._ She tried to guess what was inside based on its size. It was about a yard long and a foot wide, but the box obviously wasn't deep. _What the heck is it?_

"Come on! Open it!" Turf egged her on.

"I am! I am! Cool it, Fido!" She returned her attention to the box. She slowly lifted the lid off of the box.

Timbre immediately began crying for what felt like the tenth time that day, feeling her knees wanting to buckle from beneath her. She cupped her hands over her mouth.

Inside the box laid a glittering silver blade against a navy blue layer of satin. The blade of the sword was wider than most of its size and length, but the greyish-blue mesh speaker filling the core of the blade was enough to explain why. Only an inch and a half of polished steel made up the edge itself, and formed a lip around the speaker inside. Six metallic cords, guitar strings, ran down the length of the blade over the speaker and within the lip formed by the actual cutting edge. It all connected to the cross guard where six tuners were attached to the underside. The handle was covered in buttons that could easily be held by the user's fingers if held correctly, seven of which were labeled 'A, B, C, D, E, F, G', two with the symbols denoting sharp and flat notes, and a slider just below the crossguard labeled 'octave' which was meant to be adjusted with the thumb or pinky finger. All of it was just as Timbre remembered, only with an interesting addition. A mint green microphone head had replaced the pommel.

She threw her arms around both her father and Carmen. After wiping away some of the tears and regaining composure, she stuttered out a question, "A-are you guys serious!?"

"Well, yeah!" Carmen threw her arms around Timbre with Amadeus, "Your dad had to get it all cleaned up after you traded it in for your gloves after prep school, and I made a few modifications to suit you. There's an inhibitor on the volume that you can switch off if you need, and the mic on the end should prove useful!"

"I know you said you didn't want to rely on it during your time at Beacon…" Amadeus gently lifted the sword out of the box, "But I thought you'd at least like to _have_ it." He held it out to her with a melancholic smile, "I'm sure she wouldn't mind you hanging onto it. She definitely wouldn't mind you using it again," he nodded towards Carmen, "I think she wants to see you try out the modifications she made to it."

Timbre gently took the sword by the handle and held it up.

"Wow…" Arty looked over the weapon in Timbre's hand, "That… is pretty sick. Never thought of you as a swordsman, T."

"Hot damn! Did she get a _sword_ for her birthday?!" A voice called from across the room.

Within seconds, Titian Mars was next to her, eyes nearly bulging out of her head as she inspected the sword in Timbre's hands.

"Oh… hey, Titian…" Timbre watched as Titian dipped her head in close, nearly sniffing the blade, "You… you like it?"

"Oh my god… Like it? I _love it_!" she reached her hands out, but stopped, and then retracted them, "Sorry… I know. I know. Probably don't want me touching _any_ of your gifts. That's still an incredible weapon! I can't wait to see it in the free-for-all tonight!"

' _It really would be cool if she broke out that sword!'_ Sepia signed, her eyes still tracing every inch of the blade, ' _Wait… what's it called?'_

"Sonora, but…" Timbre looked to Carmen, "I can't use this in the fight can I? That has to break a rule or something."

"Well, not since it was on your paperwork…" Carmen smiled wide at her student. Part two of this gift was being revealed before her eyes, "See, Alabaster and I reviewed all the Vytal Festival Tournament applications as they were submitted. I saw that Arty accidentally left out your second weapon, so I went ahead and threw it in. Standard procedure, really."

Timbre shook her head, "Carmen, it's been over a _year_ since I used it. I don't exactly have time to retrain myself with it… much less figure out the additions you made to it."

"Eh, I'm sure it'll come to you if you need it," Carmen threw her arm around Timbre's shoulders, "Besides, my edit to your paperwork is going to get a piece of my team's leader out on that stage. A weapon is an extension of ourselves, after all."

Timbre looked back to Sonora. It's grip felt like it was made exclusively for her hand. "That would be nice, wouldn't it? Maybe I can take it as a more… symbolic gesture."

"Or use it to stick it to Ray. I mean, that mic could do a lot for you, don't you think? Even from across the arena. Tox gets close up to distract him… Sis throws him off… then you take advantage of the situation. It'll be perfect," Roland played the fight out in his mind. Having Sonora could prove to be valuable if Timbre wanted a chance at winning.

"One step at a time, Roland," she glared over at him, "Like I said, my swordsmanship is a little rusty…"

"Well, if you want, you could get some last minute pointers from someone who uses a blade regularly!" Titian smiled warmly, "Not that you _need_ it, just if you want it."

"I think I'll manage." Timbre smiled back, "Thanks, though."

"Okay, well, then how about your _real_ birthday gift from me?" Titian pulled a small black and red box from the top of the stack Lurida had brought into the room, "I know we've only known each other for… what? Not even six months? But I already like to think we're good friends," she held the box out to the pop-star, "After this is all over, I'd like to keep in touch. Is that okay with you?"

Timbre took the box, "Yeah. That'd be great, Titian." Now that she thought about it, everyone in the room that wasn't a Beacon student would go back to their respective kingdom. The big family that she had grown would be broken up again. _Stop it. Don't think like that. So what if you're separated by distance? That's what the CCT is for. You wanted friends, now you have a whole world of them_.

"Hello? Remnant to Timbre?" Titian snapped a finger in front of her face, "You gonna open it or what?" she looked to her expectantly, "I wanna see if I did a good job!"

"Oh! Right. Sorry!" Timbre opened the box.

"I know. I know. It's so cliche. Giving a girl jewelry on her birthday, but I wanted to get you _something_."

Timbre held up a necklace made of black chain. At the bottom was an ornate red and black charm in the shape of a flattened disk. As she turned it over in her hand, it caught the light from overhead in different ways, making it reflect a myriad of patterns, "Titian! This is awesome!"

"Glad you like it!" Titian beamed as she took it from Timbre's hand and put it over the birthday girl's head, "You know, I also got it in hopes it'd be a kind of… good luck charm for you. Give you a little confidence boost tonight. Ray's one tough puppy to deal with, but after seeing you take on his sister, I'm sure a little extra _oomph_ could only help even if it is just superstition."

"Which it most certainly is," Curie walked over to join her teammate. She knelt forward and inspected the necklace around Timbre's neck. "I'm honestly not one for jewelry but… you pull it off well, Timbre. But as you were saying about luck… it is a load of bull, However, in Huntsman's Requiem, even a +1 stat boost can be the difference between doing piddly damage and a critical hit."

"I'm gonna take that that's a good thing?" Timbre chuckled as she rolled her eyes at the gamer.

"It is," Arty grabbed Curie's hand, something that both of them were getting much more used to doing, "She's been teaching me a bit. Still have no idea what's going on most of the time, but the art style's nice and colorful."

"And it can help you learn real-world facts about our future _profession_ , Umber," Curie huffed, "I've been trying to tell everybody that for _years_ , but does anybody listen to me? _Nooooo…_ "

' _I did. That's how I beat you all the time,_ ' Sepia giggled.

"Hey." Curie pointed at the mute girl, ' _Shut it_.'

"You learned sign language…?" Roland raised his eyebrows.

"Yeeeaahh…" Arty winced, "She made me teach her just so she could spite Sepia whenever she brought up her losing streak."

" _You shut up about my losing streak, too, Umber!_ "

"Doesn't help that carmelhead265 is just a few matches away from taking her rank… Maybe if she can beat Sepia, then she'll have a chance against them. It'd be a real shame if she lost out just because she obsessed over someone who didn't even play competitively…" Carmen tapped her lips. She peered over at Curie, "It'd be terrible if she lost her rank from cracking under the pressure."

Curie's eyes narrowed on Carmen. She slowly raised a finger, trembling from anger, " _You're_ carmelhead265?!" she stomped her foot, "You've been causing me trouble in my placement matches for the past _three seasons!_ " her fingers curled around the straps of Sepia's dress, "Are you two working together to make me crack or something?!"

"I think they already succeeded there, Cure…" Arty muttered.

' _I'm playing next competitive season, and there is nothing you can do to stop me now,'_ Sepia signed back with fury in her eyes.

Curie's nostrils flared before suddenly lifting her arm. Without breaking eye contact with Sepia, she pointed to a nearby air hockey table, "You. Me. One on one. _Now_."

Not even a word more passed between them. They both just darted off to the air hockey table.

The rest burst out laughing at the fight breaking out on the table.

"Come on then!" Amadeus waved everyone to come closer, "Picture time!"

Timbre's grin didn't fade as she rolled her eyes, her friends grouping up around her, "Whatever you say, Dad."

* * *

"That was absolutely disgusting…" Titian grumbled as she trudged through the tight halls between the plates of the simulated biomes. She ran her fingers through her rooster comb of bright red hair. Just behind her trotted Ledning, who looked just as displeased as ever. She sighed, picking up the pace as she did so, "We've only got an hour before that stupid fight, and here that party just had to run a little late. If only I could've landed a position in a different team. No. I just had to be on one that's all buddy-buddy with Team ARTS…"

"Well, at least you got the tracker on Forté," Ledning fidgeted with his bracelets as they walked, "At least that back-up's in place in case she gets away from us again. How many times has that failed? Three? Four?" he grunted, "How can a washed-up musician be so hard to catch?"

"How difficult she is to detain isn't your concern, my dear Agent Kokonatsu," said the white cloaked woman walking silently just behind them. The rainbow crevices in her pure white octopus mask was almost identical to the Maelstrom. She bowed to them as they whipped around, her hood dipping as she did so, "And I suggest working on a sense of empathy for the success of future endeavors, Agent Deathstalker. It would allow you to understand your adversaries on a more personal level."

Titian and Kokonatsu both bowed their heads, "Yes, Commander," They said in unison.

"Oh my…" Commander Maelstrom gently pat them both on the heads, "We are not the Atlesian military, children. We are far better than that, or so I hope. I would hate to make such a bold statement to those whom may be able to refute it."

"Right… sorry, Commander Maelstrom," Ledning said as he lifted his head. He turned and walked with them to the center of their secret hiding spot. Other figures stood in the darkness, the glowing eyes of masks looking back at them.

"So…" Titian rubbed her arms as she entered the darkness. She picked out the birdlike mask in the darkness. Captain Sanguwalker was punctual as usual, "Hey, birdbrain. How's it going?"

"Cut the jokes, Deathstalker. Now's not the time," she snapped back.

"Right… still snippy after that fight with Team STON…" Titian took her place in the ring of agents with Ledning at her side. She glanced around for a few more familiar faces, "Tuu and Geist… They aren't here, huh?"

Lieutenant Hulud looked over her subordinates. She had noticed the missing members long before the two Atlesians had arrived, "Unfortunately… Thankfully, their roles tonight aren't as large," she looked to the other members of the missing agents' teams, "As for the _rest_ of FSTV and TCSC."

"Accounted for… Ripper Alpha and Omega are present. So are Taijitu and Griffon," said the man in a mask with eight glowing eyes. As his mask would indicate, this one went by the name 'Agent Raach'. From the mask came the voice of Scorpio of Team TCSC.

"Fear not. I am keeping a very close eye on them…" Commander Maelstrom strided into the center of the circle of agents. Had any one of them wished to do her harm, then they would have the perfect opportunity to strike. However, she liked it this way. Showing a touch of vulnerability bred trust, "I hope that you are all having a productive day. How are things on the technological side, dear Lieutenant Koloss?"

The man in one of the more monstrous masks stepped up, "My virus was uploaded successfully into Amity's systems without detection. At the simple press of a button, nobody will have access but us, and the committee will have no way to regain control until after we've done what we need to," he looked to his superior, "And we've set up the connection for you to make your announcement to all of Remnant, Commander."

"Perfect. Thank you for all of your hard work. I hope that you are able to relax before all of the excitement starts. You certainly have a lot on your hands," she turned to face another taller figure. Their mask resembled a reptile whose mouth was wide open like a snake in mid strike. Frills of bone came off around its eyes, "Lieutenant Tursus… I do hope that you will keep your little… project under control tonight. I truly hate to see the blood of so many people be spilled without reason. We would not want a repeat of the last incident."

Tursus seemed to go rigid. Her stance seemed to exude not only loyalty, but confidence as well, "Don't worry, Commander. I'm making sure she stays very, _very_ deep undercover throughout the entirety of this mission. If she listens, that should qualm her… urges."

"My urges…?" a soft voice came from above. A soft orange light came from the covered eyes of the bone vistage of a chameleon. This was the only part of the mask that was illuminated. The figure dropped in from above Lieutenant Tursus, landing between her and Commander Maelstrom. This frail woman clad in a black bodysuit that covered every inch of her skin slowly stood up from a crouching position. She slowly panned her mask around the circle to get a look at the other agents. She settled her gaze on Lieutenant Tursus, "I am sure that a few extra bodies wouldn't be so suspicious among the carnage… I do what you tell me to so well, so would you please allow me this chance to enjoy myself while I can? Aren't all dreams supposed to come true at the Vytal Festival…?"

"I thought she was very deep undercover, Lieutenant?! Why did you go and lead that _thing_ here?!" Oro snapped from beside Lieutenant Hulud. She leaned forwards, drawing her battering weapon with a hiss of steam, her rage emanating from the kangaroo skull mask, "You can't be serious!"

"What…? I do my job, and I do it well…" the chameleon masked girl cocked her head to the side, "Give me a target, and I get the job done. Give me a Faunus as a target… and there's nothing that I'll excel at more. Hate is a valuable tool here, after all, so…" she snickered, "I guess I'm happy that I'm so hated. Maybe then you'll do as well as me."

Oro's weapon rocked back, "Then how about I take a little bit of that hate out on-"

"That's enough you two!" Hulud shouted. "Both of you have your roles to play. Don't screw that up," she glared towards Oro behind her mask.

"As Hulud said, Camolurker," Tursus chided, "Play nice and do your part. If things go smoothly, then your… talents will surely come into play later."

"I swear…" Oro hesitantly stepped back into place.

The girl, Camolurker, slipped behind Lieutenant Tursus, "I will wait happily… but I hope that I don't have to for too long."

"Well then…" Commander Maelstrom sighed. While having an assassin or two was vital to their operation, it wasn't something that she enjoyed, "If that is sorted out… Captains Trex, Echo, and Sanguwalker, and Agents Venice, Speeder, and Gnile. I trust that you four will be able to fulfill your roles to the fullest extent? Trex, Echo, Speeder, and Sangwalker will recover targets, and Venice and Gnile will work to get them in position if possible. I hope that is all clear."

The six of them nodded in assurance. They all knew their roles and what had to be done.

"Perfect… With Lieutenant Chiman already in position, things should go rather swimmingly…" Commander Maelstrom giggled, "Excuse my pun. I simply couldn't resist."

She nodded to Lieutenant Koloss.

He took the cue, and brought a large black briefcase out into the center of the circle. After opening it at her feet, he retreated back into the circe.

Inside, eight colored canisters were arranged in the symbol of the eight spoked wheel. From the top going clockwise, the canisters were red, violet, black, orange, green, yellow, white, and blue. Each brimmed with the feeling of malice. Each was a key to their plan.

"Several of us already have our assignments," Commander Maelstrom gingerly picked up the violet canister, "I will handle this one myself. The others have been assigned. Please, grab them on your way out."

She cleared her throat and went on, "After tonight, I hope that we are able to secure what we must. You are all valuable parts of this mission, so I trust you to all perform your duties to the best of your abilities. Now, go finish preparations for tonight, and enjoy yourselves. I look forward to seeing the results."


	70. V3Ch17: Showdown

Four students stood facing one another in the center of the arena. Spotlights shone down on them, each illuminated by the color of their kingdom. Ray stood tall in his golden armor glittering in the bright white light of the Atlesian spotlight. To his left stood Tox. Under the burnt orange light of the Vacuan spotlight, his green hair was swooped back to get a look at his opponents through his gas mask. In the Mistrali blue spotlight to his left stood Dante with her Dust book pulled close against her chest facing Ray. Finally, Timbre stood facing Tox in the lime green spotlight of Vale. Aria's sword hung from her back by a shoulder strap. The representatives of four kingdoms stared each other down. Only one would walk out as victor, and three would taste defeat.

Carmen turned her microphone on, "Here we are at the final showdown of the 50th Vytal Festival Tournament. A student from each kingdom has made it here today, each having fought their way through to this point. Before we begin, I want to say that it is an honor to see my students as well as the students of other kingdoms before us today."

Vivian gave a worried glance to Carmen. _Why is she not screaming and bouncing around like usual? She's so… not her._ "As am I, Carmen. Now, if the combatants are ready to begin, we'll start the countdown. Good luck to each and every one of you." His hand hovered over the button, "To a hundred years of peace, and at least a hundred more."

"Oh, and one last thing," Carmen slipped her hand under his and slapped the countdown button, " _ **MAKE SURE REMNANT REMEMBERS THE NIGHT THAT ONE OF YOU BEAT THE CRUD OUT OF THE OTHER THREE!"**_

"There's Carmen…" Timbre sighed as the countdown began going down from ten. The stage began to ascend into the air. The newly-repaired ring of stage lights hovered down to illuminate the battle. Each second clunked by as her heart beat in her ears.

Dante clenched her jaw. She was only here because of a lucky shot on her last opponent. Something in the back of her mind kept creeping in. She didn't belong on this stage, but she had to focus. Her vision focused on the other three. They all had to go down. The ache in her chest began to lessen.

"So close to a good show…" Tox giggled underneath his gas mask. He twirled the sledgehammer at his right side. Standing atop the other three of these wimps was going to be the icing on the cake. Remnant would remember something, alright.

"You three _really_ think this is going to play well in your favor?!" Ray threw his cape, letting it fall to the ground behind him, "How adorable."

The stage froze in mid air. The countdown clicked down the last few digits. At three, the fighters all drew their weapons. Wires brushed the tiles, claws slid out of gilded gauntlets, a sledgehammer was gripped between two hands, and a fire poker burned with a flurry of embers. At two, the fighters steeled themselves for the coming battle. At one, the buzzer finally sounded.

Ray lunged towards Tox, but Tox was already off and on the move.

A blasted shotgun shell shook the air. The steel head of a sledgehammer whipped just past Timbre's nose. Tox raised his weapon again after recoiling from the narrowly dodged strike, then slammed the hammer down against the tiles just to miss once again.

"Man… you've got good reflexes, girl…" Tox sneered at Timbre as he yanked the weapon back out, "Or are you making me miss with that voice, huh…?"

Timbre kept dodging, but inside she was questioning everything. _Who the heck even_ are _you, buddy? There's little to no way you know about my Semblance._ She sliced a wire sideways, not even dignifying this stranger with a comeback. Watching Tox duck, she kept attacking, but each wire missed. Strangely enough, the raincoat-clad Vacuan didn't swing back. It was as if he was studying Timbre, and making her attack just so he could get a better read on her.

"Wow… I honestly expected more. That's going to make things nice and easy…" Tox reeled back away as Timbre nearly got a good shot in, "Come on. Why not just make me stand here and take the beating, huh?"

Timbre shouted as she brought both wires down on Tox. Looking up to see if they connected, she was upset to find them being held in place.

Both wires were left coiled around the handle of the sledgehammer. The open barrel at its head was turned towards Timbre's gut. Tox twisted the ring of the firing mechanism to crank out a shot at point blank.

Timbre went flying back. Her arms were tugged harshly as the wires went taut. She fell to her knees, clipping her wires as she did so. Her shoulders felt like they were on fire.

Just behind them was the ongoing clash between Dante and Ray. For once, someone was actually managing to stay out of his grasp. Around her legs was a white haze. She slid away from his grasp for the fifth time.

"Hold still!" Ray lunged for Dante, claws slicing through the air towards her.

A gust of wind sent her whooshing to the left and out of his way, "Why would I do that, Roy?"

Ray whipped his head up and snarled at her, " _What did you call me?!_ " he stood and casually began walking towards Dante, claws drawn to his sides, "I am Ray Léon, and I will not be addressed as anything else!" In a flurry of motion, he dashed through the whipping winds surrounding Dante's feet.

She tried to zip away again, but something caught the hem of her cloak. Dread sunk down in her stomach as she was yanked backwards. The fire poker in her hand was pulled close as she twisted through the air. The hook of her fire poker caught the shoulder plate of his armor just in time for her to vault over him, "Your name is Rue Lennon?" she slid to a stop behind him, the new tattered rip in her cloak waving behind her, "I'm sorry. I'm truly terrible with names."

"Get. It. Right!" Ray roared. He kept pace with Dante. Despite his heavy armor and large frame, he was simply gliding across the battlefield with ease.

The Air Dust buff was finally fading. After being grabbed by Ray, Dante was having a harder time focusing on keeping it up. She shifted her fire poker into its flare gun form, "Day Peon?" she leaped and slid between his legs, raising her gun to send a fire charge into his back.

Ray roared again as he threw his arm back. The hard gilded metal of his gauntlet caught Dante across the chest and threw her backwards.

It felt like a truck. Dante bounced back, struggling to regain her balance. Even with her far superior agility, a solid hit could cost her the match. She had to play it safer. Her book flew open to a set of yellow pages, "Bring light to the bleakest night… To end the struggles of this plight," yellow arcs of electricity began sparking around her, "Strike down those that stand too high, and flash bright like the stormy sky!" lightning shrouded her in a blinding yellow veil, "I do believe I have your name down, now. It's… Prey Lenore, right?"

Ray raised his arms upon reaching her, ready to crush her into the tiles.

Excitement built as he laid his hands on her. Every hair on her head straightened out at once as the full force of a storm sparked into Ray's arms as if he had just snagged himself on a powerline. She spread her feet apart to support his weight under her, then slapped the barrel of her flare gun against his chest plate for a third point of contact.

Sparks flew against the Faunus's golden armor. The power coursed through him. Every hair in his mane flew out, but he grinned and took the pain, "You really think a little _Dust_ is enough to stop someone like _me!_ " he pushed his face closer to hers, "Dream on, little girl."

Dante glanced to her left, smiled, then looked back at Ray, "I know your name isn't Roy, but you'd make a really good Roy."

Ray raised one arm up, claws splayed and ready to rake across Dante. His attention was suddenly drawn away from her by something bright yellow off to his right.

The metal head of Tox's weapon slammed into Ray's side. The golden armor buckled from the crushing force, decorative studs and other adornments snapping off like shrapnel. He drove the hit home like a baseball to send Ray sprawling across the tile for the first time in the tournament.

"What a moron, right?" Tox chuckled, stepping towards Ray without even a moment of hesitation, "Still wanna see what this meathead's got, though. He's still interesting enough as is."

The impact dazed the Lion Faunus and the resulting tumble did nothing but disorient him further. He felt himself fall off the platform, but he was aware enough to throw out a hand and dig his claws into the tile before he was knocked out of the fight. Using all his strength, he launched himself upwards, high in the air above the ring.

Tox looked upwards bemusedly as Ray came soaring between him and the lights.

"Sneak attacks are for weaklings and cowards!" he slammed down between Tox and Dante, forcing them to jump back to avoid being smashed.

As the bits of tile and dust settled, Ray stood in the center of an impact crater. He was snarling to himself, one hand over his side where Tox had made the initial hit that almost knocked him out of the fight.

"You…" he pointed to Tox with his free hand, "You dented my armor." he threw his arms out and let out a roar similar to his animal counterpart, "You'll pay for ruining my perfect image!" he rushed towards Tox, all but ignoring Dante as he grabbed his target by the neck and threw them against the ground.

"Man, you'll be pretty crappy as a Huntsman if that gets to you so bad… What're you gonna do to the first Beowolf that puts a dent in your armor…?" Tox's laugh was muffled by the mask and the pressure on his throat, "Must feel good to have your life handed to you… huh…?" he slammed Ray in the undented side of his armor, sending him crashing away from him.

He stood and cracked his neck, "I'm all for playing rough, but that was a little pathetic," he raised the sledgehammer, the hot barrel aimed towards Ray's head, "Why don't you show me what you can _really_ do? Unless you really want to be remembered as 'that tool that choked out three people to win the Vytal Festival Tournament.'"

"Don't talk down to me like that you little welp!" Ray rose from his place on the ground and rushed Tox, throwing a flurry of swipes in an attempt to take out his aura.

Tox juked back at each swipe. His footwork was unmatched. It was no wonder that he made it this far if no one could get a hit in on him. Each time Ray's claws neared, they missed by mere millimeters, "Man, you've got two people out here with you that you have a real hard time hitting. Bet that doesn't make you too happy, huh? Bet it makes you feel pretty weak."

"I am _not_ weak!" Ray bellowed into the air as he continued attacking Tox.

Black iron clashed against thick cables as Dante and Timbre continued their fight just a few feet away.

"I must say," embers made and arc around Dante as she smacked Timbre's cables away, "I am much more comfortable fighting you rather than Ray."

Timbre ducked as a burning charge of fire flew towards her face. "Likewise?"

"I don't like how light you are on your feet, though," Dante flipped the pages of her book with her left hand. She continued swiping at Timbre as she read, "Terrible maw gasping from below. Thou must bow to that wretched abyss. For there is no escape from its tow. Thou will die-"

"Okay… sorry, but no." Timbre launched wires from her wrists and swiped them low along the ground, catching Dante by the ankles and knocking her to the ground, "Not a big fan of Dust or getting Dusted."

She ran forward and delivered a kick to Dante's face, knocking her back further, "My dorm room almost explodes on a daily basis as is with Arty the Dust Devil around. I don't want to deal with a book full of the stuff. Besides," another kick followed by another fireball dodge. Timbre reached up and felt the singed locks hanging down in her bangs, "it's my birthday…"

"You… you use a lot of product in your hair, don't you?" Dante pulled the trigger of her flare gun. The fireball whizzed past Timbre's cheek and exploded in the hair flowing down her back. With the scent of burning hair beginning to fill the air, panic began welling up on her opponent's face. She took the opportunity to leap back up and shift her flare gun into its fire poker form. The iron rod was whipped into Timbre's pelvis, then was slammed again into her side. As Dante followed through with a quick pass, she threw a shin kick into Timbre's side.

Timbre cried out in pain. The iron poker stung, and the fire didn't make it hurt any less. _No. That's not going to be enough._ Timbre reached her arm back and grabbed the hilt of the sword on her back. She tore it free from its strap and laid the blade flat on the ground. Her fingers caressed the strings lining the length of the sword as Dante lined up another shot.

Silence filled Dante's mind as Timbre strummed the strings inside the blade. Wind ripped upwards from the sword in a wave of sound. Ringing filled her ears as her hearing began to come back, and her eyes followed the fading embers coming up from Timbre's head. Then the headache struck her, and it was followed by a disorienting wave of nausea. She stumbled back away from her opponent.

Tox and Ray felt the impact as well, both reaching up and covering their ears as the soundwave hit them. They steeled their feet against the ground to prevent being thrown off the stage.

From the epicenter of the blast, Timbre stood slowly, her hair now only smoking instead of openly burning. She lifted Sonara and placed it back into its strap on her back, "I don't know about you, but I don't like being on fire," she drew wires and shot them towards Dante. Catching her off guard, Timbre let the wires coil tightly around her.

Dante's Dust book of poetry was tied too close to her side to get it out and open.

She struggled to break her bonds to no avail, "I don't believe there's a chance on me convincing you to release me, is there?"

"Normally, yes because you're a friend, but right now," Timbre twisted her foot ninety degrees to the side, preparing her next move, "Sorry."

"Watch out, girls!" Tox shouted as he zipped past both of them.

"Now you're caught!" Ray sliced the wires and grabbed them. While Timbre had been planning to repeat her body throwing technique from her fight with DINO, Ray was the one to actually pull it off.

Dante was lifted clear off the ground and began flying through the air as Ray swung her as a makeshift weapon.

"If I can't catch you, I'll let someone else do it for me, _and then beat you all with her!_ "

Dante struggled as the wind picked up. She could feel the blood rushing to the ends of her limbs as she was spun over and over again over Ray's head. _Think, Dante, think! A poem! Just one poem! Remember! Remember anything! My book's still here! I've got this! There's gotta be something I can do!_ she screamed inside her head as the whipping air around her made her squeeze her eyes shut.

One managed to come to mind.

"Eternal stone of," Dante began shouting the first poem that came to mind as she was spun through the air, "Unyielding weight upon my," her body began to become heavy with the green haze surrounding her, "Own shoulders I bear!" she fell straight down towards Ray as grey stones formed around her body.

Ray was throwing his arms forward to swing Dante into both Tox and Timbre, but he felt the wire go limp above him.

Rubble began tinking off of Ray's armor, then a human sized boulder slammed into his back. Dante dropped down as the rocks collapsed down around him. Her Earth Dust buff had worked just as intended. Bits of golden metal fell away from the his armor as the rocks shifted over him.

Dante snatched her book out of the air, the remainders of Timbre's cables falling down around her, "You should be more mindful, Raymond."

Dented gold plates spilled to the ground as Ray pushed himself up, "You… just ruined… my armor…" Ray grabbed the broken piece of breastplate still clinging to his chest and threw it to the ground.

"If that's how you ladies really want to play this…" he threw his gauntlets to the side, revealing the burly bronze muscle of his arms hidden beneath. Without his armor, he didn't appear nearly as large, but his stature and build was still vastly intimidating. The only remaining armor was from the waist down. Golden chain link covered his torso, "I will crush _ALL OF YOU_!"

Timbre didn't know what to say. In a one-on-one fight, it was obvious that Ray was superior, but he had trouble against so many targets without backup. _His ego's way more fragile than Khimera let on_. That's when it hit her. _Was that what she was trying to warn me about?_

"Yeah, right… says the guy who can't even keep his armor on!" Tox scoffed. He raised his weapon towards Ray, "Bring it on. I've been waiting for this to get interesting."

Dante stood ready with her fire poker at her side. Ray was about to go after at least one of them, and she was a likely target. She braced herself for whatever would come, then began flipping through the pages of her book. She whispered out a poem, her weapon and cloak beginning to burn with red fire as she read it aloud, "Let the flames of chaos flow across thine keen blade. Bring forth wild destruction in thou wake. No longer will such embers burn as fear in thy mind, for thou will let them grow until all returns to ash…"

Ray charged towards the other three contestants, now much faster without the added weight of his armor.

 _If nothing's done about him, then of course he's going to be the winner_ , Timbre thought to herself as she watched Ray hone in on Tox and Dante, _At least I haven't pissed him off that much since the fight started._ She watched as Ray clawed at Dante and Tox, who were exchanging blows with their weapons, _Am I really having to take the high road here and suggest working together to keep him from winning? Is that even allowed?_

Flames danced around them as Dante tried to get a good shot in, but her weapon was doing much even with the Fire Dust buff. She went in for a stab. Buckshot slammed into her side from the shot that Tox cranked off. She slid back away from the fight as Tox brought the sledgehammer down into Ray's shoulder to no effect. He was only batted away a few feet, leaving Ray with a clear shot on Timbre.

He began to lunge, but was struck in the side of the head by a red hot fireball. His seething eyes narrowed on Dante. With a bellowing warcry, he lunged at her. She collapsed instantly under his weight, his claws scratching her breastplate upon contact.

Timbre, seeing that teamwork was now absolutely _not_ an option, released wires and began swinging at anyone in her way.

A wire struck Tox in the side, who just shook off the hit like it was nothing. Instead of going for Ray, he rushed Timbre with his sledgehammer ready to dish out a devastating blow. He swung it once overhead, then swept it across into Timbre's arm.

Timbre crumpled for a moment before swiping Tox with another wire. With him disoriented, she rushed forward and began throwing a volley of punches and kicks into his body. _This is too much,_ she thought to herself, _I've never been in a fight this hectic before…_

Dante crashed into Tox's side, her fire poker clattering to the tile. Both of them fell over one another. She looked up to see her book had left her. The sound of leather and paper sliding caught her attention to her left. Her book was being crushed under Ray's foot. It wasn't enough to throw her. He needed to humiliate her.

"What's wrong, girl?" he snarled. His foot let up on the book for a moment, then he kicked it across the arena. His cold smile grew as it flew over the edge of the platform, "Can't do anything without your tricks?"

"Y-You…" she shook as she jumped up off of Tox and snatched up her fire poker, "How dare you do such a-"

Metal slammed into her just below her ribs. She rocketed across the arena, slamming her head against the tiles as she tumbled. She dug the hook of her fire poker into the platform, but the heat only melted through whatever she caught. Dante disappeared over the edge of the platform. The first buzzer sounded.

"Dante!" Timbre shouted, but she knew there was nothing she could do. The only semi-ally she had in the fight was gone. The only one that could potentially help her take down Ray was gone. She was truly on her own now.

"Sorry," Tox spun his hammer around, "Did I just knock out your girlfriend?"

Timbre had turned just in time to see the head of Tox's hammer coming towards her. It smashed into the ground just inches away from her toes. Tox's gas-masked face was right up against Timbre's. The dead opaque lenses were unnerving. There was no way of telling what emotions lied behind them.

He reared his head back a little bit, then slammed his forehead into Timbre's. As she stumbled back, he threw his attention back to Ray, "What's wrong, buddy? You still patting yourself on the back for helping me get that annoying poet chick off the platform?"

Ray snarled, "I would've done it _alone_ had you not gotten in my way!" Ray batted Timbre to the side and began swiping at Tox again. "I. Don't. Need. _Help_."

"Right… that's why you didn't want the child of another headmistress stealing your thunder… because she was," Tox ducked and juked around each slash, but a few actually managed to connect this time. Without the armor, Ray was actually managing to keep up, "What's wrong, dude? You don't want to take out the celebrity before she also steals the spotlight? Heard that she has a trick up her sleeve that might make things a little too easy!"

Timbre snapped her head towards Tox. Wires flew, colliding with Tox's side before reeling them back in for a stronger attack.

He held his side, this strike actually managing to sting a little, "What?" he ducked under another slash from Ray, "Oh, sorry. Ray, she doesn't want me to tell you about-"

" _Shut up!_ " Timbre swung a wire, hitting both Ray and Tox to the side. "Who even _are_ you?!" The idea of the Grimm Brotherhood passed through her head. _They've been immune before. They have to know about Siren's Song._ A chill of fear passed through her. _Could this guy…?_

Tox fell forwards, slamming his shoulder into Ray's chest. He rolled just past Ray, who just stood there following the hit.

"Who am I? Just someone who pays close attention," Tox held his sledgehammer out to the side and bolted towards Timbre, "Like when you pulled that crap with Damascus. Pretty screwed up if you ask me."

Timbre threw a punch to Tox's face, bending the gas mask inwards. "I said, _shut up!_ "

Glass shattered inside the left lens of Tox's mask. He grabbed Timbre by the arm and yanked her in close. His voice sounded much smoother with the new opening inside the mask. The soft words instantly made her feel cold, "Now you're trying to use it on me… Look at how far you've fallen…"

Timbre pushed the sledgehammer forward into Tox, her strength pushing him backwards, " _Who_. _Are_. _You?_ "

"Tox Hazmatte," Tox shoved Timbre away, the fiery amber eye exposed by the broken lens staring her down in cruel, wide-eyed amusement, "Nice to meet you."

Timbre was thrown back as Tox kicked her in the stomach. Ray barrelled through the space made between them.

He turned and knocked Timbre aside, "Stop blathering and _fight me!_ " he pointed a finger at both of his remaining opponents, "Hurry up and _fall like she did!_ "

"Oh, sorry. Kitty's not getting the attention that he needs. Want a ball of yarn or something? Maybe a can of tuna or a dish of milk?" Tox chuckled with his weapon up on his shoulders, "Oooo… sorry. Did that sound a little rude to someone of your background? My bad, dude. Didn't mean anything by it."

Ray had had enough. He snarled as he grabbed Timbre by the wrist. She struggled to free herself from his grip, but he was too strong. With a loud shout, he chucked the singer at Tox.

While Tox was completely ready for a head on attack from Ray, he certainly wasn't ready to have one of his opponents thrown at him like a ragdoll. Timbre crashed into him, but she simply tumbled over. Tox was sent sprawling across the arena. He slid to a stop not too far from the edge. Upon flipping over onto his back, the stage lights were blotted out from his view.

"I'm _done_ dealing with you," Ray saw Tox reaching for his sledgehammer. He grabbed him by the neck and lifted him up off of the ground. "Thought you could get the best of _me_?" Ray lowered Tox a bit, as if about to let him go, "Think again," with all of his force, he through Tox upwards towards the lights floating above them.

Glass and sparks flew out as Tox struck a stage light. His arms flailed as if to look for the weapon that was still far below. Seeing Ray down below scared even him as he began falling. Upon nearing, the front of his coat tightened and ripped. Ray's claws caught him, and then slammed him down against the platform hard enough to send cracks fracturing outwards from the impact. A deep red shimmer covered his body and disappeared. The second buzzer sounded.

With Tox and Dante out of the fight, half of the free-for-all was over, and that meant only one thing. Timbre was alone with Ray Léon. No longer could he set his sights on someone else. There was nobody left for him to maim but her.

"That'll teach him…" Ray took a tremendous breath as he stood tall over a crumpled Tox. His steps shook the platform as he strolled towards Timbre, "You might as well forfeit like that Crims girl and her weakling partner. After all the trouble you put me through in this fight, you're not getting off easy…"

 _You're one to be calling others pathetic._ Timbre's hand instinctively shot to her back. She held Sonora out in front of her, ready to defend herself, "What you did to Alice wasn't anywhere _near_ justified," she looked over to Tox, rolling on the ground holding his side. While the possibility of him being in the Grimm Brotherhood still nagged at her, one thing rung true, "Maybe he was right. You are weak. Weak _willed_. There's no honor in destroying everybody in your path with reckless abandon," she solidified her stance, fear melting away to confidence, "No sane person respects you for the way you've handled yourself in this tournament. So what if you're the General's son? Up here, you're on equal playing ground with everybody else!" she kicked off the ground, sword ready to swing directly for Ray's torso.

Claws wrapped around the blade. Six snaps rang out from its center. Ray's claws sheared through each guitar string without even a hint of resistance. His left hand came up from below and palmed her middle, all five of the claws digging into her metal corset, "What, you think this is some kind of fairy tale..?" he said in a low growl as he lifted her up, "All you are is a weak little sheep whose ego has gotten just a little too big. In a tournament like this, all that matters is beating everybody else into submission."

Hearing the strings lining Sonora's blade nearly made Timbre cry, but it wasn't time to give up yet, "If anyone's ego's grown too big, it's _yours_!" Timbre pushed the blade, despite being held back by Ray.

The hand he had on the blade didn't budge, "Too big? No… not at all," he raised her up, then slammed her against the platform like he had with Alice and Tox already. He leaned in, a hand still over her middle, and then yanked Sonora away from her. The sword disappeared behind him, "What, did you think that being a celebrity meant that you had a chance?"

"I don't care about being known, Ray," she winced as she felt his claws beginning to dig deeper into her corset, "I'm fighting to be a Huntress. If people forget who I am, _so be it!_ " she slammed her head up into Ray's nose.

Ray didn't even flinch, "If you ever actually become a Huntress," he raised her up and slammed her down once again harder, "then you'll just die on your first time out! You're _nothing_!"

"I have plenty of people that would tell me otherwise," Timbre kicked at Ray's stomach and shins, "I may be nothing to you, but I honestly don't care what an egomaniac crybaby like you has to say about me."

"Fine, then!" Ray reared her back and pitched her towards the edge of the arena, "Fall like the rest of them!"

Timbre bounced hard against the tile before flying off the edge of the platform. _No way! I'm not going down that easily!_ She fired a wire, connecting to the underside of the platform. _I'll do what I did against Khimera, only I'll make sure to mess up your face a bit more!_ She fired another wire, swinging underneath the platform, ready to come shooting up the other side and giving Ray another taste of what she was made of.

The third buzzer sounded.

"Huh?!" Timbre came launching up over the edge of the platform to find Ray standing triumphantly in the center of the platform. She landed on her feet, not on Ray's face. "What's going on?!" The fight was over, but what happened? She looked up to the screens and felt her heart sink.

Timbre's aurameter read 14%, the bar barely reading to the left of the line representing the threshold signifying an elimination.

"And there we have it, folks!" Carmen called from the intercom as the platform began to lower, "The victor of the 50th Biennial Vytal Festival Tournament has been decided! Ray Léon of Team RYAL from Atlas stands tall in the arena! After a hard fought battle, he alone holds this year's champion title! Congratulations to him and his team! Let's give it up for him!"

Ray raised his arms, calling for all of Amity Colosseum and all of Remnant beyond it to cheer for him. He gave a sly glance to Timbre, "Nice try. Better luck next time, Nothing."

Timbre grit her teeth as she watched him call for the crowd to cheer louder, but then she began to calm herself down. _You know what? I'm kinda glad I lost. I made it to the last two… and I'm_ nothing _like him._

She smiled to him, "Good job, Ray," she held a hand out to him, "Despite our little… back and forth, that was a great fight. You deserve the title. Truly." _If he wants to live his life like a complete tool, then let him. Who am I to tell him how to live? He does him, I do me._

"You're right. I do. I'm the only one who does." he chuckled, not even acknowledging the outstretched hand, "Like any of you had a chance anyway."

The platform finally settled back into its place. Dante stood in the Mistrali entrance, and a pair of medics ran out from the Vacuan entrance to retrieve Tox from his place in the crater Ray left him in.

"Please," Vivian began as Timbre walked towards the Valean entrance, "Join us for the closing ceremony tonight at nine. That will give our fighters and their teams an hour to prepare. We would ask that the four fighters from the final round bring their teams with them on stage to commemorate this night. Come fully dressed in your combat attire so that we can show Remnant what the next generation of Huntsmen and Huntresses looks like. May you all have a great rest of your night, and please enjoy the rest of the festivities!"

Timbre smiled to herself as she entered the locker room. She took Sonara off of her back and examined the damage, "Damn… at least it lasted as long as it did… Thanks, Mom. Maybe Carmen will have a few spare strings," she pat the blade lovingly, "I'll fix Sonara up again, good as new."

"Talking to your sword, now?" a voice said from the hall.

Upon turning, Timbre found her team running up to greet her. Sepia, as expected, leapt and latched onto her to give her a giant bear hug.

"People are going to think you're crazy if you keep doing that." Roland tapped the sword.

"T! That was _awesome!_ " Arty took his turn to hug Timbre, "You were the _last one_ with Ray! I was honestly expecting you to be, at _most,_ the second one knocked out."

"Gee… thanks, Arty." Timbre mock grumbled as she punched him in the shoulder.

"You outlasted my sister, and you saw how she handled Shorla. It takes quite a bit to take her out, but she still went down first. Tox also seems to be pretty tough, but you even outlasted him. You really did well," Roland hesitantly hugged Timbre, "and you actually used her sword. It doesn't matter if you won or not. You took Team ARTS farther than any of us expected."

"Thanks, Roland," she uselessly plucked one of Sonara's broken strings, "I was honestly expecting all three of them to just start wailing on me like a pack of Beowolves as soon as the countdown ended…"

' _But they didn't, so you were able to pull off what you did! It was awesome!'_ Sepia giddily jumped up and down in front of Timbre. She ran over to her locker and pulled out her guns. She hooked them back behind her bustle, the reels resting against her thigh, ' _You know, we can totally get something to eat before we have to go up there! I bet you're starving after that!'_

Roland opened up his locker and pulled out Writer's Block. He strapped it to his left arm via the leather straps made to secure the typewriter, and then went to mounting his ink grenades to his belt, "Yeah, no kidding. Hopefully we can see Sis before the ceremony-"

"I don't believe that will be a problem," said the woman clad in a red cloak over white, grey, and black plates of armor from the doorway, "I thought it would be appropriate to pop in," Dante gave them all a warm smile. Her curly black hair was let down so that it flowed down around her shoulders and a little way down her back. It poofed out just a few inches while not contained in a ponytail.

"Oh!" Timbre smiled from the pleasant surprise, "Hey, Dante!... You did great out there!... Especially when you set me on fire…"

"Yeah," she stepped in and began examining Timbre's burnt hair, "I'm sorry about that. I would be more than happy to pay for you to go to a salon to get that fixed. Believe me when I say that I know a thing or two when it comes to managing hair… it can be a big pain. I would even be happy to have the red streaks redyed."

"Thanks, but after tonight, I think I'm done with red…" Timbre brushed a few stray flakes of ash off of her shoulder.

"Then I will take you to this fantastic Mistrali salon that I know. We can get our nails done, eyebrows waxed… get your hair fixed... everything. My treat," Dante looked around at the other members of Team ARTS, "Arty, Roland, Sepia, I didn't mean to ignore you all. I just wanted to congratulate Timbre on such a good show."

Timbre gave Dante a worried look, "Did… did you just get all of our names right?..."

"Oh…" Dante giggled, "I'm sorry. I forgot that only Arty and Roland really know. I like to get people's names wrong so that they underestimate me. It makes for easier negotiations, and more interesting fights."

"She picked it up from Dad. That's how he handled Satsuma Sassafras for the first two years of their contract…" Roland shook his head. Dante definitely took more after their father than him, "She knows everyone's names."

' _Here I thought she was just really awkward…'_ Sepia looked between Roland and Dante, ' _Well, more awkward than she actually is, anyway.'_

"Oh… kay then. I'll stop questioning it then," Timbre began to laugh nervously, "I'm about done with surprises for the day. I don't think anything could surprise me right now, to be honest. I'm just ready to get done with this closing ceremony, grab some dinner, and get a good night's sleep."

Arty began to stretch, "You and me both. It's been a long day."

Timbre glared at him, "Yeah, because _you_ were the one fighting in the free-for-all. You were in _one_ round," she joked.

"Yeah… but we had your birthday, and the matches started running later into the night starting with the singles, and all the excitement just… _Woo!_ "

"Let's get a move on," Roland tossed Palette and Arty's backpack over to him. He held the vials of Dust paint over to him, "Here's your things."

"Tha-..." Arty slowly looked up to his partner, "Waaaaait a second… How did you know the combo to my locker?"

"You wrote it down in your notes on the first day of class. In pen. In the black spiral notebook that you ended up using for doodles. You left it on the second shelf on your desk," Roland popped Arty's locker door back in with his elbow, "Why do you think I let you borrow my pen? It was a good bit of information to have in an emergency. I also have Timbre's because she made it into the lyrics of a short song. Also wrote that in pen. The one that I lent her to do so."

Timbre crossed her arms and looked to Sepia, "Sepia, tell your boyfriend to stop being such a creep."

' _I'd be a hypocrite. I know all of our scroll passwords. I also thought that'd be good for emergencies…'_ Sepia tried to smile at her partner, ' _Sorry, T… and Arty…'_

Timbre leaned over to Arty, "Arty, tell your team to stop being weird."

Arty stiffened his stance, exaggerating an imposing military manner of conducting himself, "Team, stop being weird _this instant!_ " he loosened and pointed to Timbre, "That goes for you, too, T."

"Wha- What did _I_ do to be weird?!"

Arty pointed to Sonara, "Talking to your sword for one thing."

"They've got you there, Timbre…" Dante smirked, "So, shall we be on our way?"

Timbre looked to her team, "I'm up for it if you guys are."

* * *

Onlookers sat in the dimmed stands of Amity Colosseum. They looked on through the darkness to the brightly lit arena. The colors of each kingdom illuminated their respective emblems on the outer ring of the arena. In the center platform stood the participants of the final match, their teams standing behind them, and all of them looking up to the four raised podiums with the emblems of the kingdoms in silver on their faces only a few feet away from them. From left to right, Team ARTS stood facing Professor Onyx Alabaster, Team TCSC stood facing Vivian Willows, Team RYAL stood before General Khidna Léon, and Team READ stood facing Professor Shirley Wells. All of them stood under the combined lights of lime green, burnt orange, pristine white, and chilling blue spotlights. Behind the headmasters and headmistresses was a marble pedestal with an etched glass trophy in the image of the combined symbol of Vytal.

Every student was dressed for battle with their weapons in hand, except for Ray in just his white Atlesian uniform, and their headmasters and headmistresses donned their typical attire. Alabaster in his checkerboard suit jacket and red tie, Vivian in his long white linen shirt and tan scarf, Khidna in her pressed white military attire with golden epaulets, and Shirley in her blood red plated battle dress.

"Would the participants of the final match please step forwards?" Alabaster said into the microphone just a few inches away from his mouth.

Timbre, Tox, Ray, and Dante stepped away from their teams and approached the center of the stage.

He cleared his throat, "I would like to begin by saying that I am proud of all of you for coming this far. Had it not been for your exemplary skill in combat and teamwork, none of you would be standing here to begin with. While it is you all as individuals who fought in the last few fights, you all must remember that it was your teammates are who allowed you to get to this point. You only have them to thank for that. So, I would like all of you to turn to your teammates and show them your appreciation for their efforts to get you here."

Timbre immediately turned and ran to thank her teammates. She wanted all of Remnant to know how much she appreciated them, not only for getting her to the point where she was standing in Amity like her mother had years before, but because she wanted everyone to know how much she'd changed because of them, "Thank you guys, _so_ much. I mean it."

Arty just gave her a thumbs up, "Hey, all I did was get pepper sprayed. If it meant getting you to this point again, I'd do it a hundred times over… maybe."

"How about getting charmed again instead?" Timbre snickered, "That'd be a lot less painful."

"Uh… Have you met Curie?!" Arty gawked at her.

"Yeah… getting pepper sprayed is a lot less painful than the beating Curie can give," Roland held out his arms to welcome the inevitable hug.

Timbre latched on and pulled back away to deliver a quick jab to his left shoulder, "Thanks for helping me out after Cayenne nearly busted my head open."

"Anytime, and you know that we've all got your back for more than just a tournament," Roland pulled his hat off and put it over his chest, "I'm honored to stand up here knowing that I played a part in bringing you up here, though."

She wiped a tear beginning to form under her eye as she turned to Sepia. Just as she had the day that she met her partner, she raised her hands to sign, ' _I never could have made it here without you. Sorry I wasn't able to keep Damascus from popping you in the head.'_

Sepia held her guns under her arms to sign back, ' _You know, I don't regret taking that hit after seeing you up there. You showed Remnant what we are, and that's some badass motherf-'_

The subtitles for Sepia on the screens overhead abruptly came to an end.

"Cool it potty-hands," Timbre laughed as she looked over to the other three finalists' teams.

Tox, who had already had his gas mask fully repaired, shrugged at his team. Cyan and Cobalt both paid him no mind, and Scorpio stared at him with frustrated concern.

Ray made a much larger show of thanks than the others. He held out his arms wide to his team and the world, "Thank you, girls, for allowing me to spread the glory of Atlas to the entire world! You all made it marginally easier for me to cut down all those who stood in our path to fame!"

Yaara and her other two teammates, Amaryllis, the girl dressed in pinks, reds, and yellows with a parasol/rifle hybrid, and Lila, a hooded girl draped in black, yellow, and purple stealth gear, looked at each other in confusion. Sure, Ray was never one to give them any real thanks, but this backhanded way of almost thanking them was more insulting. Still, their mission for the tournament was finally over, and they could be thankful for that much.

Dante quickly tied her hair back up into a ponytail, having forgotten to do so prior to coming out. She smiled wide, her dimples showing themselves for a rare moment, and bowed to her teammates, "Robin, Eden, and Ahab. I thank all of you for carrying me to this point. I could have never gotten up to this stage alone."

Robin gave her a quick nod, the piece of straw between his lips bouncing around as he did so, "You did great out there on your own though," he gave her a hearty pat on the shoulder, "Glad you weren't the one doing you in. I would've hated to see you overdo yourself with the spells."

"They aren't… sp… nevermind. I appreciate your trust, Robin," she stood back up straight.

Eden grabbed Dante and squeezed her tight, "You seriously rocked out there! You'll be the next victor of the tournament if you get even better from here! No one will be able to beat the Witch of Haven before long!"

"T-Thank you, Eden," Dante pulled back from the hug a bit and put a hand over her chest as a reminder to calm down. The stage lights were already getting to her.

"Hey," Robin reassured her, "You're fine up here. The whole world thinks you're magical. No need to stress out so much, okay?"

"I'd be pretty stressed if everyone thought I was a witch or something." Ahab jeered. "You did good, but you could've done better," he nodded to Ray, "We could've been in _his_ place right now if you had."

Her eyes narrowed, "I love you too, Brother… It is _so_ much easier to cope with my anxiety under your judgemental gaze..." she put back on her happy face, "Oh, and the male form of a witch is a warlock, but I understand why someone like you wouldn't know that."

Ahab scoffed, hand caressing the harpoon launcher strapped to his side, "Whatever. Doesn't matter much in the long run anyways."

"I think I speak for all of us when I say that you've all given Remnant the greatest centennial celebration it could've ever asked for," Vivian beamed to the sixteen students in front of him, "Without a doubt, each and every one of you, and every other student in our wonderful academies, will make some of the best Huntsmen in Huntresses in all of our history!"

"But this tournament was to show the world who of them would be the greatest among them. The victor of this tournament is Ray Léon of Team RYAL, and he will hold that title until the next Vytal Festival Tournament. His prowess as a warrior is unmatched," General Léon stepped away from her podium to reach for the marble pedestal behind them. She gingerly picked up the trophy, "As I am your mother, I will pass off awarding this to you to Professor Shirley Wells so that I may not appear biased. Still, I am proud of seeing you here, son."

"It would be my honor to bestow the trophy to such a fine young warrior," Shirley took the trophy from her fellow headmistress before turning to Ray, "Congratulations, Ray Léon, Team RYAL, Atlas Academy, and all of Remnant on this glorious day!"

Ray almost forcefully took the trophy from her and held it above his head. As Shirley returned to her podium, he began shouting to all of Remnant, "I want every one of you to look at me and see everything that you aren't! _I_ destroyed every last one of you to get up here today! _I_ showed all of you what someone who actually is powerful can do! _I_ made sure that all of Remnant sees just how weak everyone else here is! It doesn't matter if you're from Vale, Vacuo, Mistral, or even _Atlas!_ You'll never be as good as I am! My name will be remembered, while all of the scum behind me will die and be forgotten!"

General Léon motioned to stop him, "Ray, that is eno-"

A black glow enveloped Ray. It would have appeared to be his aura had it been gold instead, but no. It flowed around him like a black blaze. He let out a lion-like roar as the black haze seemed to explode around him. The black hue blinded the students around him for a moment, and then it began to fade. Ray was left with a similar fading shade around him, a revitalized gleam in his eye.

"Would you look at that?!" Ray shouted, "It looks like _I_ was the one out of us that-"

Glass shattered over his head and fell like prismatic snow. Shards of the trophy littered the ground around him. A second impact, a muffled one, followed. Ray fell flat on his face, his arms already below him to push himself up. They went slack as a third impact came down on his head. Red speckled the broken glass surrounding him.

The head of a sledgehammer came down again, this impact sending a wet crack echoing across Amity Colosseum. Red began to pool under Ray and carrying shards of glass out around him. The hammer's head raised again, this time having been covered in matted brown hair and fresh blood. It came down for a final time as Khidna Léon's terrored shriek pierced the air. The hammer slammed down into an already finished target, as if to spit in the face of anyone watching.

Chaos broke out in the crowd. The headmasters and headmistresses stood helpless. Eleven of the fifteen remaining students froze in place from sheer terror. Team TCSC stood with their weapons ready. Their leader, Tox Hazmatte stood over the victim speckled in red. Remnant's champion laid motionless, his wounds making him totally unrecognizable.

Ray Léon was dead.


	71. V3Ch18: Curtain Call

" _ **RAAAY!"**_ Khidna shoved the podium aside and lunged towards Tox with her hands outstretched like claws. The only thing that stopped her was the firm hand latched onto the back of her coat. She struggled against Shirley to reach her son's killer, Tox Hazmatte, " _ **DO YOU HAVE ANY IDEA WHAT YOU'VE DONE?!"**_ she shrieked with tears pouring from her eyes. Hate, sorrow, and fury all shook around inside her stinging reddened eyes, " _ **SOLDIERS! TAKE AIM AND FIRE! FIRE THIS INSTANT!"**_

Not a single shot came.

" _ **I SAID FIRE ON THIS MURDERER!"**_

Nothing.

Everyone around Team TCSC scattered back and away from them.

Vivian was the first to ask the obvious question, "Wh-where are the soldiers!" he looked frantically around the stadium as spectators scattered.

"Oh… ha… that's funny…" Tox twirled his sledgehammer, sending bits of red speckling around the stage. He nudged the body at his feet with his toes curiously, "They're dealing with the Creatures of Grimm. They should've been released just a little bit after the ceremony started. Thanks for dragging that out a bit, oh great headmasters. Couldn't have done it without you four!"

Onyx Alabaster didn't take his eyes off of the monster before them. The world seemed to be crumbling around them. The peace he and the other headmasters were just preaching about to the entire planet had suddenly been shattered by this one individual and his posse, "Shirley, Vivian, take Khidna and get her out of here. RYAL, do everything you can to stop these four."

Vivian and Shirley dragged Khidna towards the exit by her arms. She kicked and screamed for them to let her go, but her pleads went ignored. If any of them also lost their lives here, then Remnant would be in an even greater state of disarray.

"Awww," Cyan faked a pout, "That's not very nice blowing your brainwashed slaves' cover like that old man!" She shrugged, "Not like we didn't already know about them." Her gauntlets sparked with energy as her eyes glazed over the three girls from Team RYAL before darting to Robin and Eden, "All you did was expand our little hit list."

The glistening axeblade attached to Robin's weapon was held out in front of his team, "Team READ! Scatter! Follow Yaara out! ARTS! Stay with Lila, Amaryllis and Alabaster!" he shouted while eyeing Cyan down, "Get out of here!"

Ahab and Dante ran for the exit with Yaara between them and Team TCSC.

Cyan calmly blew a bubble with her gum and let it pop as she rushed Robin. Her gauntlets clanged against his musket, and her brute strength was doubled over by the battery pack feeding energy into her gauntlets, "Well, looks like _somebody_ really wants to be the second piece of garbage to die tonight."

A violet puff of Dust spread upwards from between Cyan and Robin. The surge of energy in the gauntlets backfired into the battery pack. She was sent rocketing backwards, leaving Robin still in the puff of Dust.

"You're not dying tonight, Robin!" Eden shouted as her rope wrapped around Robin's waist. She yanked him towards her, "ARTS can handle themselves! We have to stay on Dante and Ahab!"

Robin nodded in agreement, "Lila! Amaryllis! Get the four of them out of here! Defend them with your _lives_ , got it?" he looked to Onyx, "You too, sir. You don't need to be in the middle of this."

The two girls from Team RYAL began pushing Team ARTS to leave. The girl in the dark purple hooded cloak, Lila, held out a long bladed polearm, ready to defend them.

"Go! Now!" she shouted.

Timbre wanted to run, but her knees gave out. She fell to the ground. She knew people were screaming and shouting around her, some trying to get her to move in order to avoid a certain death, but all she heard was a dull ringing. She had felt the splatter. She reached up and wiped her face. Upon looking at her fingers, she saw smears of blood running across them. Her breathing spiraled out of control. She wanted to scream, but nothing came out.

"Timbre!" Arty shouted, he too on the brink of passing out from how fast he was breathing, "We have to go!"

"Nuh-uh." Cobalt raised his sword. Like his sister's weapons, it too sparked with blue arcs of electricity, " _She's_ not going anywhere." he pointed the end of the blade directly at the singer crying on the ground, "Out of the four of you, _she's_ the one we're _not_ letting leave this floating piece of crap."

A thin black wire rolled down from the ring of stage lights docked in the apparatus above. A massive figure donned in black and red armor slid down it by a metal clip on his waist. The jagged bits of silver metal around his helmet formed the chilling vistage of a skeletal bat, "You've all done enough, Team TCSC. Get to the rendezvous point _now_."

"Aw, come on, dude!" Tox whined, but Scorpio shoved him towards the exit.

Before Scorpio could berate him, the armored man did it for him, "You're not going to screw this up any more for us. Get out before I decide to cut a few loose ends."

"Fine, fine!" Tox raised his hands, "Let's go, guys…"

Scorpio shoved Tox forwards, "You'll be reporting to Hulud for this…"

"Psh," Cobalt scoffed, "Been fun playing with you guys! Have fun with those mental scars, Greenie!"

Cyan stuck out her tongue and skipped along with her brother and the rest of their team. Sparks shot out as her heavy boots clunked against the ground.

With them gone, the armored man turned to face Team ARTS, Alabaster, Lila, and Amaryllis. He stepped towards them, ignoring the weapons being raised at him. His armor could take much more than any of them could dish out. He held out his hand to make a grab for Timbre.

A paper blade scratched the surface of the plates at the fingertips of the gauntlets. A metallic scar could be seen as the man retracted back. Roland stood between him and Timbre, a fresh blade from Writer's Block still dripping with ink. Every hair along his tail stood on end. His face was tinged red with rage. Every line of his face was folded deep in his anger, "Get the hell away from her!" he barked, "Why don't you go crawl back into a cave like the creatures you name yourself after?!"

Arty and Sepia were both trying to lift Timbre to get her to run, but her legs still refused to work.

"Please! Timbre!" Arty pleaded, "We need to _go!_ "

"Th-th-th...the…" Timbre began to shake as tears flowed freely, making wet trails down her face as she watched Roland square off against the Grimm Brotherhood operative.

Sepia yanked Timbre up and back towards her. She hastily pulled her towards Alabaster and the two girls from Team RYAL with Arty. Her eyes passed over Ray's body for a split second. It wasn't but ten feet away from them, and the fresh smell of blood was starting to seep into her nose.

Timbre began openly sobbing as she tried to convey that she recognized this man, "The armor…"

Agent Echo reached to his sides and grabbed the two halves to his weapon. After clasping them together, the red and black staff buzzed to life with a dark laser running from one end to the other. Echo grabbed the thin line of dark energy with his thumb, index finger, and middle finger. A deep black mass appeared along the string as he pulled it back. It was a sight Team ARTS all knew very well.

Arty, Sepia, and Roland, faltered in shock at the sudden realization.

"No..." Arty muttered in disbelief as he shook his head, "No no no…"

The helmet retracted piece by piece into the armor. Once the final plates pressed themselves back into the neck of the suit, the agent's face was revealed to them. His square jaw and neatly trimmed dark grey hair were unmistakable. He drew the black hole arrow taut, a friendly smile playing across his thin lips.

"Hey, guys. Good to see you up here. I can't tell you how happy I am for all of you," Gavin snickered, "Man, seems like just yesterday I was giving Roland and Timbre a tour of Beacon, and now here we are! That's just too cool, ya know?"

"Y-You…?" Roland shook under the pressure growing inside him. This was the first person that he ever told at Beacon about CiCi. This was someone who actually guided him. This was someone that he began looking up to once he got past the obnoxious positivity. Now, Gavin stood as one of the very same monsters that killed his mother, " _I'LL KILL YOU, YOU BASTARD!"_

"Woah, woah," Gavin aimed his arrow at Roland's chest, "woah. Jumping straight to murder so fast! Damn, dude! But you can't do anything if you're dead, Otterbutt. Gotta keep in mind that I don't care if you're dead. Khimera told you guys about the list, after all. That's still buried somewhere in that dumb animal brain of yours, isn't it?"

Sepia eased up on the triggers of her guns. Tears streamed from her eyes. Gavin couldn't be one of them. He had to be joking. This had to be some kind of sick nightmare. Still, she didn't fire out of fear. If Gavin let go of the arrow, Roland was as good as dead.

"That's it." Lila collapsed her polearm and tucked it away. She ducked down and grabbed Timbre, hoisting her up and throwing her over her shoulder, "Come on, all of you! Amaryllis, give us covering fire! We don't have time to deal with hi-"

"You leave with her, I kill the other three. Leave them all here, and none of them die," Gavin nodded to Alabaster, "Bossman would be pretty disappointed if you failed at your job _again._ " he nodded his head back, gesturing to Ray's body lying only a few feet behind him.

Amaryllis, the other RYAL girl dressed in pink and red day wear, covered her mouth to keep herself from openly sobbing.

"It's your choice, though. I'm good either way. I don't care as long as Forté's still alive," he passed his black hole arrow's line of fire between Arty, Roland, and Sepia, "You guys will probably want to run off anyway once you see our little message to all of Remnant."

Professor Alabaster's grip tightened on his cane. He was out of options. Negotiating with the enemy was the last thing that he was willing to do, especially with the lives of his students on the line, but there was nothing else that he could do. He raised a hand to call off Lila and Amaryllis, "Step away from Team ARTS. We have to trust that they can handle themselves for the time being."

"What?!" Lila cried out.

Amaryllis tried to question his decision. "Onyx, you surely can't be seriou-"

"If they could handle the Maelstrom, then they can handle themselves. We have to trust that," Alabaster tapped his cane to draw Gavin's attention. It tore him apart to see his student standing here with a weapon drawn against his peers. Never once had he suspected Gavin of all people of being an infiltrator, "Show us this message, boy."

Gavin looked to his jet black scroll inlaid in his left arm guard, "Well, looks like we're actually running on schedule. Great. She's ready to speak with you."

Every big screen in Amity flickered on. A black screen brightened with a white light coming down from above. A cloaked white figure stepped into frame, her white octopus mask pulsating with the myriad of colors from the cracks of the Maelstrom's flesh. Her soft, feminine voice passed through the colosseum like a gentle breeze with an accompanying layer of static to conceal her true tone, "Hello, Remnant. I sincerely apologize for all of the chaos that is being wrought this night. If it had not come to this, then I would have never even considered this as an option. Unfortunately, a peaceful solution is no longer within our grasp, and I will shoulder all blame for what is to come. I take full responsibility for everything as Commander Maelstrom of the Grimm Brotherhood."

Team ARTS, Alabaster, and the RYAL girls could only stare at the screen as the woman spoke.

"However, I will still show mercy despite the route that I have been forced to take. I will give every person watching the opportunity to be shielded from the destruction falling over this night. I have a list of students that are vitally important to me," Commander Maelstrom tapped away at the large scroll resting on the inside of her forearm.

Arty gave an unconvincingly angry glare to Gavin, "Don't we already know this?..."

She held up the scroll to show the viewers a list of names and pictures. She began naming off each going down, annunciating each name as clearly as possible.

Everyone except Gavin stood in stunned silence as they realized the list had grown.

"Burne "Arty" Umber. Roland Solferino Wells. Timbre Forté. Sepia Hughes. Shorla Tamil. Dante Wells. Khimera Léon. Ray Léon." she stopped for a moment, "Those names are all the most important to us, and I cannot well tolerate any of them coming under too much harm unless completely necessary. However, Timbre Forté is not to be harmed under any circumstances, and anyone who does will see the fullest extent of my anger. I trust that she will come to me in one piece."

Timbre managed to get out a few words between sobs, "Why me?! Why do you care so much about _me?!_ " she shouted at Gavin.

"Wouldn't you like to know?" Gavin sneered, "Now shut up and keep listening."

"I do, however, have a few more students that have been deemed beneficial to our cause. I have taken a special interest in these children as well, but I am certainly content with not having them. These would be: Turf Fescue. Curie Geiger. Epazote Elderflower. Oliver Lu. Ivoros Saurus. Xannie Rhea. Lurida Rhea. Yamuna Luna. Anubis Luna. Set Luna. Opal Uluru. Alice Crims. Namib Sahara. Neila Lithic. Yaara Honig. Lila Notte. Amaryllis Carmine. Fenix Flare. Rime Chione." she took a breath as she finished, "All of these students have uses in mind, and none will be harmed in what we have planned for them. If they come quietly, then this night can come to an end sooner. If all of the students that I have named here come into our possession, then this night will end with much less bloodshed. For the sake of the innocent civilians that might die this night, I beg that all of you will come peacefully. No one needs to die tonight, but I will make the necessary sacrifices for the good of Remnant. Consider your options carefully, and please think of what is best for those surrounding you. Civilians need not suffer as a result of your unwillingness to cooperate. As a last note, I would ask that Onyx Alabaster meet me at the docks of the Valean quadrant. Come alone, or do not. I do not care either way. I simply wish to speak with you."

With that, the screen faded back to black. All that was left on the screens was the eight spoked wheel in pristine white.

"Awesome. Now that she's finished…" Gavin tapped at his scroll. The screens around them shifted back to the camera feed. The arena and its occupants all showed up overhead. Every move they made was being broadcast across Remnant, "Team ARTS, you stay with me. Professor Alabaster, you heard the woman. Lila, Amaryllis, you're not my priority, but it'd be a shame if your precious leader was defenseless against the Creatures of Grimm, now wouldn't it?"

The two girls looked to each other, trying to gauge their options.

"Come with me…" Alabaster's knuckles turned white against his cane, "If we stay here much longer, Gavin here may get impatient and begin killing our candidates… we haven't much choice. We must trust them to defend themselves," he looked to Arty, "I trust that you can guide your team, Arty. I have faith that you four can manage. Can you assure me that my faith is well placed?"

Arty shot Onyx an incredulous look. "What?! Professor, _what is going on!?_ " There were so many things that didn't make sense. "Why are complete strangers on teams from separate kingdoms so coordinated with one another? What did you mean when you referred to us as candidates? What did he mean by 'precious leader'?" He shook his head, "How can we trust that you're not in on this?"

"I will send someone when this is over to explain, but now is not the time." Alabaster turned, but even his hands shook with the fear of the situation befalling them all. He had done everything to avoid all of this, but here he stood on the edge of the abyss that he so feared, "Lead your team through this crisis."

Arty was getting upset. Instead of answers, he was only getting more questions. "But, Profess-"

"He's never given us a reason for us not to trust him, Arty…" Roland said without taking his eyes off of Gavin. He trembled with every ounce of murderous rage that was boiling up to the surface.

Gavin only grinned at that remark, "You could say the same thing about me, Ot-"

" _ **NO ONE ASKED YOU, GAVIN!"**_ Roland snapped back. It took every bit of focus not to bolt forward and go for a stab in the chest to end it all. He stayed planted in his place between Gavin and the others with his paper blade raised. Rage laced every venom-tinged word, " _ **JUST GO, ALABASTER. WE CAN HANDLE OURSELVES. JUST. GO."**_

"Aww, man, dude! I haven't seen you this angry since you nearly killed Alice!" Gavin readied his black hole arrow, "Now… who's going to die first if you don't get going, Onyx? Arty, maybe? Sepia's a good choice. She's always been _so_ annoying. I think I'll leave Roland to watch his friend and girlfriend die before I take him out. Dirty Faunus deserves it…"

Alabaster began stepping away, "Lila… Amaryllis… it is time to leave."

The two girls knew that arguing was useless.

"Yes sir…" Lila said begrudgingly before acknowledging Arty, "I know you barely know me, but know full well that I want you four to stay alive. Do whatever you need to to survive." she glared at Gavin, "Even if it means killing anyone who tries to take you."

"K-kill?..." Arty stammered, obviously terrified at the thought of taking someone else's life, "We've been trained to kill _Grimm_ , not _people_!"

"Then you'll either die or be taken. Your choice!" Lila shouted.

Amaryllis grabbed Lila by the arm and began leading them away, "Fine, you win, Echo. We're leaving."

"See you guys!" Gavin nodded goodbye. A cruel smile grew across his face. He never thought it would be so easy to nab the four of them, "Look at that. I've done what the other _three_ branches couldn't do for almost a year in ten minutes. Guess mine should have just gone for it in the first place… Man, I should have just taken all of you in Mikado, but Oro just _had_ to insist that we begin working together."

Sepia stared at him. She couldn't believe the words that were coming out of his mouth. This was Gavin, for crying out loud. This was the man that they looked up to. They had been so close… and it was all an act. She looked desperately to Arty. If they stayed, then they would either be killed or taken.

Arty felt the drive to fight back, but with everyone's lives on the line and Timbre in no shape to fight, they really only had one option. He began signing to his team, ' _We need to run. Our aura should be able to stop his arrows for a while_.' he knelt down and grabbed Timbre by the shoulders, looking her in the eyes, "Timbre, please. You have to get up. We're safe… for the time being."

While she was still shaking, she slowly began to push herself to her feet. She hugged her arms around herself tightly in a vain attempt to comfort herself, "J-Just breathe, Timbre… _Just… breathe… You've got to… push through… this…_ " her shaking began to slow down until she stood rigid and facing forward. While she looked confident, her eyes were glazed over. While she was no longer acting like it, the trauma of everything that had just occurred was still taking its toll on her mind.

"You think Siren's Song is going to help you all that much, T…?" Gavin sneered. He aimed his bow at her head, "That thing that you've used on so many random people isn't going to be your saving grace here."

Timbre didn't flinch. She only looked at him with a calm indifference.

' _Are we ready to run?'_ Arty signed again.

"Run?" Gavin turned his bow on Arty, "No… I'm not letting you guys get away…" Something pinged inside his armor. The platform shuddered. It began rising like it did for the single's matches, and the stage lights began to descend from far above. The panelling connecting the seats with the center platform began to retract as well, revealing the dark abyss deep within Amity Colosseum.

Arty and Sepia watched in horror as they rose, their plan ruined.

Timbre stayed motionless.

" _ **RUN!"**_ Roland threw a grenade down between him and Gavin. It instantly exploded into a black cloud of ink. He turned and pushed Timbre towards Arty and Sepia, " _ **Don't let her out of your sight!"**_ he clenched his fist, condensing the ink around Gavin, " _ **GO! NOW!"**_

"What?!" Arty yelled as he and Sepia stood with Timbre, "Roland?! What are you doing?!"

" _ **I won't be far behind!"**_ Roland struggled to keep the ink around Gavin. It was getting more difficult with each wipe he made over his eyes, " _Just. Go."_

Arty snatched a vial of Dust paintballs from his belt and handed two to each of his teammates and kept two for himself. It was a tried and true method at this point, "Roland… please tell me you know what you're doing."

Roland snatched his paintballs, "I do."

Arty, Timbre, and Sepia threw the white Air Dust paintballs on the ground and stomped on them. With the new boost, they were able to safely make it to the seats without falling into whatever lay beneath. With them out of the ring, it'd make evacuating much easier. They just hoped Roland kept his word.

The inky hold on Gavin fell away, forming a puddle around him. He stomped his foot against the platform, "You stupid… little…" he looked back up, his eyes narrowing on the last living person left with him on the platform, "What… you're not gonna run away with your team…? Weren't you paying attention? Timbre's the only one that isn't expendable."

"You would chase after all of us," Roland raised his blade. His heart thudded in his ears. Every passing second made him ache, "I can't let you get them. Timbre's got more value than the rest of us for whatever reason… Arty needs to lead them… and Sepia's going to be the best for searching for survivors, and no way am I leading you into that crowd of innocent people trying to get away from you monsters. Me..? I can only fight…" he threw his two paintballs over his shoulder and off the platform, "Arty isn't willing to kill you, Gavin, but I am."

"Look at you. So noble," Gavin chuckled, "Then let's get this over with quick so I can get to the useful ones."

.

 _We left him?! How could we do that?!_

 _Shut up, he said he'd be right behind us._

 _Yeah, so? What if he-_

 _Don't. Even. Me._

 _Things are crazy. There's no telling how much worse they're gonna get._

 _Shut up!_

Arty shook his head to get himself back into the present. He had Timbre by the hand, running along with Sepia through the outer docking platform leading out to open air. He could see fires and large black shapes running and flying amok across the cityscape leading to the ocean.

The three of them fell back as a giant shape flew right in front of them. Looking out, a giant Nevermore soared off down the hill.

"Grimm… there are Grimm on the island… _Normal_ Grimm... How is that even possible?!" A familiar voice shouted in panic nearby.

Arty snapped his head over and saw a girl with dull green hair staring off to the chaos and destruction below, "Curie?!" he led Sepia and Timbre towards her.

"Arty?!" she ran to him, throwing her arms around him, "Oh my god… When I saw Ray get… and your mentor came out… his bow… I thought you were-"

"No. I'm okay. We're all okay…" he realized that that was a lie. Right now, nobody was okay, "We're alive." he looked through the crowd shoving and rushing for the emergency airships to evacuate, "But you're not safe here. None of us are," he looked into her eyes as he tried to bluntly state the truth, "You're on their list, just like we are. I don't know why or what they have planned for you, but I won't let them touch you, you hear me?"

Curie looked surprised. Arty was taking action, something she'd never thought she'd see again after the Maelstrom attack. She nodded, "The airships are all crowded. We won't get out of here in time before more of them show up… I don't even know who we can trust anymore… The theory about the infiltrators… it was true. If that upperclassman from your school is one of them, there's no telling who else is with him," she looked off to the city below, sadness and anger flashing across her face, "My entire team just disappeared… I don't even know what to think anymore…"

"Then stop thinking and _let's get out of here_ ," he held out the half-empty vial of Air Dust paintballs, "This should be enough to get us down. Maybe we could find some teachers… or the military… or a boat or something."

' _No!'_ Sepia threw her fists down at her sides, then shook her hands to stop them from shaking. She couldn't get the image of Ray out of her head, but she needed to focus. Gavin was one of the Grimm Brotherhood's operatives. Her and her friends were in danger. Roland was still back in the arena with Gavin on his own, ' _The people out here are safe, and we are too for the moment! Arty, you can take care of Timbre. I'm going back in to help Roland. I am not getting out of here unless he's at my side.'_

"Sepia…" Timbre grabbed her arm, but stopped, not knowing what to say next. After all, Roland was her friend, too.

Sepia shoved her away, ' _Don't try and stop me! If it was Turf back there, then you'd run off without saying anything to begin with! He'll die in there without backup!'_ she drew her guns. Every ounce of fear in her brain seemed to shout out at once, but it was swept away instantly. She wasn't leaving him.

"Sepia!" Arty grabbed her shoulder and held the Dust paintballs up for her to see, "We. Have. To. Leave. You have to have faith that he'll be okay. It's too dangerous for us up here."

She shook her head quickly. She couldn't have that kind of faith when she could still fire her own guns.

"He stayed behind, didn't he?!" shouted someone from within the crowd. Her ember covered hands tapped people on the arms to get them to move out of the way as she approached. The Fire Dust infused into her burnt flamenco dress glowed with each quick step, the center of the flower in her hair breathing with the same hot light. Cayenne waved them down as she rushed towards them, "You let that idiot stay in there, didn't you, Arty?!"

"Cayenne!" a boy ran behind her. He, Epazote, adjusted his glasses once he reached her. After patting out the ember that caught the seam of his hiking backpack's strap, he put a hand on her shoulder, "I told you that he's…" he looked around, "He's still back there?!"

"He didn't exactly give us a choice!" Arty shouted back, "He-he-he caught Gavin up in an ink glob and told us to run!"

A flame erupted across Cayenne's fingertips. She jabbed towards Arty's face with her burning index finger. It was obvious she wanted to start arguing with him, but she decided it wouldn't get them anywhere. She looked back to the entryway to the arena, then to Sepia. It didn't take an expert to know what she was wanting to do with her guns already drawn, "Seps, I'm going with you. With you on that list, there's no way you can go alone."

Epazote started to pull off his backpack to retrieve his weapon, "Okay, then I'll-"

"No you will not." Cayenne put a hand over his, then looked to Arty, Timbre, and Curie, "You three make sure he doesn't come after us. Got it?"

"Cayenne, Roland's my friend to-"

" _Do as she says and keep with us, Epazote,"_ Timbre forced each word to flow out of her mouth. She shut her eyes to focus on getting the maximum use out of Siren's Song, " _Please stay with us. Think about how she would feel if you were lost in all of this. You need to focus on keeping yourself safe."_

Epazote blinked a few times as tears welled up. If anything happened to him here, then Cayenne would be completely heartbroken. He couldn't get taken for her sake. Hesitantly, he agreed, "Fine. Don't do anything too stupid, though. Got it? Get him and get out."

Cayenne drew the weapon resting at her side. Her hammer extended parallel to her arm, "Understood," she looked to the others, "You _will_ keep him safe."

Arty nodded, "We will. If we can find someone to help us, we'll make sure to send help and make sure _anyone_ that that psycho named doesn't leave this island with them. We've been able to fend them off when they've tried to take us before, we can do it again. I don't care how big their list gets, I refuse to let them win." For whatever reason, Arty's panic and loud internal screaming was beginning to die down. All he had now was a will to keep people safe and fight back against the Grimm Brotherhood and any Creature of Grimm that threatened that goal, "You guys be careful… If Gavin's one of them…"

"Don't go anywhere with anyone you wouldn't trust with your lives…" Timbre said quietly as she watched Grimm flying above the island.

"Or…" Curie bit her lip. She couldn't stop thinking about how her whole team up and disappeared in the chaos, "Unless you've known them for years or they're on that list, don't trust them. You're better off cautious than you are dead or taken."

"Understood," Cayenne began pushing through the crowd with her hammer with Sepia at her heels, "You four be careful! We'll bring Roland back in one piece!"

Sepia looked back at the others, zeroing in on Arty and Timbre. Part of her wished that they would follow them. How could they just be fine with leaving their teammates like this? How could they be okay with running? They weren't Huntsmen or Huntresses yet, though, and then again, neither was she. None of them could be asked to run headlong into danger, and especially not while their names were on that list.

"Hey," Cayenne slid back beside Sepia as they passed through the empty archway leading to the ring of concession stands, "You can head back if you want to. I'm not on their list, but you are."

Sepia shook her head. Even with the growing doubt, she was not going to just leave him. She acted as a Huntress in the Maelstrom attack, and she would do the same here.

"Good…" Cayenne feigned a smile, "I'd hate to go at this alone. I guess that makes me a scaredy-cat," she looked around. If she had gathered anything about the Grimm Brotherhood, then it was that they always seemed to have eyes on everything and everyone. After hearing about what Oro knew through all of Team ARTS, she made it a point to stay on her toes, "Can you give us some eyes around this place? We should take the corridors and get in through the entrances past the locker rooms. Gavin won't see us from up on the platform if we come in from lower."

 _Got it._ Sepia shut her eyes.

.

Arty couldn't believe his team was breaking up further, but now he had others under his watch. He began passing out paintballs, "Okay, Epazote, I know you've never done this, but I need you to listen. Put these on the ground, jump on them and get ready to keep your feet aimed _at the ground_ as we go down."

"I understand," Epazote rolled the paintballs in his hand. He looked around at the massive crowd of people trying to evacuate onto the airships. They were in danger just as much as he and the others were, "But… what if Grimm decide to get up here and-"

Timbre put her hand on his shoulder, "There are tons of Huntsman here. They can handle the Grimm," she pointed down off the edge of Amity so that Epazote would see the flashes of gunshots and pops of Dust, "They have people who can deal with that, but the Grimm Brotherhood knows that. There's enough Grimm to keep the soldiers and Huntsmen busy, but…"

"Not enough to keep us safe. Got it…" Epazote nodded and threw down his paintballs, "So we get down and just… run?"

Arty stood at the edge and looked down, "Do you have a better idea? Maelstrom called all four of us out. I don't think Amity's exactly the safest place for us right now. Up here, we're cornered," he looked to Curie. He was expecting her to start breaking down, unable to deal with her fear of heights even when her life was in danger. He was surprised when she snatched two paintballs from him and threw them on the ground.

"Then what are we waiting for? Let's get out of here and get help," she said flatly, "The longer we're up here, the higher the chance of one of more of those masked freaks showing up to grab us."

Arty was surprised with how well she was dealing with not only the calamity around them, but also her ability to push away the phobia she'd had since they were kids. He took two paintballs and threw them on the ground before handing the vial off to Timbre, "You ready?"

Timbre threw down a pair of paintballs and passed the vial back, "I'm as ready as I can be…" she hesitantly looked to Arty. Seeing him keep such a level head was making it easier to focus on just getting out. After this night, Remnant wasn't going to be the same, and she feared that she wouldn't be either, "I… I won't panic and veer off course, so I'm ready enough."

"Then let's get going," Arty stepped back away from his paintballs, the other three followed suit, "Three… two... one!" They all jumped, the Dust activated beneath their feet and launched them into the night air above the city. It would've been beautiful if Vytal wasn't being destroyed hundreds of feet beneath them.

It took a moment, but Epazote got a hang on keeping his feet level. He leaned forwards to keep pace with Arty. He looked around for somewhere that was free of Grimm. They headed south towards the Valean quadrant, but the black and white blobs of Grimm littering the streets could even be seen from a distance. Griffons, Echos, Nevermores, and Lancers flew all around them, but it seemed that staying as calm as possible was keeping the creatures from noticing them.

"Just stay calm and keep your feet pointed down!" Arty gripped Curie's hand tightly. "We're doing good!"

"Yeah… yeah… we're doing-" Curie shrieked as a giant Nevermore came shooting up from below them, a wing nearly knocking them from the sky.

"It's coming back around!" Epazote shouted as the bird looped back, now heading straight for them.

"Stay calm! Stay calm!" Arty pulled Palette up and aimed for the Nevermore. The large bird Grimm opened its mouth and shrieked. They were still well above the ground. Even if the Grimm didn't kill them, gravity would finish them off for it.

"Arty!" Timbre yelled, trying to keep her cool and not tilt her feet too far in either direction. While her brain told her to run, she knew she couldn't while she was this high up.

A yellow paintball shot from the barrel, hitting the giant black bird right between its two sets of eyes. It twitched and spazzed about as electricity coursed through its body. It's smoking body fell from the sky, but it didn't fade.

"I might have just ticked it off, but it shouldn't bother us anymore," Arty looked to his group to make sure they were not only all in one piece, but still with him and not falling to their deaths, "You all good?"

"Yeah, _I'm fine…"_ Timbre felt the effects of her Semblance start to kick in to keep her from completely panicking. She needed to be ready for anything that might make a pass at them again, "We need to land quickly! Is there any place that isn't covered in Grimm?"

"There!" Epazote pointed out to an empty rooftop of an apartment building. It was tucked between two buildings on either side, each taller than the apartments. It would provide decent cover if they could get to it. Grimm from below wouldn't see them, and Grimm from above would likely pass it by. The building itself was four stories, but all it would take to get down was a little Dust.

Arty agreed with Epazote, "Sounds good! Everyone, lean!"

Timbre leaned forwards, her hands covering her chest to remind herself to keep under control. Once they finally touched down on the flat concrete roof of the apartment complex. She held out a hand to Curie to keep her from having a crash landing. They couldn't afford to be too scared. If they attracted the Grimm below, then they would be as good as dead.

While Arty, Timbre, and Curie all landed easily, Epazote, wasn't so lucky.

He stumbled forwards, then slid to a stop on his knees just inches from the edge of the roof. His glasses flew off of his face, tumbling down into the dozens of Grimm below, "C-Crap…" he scrambled back away to keep those dozens of pairs of molten eyes from locking onto him, "That's just great…"

Arty tugged him by the back of his sweatshirt away from the ledge, "Hey, at least you're alive…" he winced as a few Beowolves whipped around upon hearing Epazote's glasses hit the ground before slowly looking back up to them, "Sorry about your glasses. I forgot you've never done that before… Everyone usually has trouble their first ti-"

"Umber, can we discuss this _after_ we get off of this roof?" Curie snapped as she darted from edge to edge before finally throwing her arms up in defeat, "Which I don't see how we're going to do anytime soon unless you and Timbre take out _all_ those Grimm."

Arty began counting up his stock, "I'm low… after my attack against SPCE, I used up most of my paint… and since Timbre and Sepia went on to the next round, I never bothered to make more…"

"Well…" Epazote slipped off his backpack. Archimalter sat snugly inside. He yanked it out and threw his backpack back on, "I've got my weapon. All of Team SPCE ran to get theirs when Ray…" he shook away the gorey thought, "Saffron insisted that her and Pepper use their Semblances to herd civilians into the airships, and she told Cayenne to get me out of here since I was on the list… but that doesn't mean that I can't fight those things off."

Curie threw up her arms again, "So I'm the only one that doesn't have my weapon… great," she crossed her arms, as if trying to comfort herself, "I panicked after the rest of my team vanished… I'm so _stupid!_ " she stomped her foot in frustration.

"Hey, we're good," Arty looked to the others for help, "We'll get through this. Maybe we can jump rooftops and try to get as close to the shore as possible."

Timbre looked back up at the sky. She tried to count just how many Grimm there were, but she lost count after 30, and that was only a fraction of a fraction of the Grimm in the skies above. How the Grimm Brotherhood got this many Grimm onto Vytal was anyone's guess. She had never seen so many in one place, and she feared that no one else alive had either.

"There's no way that we'll get there in one piece, Arty…" her heart sank in her chest. It all just seemed hopeless. Ray, the strongest student in all of Remnant, was dead, and he was killed without even a hint of effort. Everything they thought they knew about the Grimm Brotherhood changed in an instant. They weren't just putting a kingdom under their thumb with this attack. They were letting the entire world know that there was nothing and no one that could stand in their way, "We can't beat this. We can't take them. It's hopeless… They have the manpower to do this… and they have the things that we are trained to kill on their side… We. Can't. Win."

"Stop saying that!" Curie shouted back, "This isn't the time to give up!" she began looking around for a solution, "Maybe… maybe you can get yourself somewhere else and try to attract some Huntsmen."

"No. Timbre's right about one thing. There's too many Grimm for a maneuver like that…" Arty mumbled as he looked for a solution as well, "And we can't call out for help… we'd either attract the Grimm or worse, the Grimm Brotherhood…"

"They'll never clear out these Grimm in time, Arty," Timbre's shoulders slumped as she stared off down the street, "If we stay, then we die. If we go, then we die or worse…"

"If we act like it's hopeless, then we'll actively attract Grimm…" Epazote looked around the rooftop. There wasn't a door anywhere. All that was on top of the complex was a bunch of air conditioning units, "Wait a second… There isn't a stairwell leading up here, so the rooftop access is probably on the other side… but we can't just go into the alley and run… so..." he jogged over to the back side of the building where it dropped off into an alleyway, "Fire escape. We can get in through a window and barricade ourselves in! If we need to run, then we'll have plenty of space to get away with all the hallways inside! I mean, it _is_ an apartment complex!"

"Way to go, Epazote!" Arty ran over and pat him on the back before making the descent down the old metal stairs.

Curie was next, "You read that in a book while on an architecture binge or something?"

"Safety codes…" Epazote followed close behind, "And it was an article on the web. After the bombing on Mom's temporary office, we got in a debate about if the building was up to code… and she told me that I was wrong and that it was… she was right…"

While the others tried to keep their spirits up, Timbre just couldn't find the hope to join in. Every second that passed just brought her down more as the realization of what was going on continued to sink in.

Arty considered leading them all the way down to ground level and running the opposite direction through the alley, but as he saw dark shapes rushing beneath them, he reconsidered and decided to stick to Epazote's original plan. They came to a window. Looking in, he couldn't see anyone inside, hopefully meaning that the apartment on the other side was empty. He shifted Palette and used its handle to smash the glass.

Bronze shifted around Epazote's arm. What was left was a cannon mounted to his right arm with a green haze curling up from the end. He aimed it out over the railing, "I've got your backs. Go ahead and get inside."

Arty, Curie, and Timbre climbed through the broken window.

Epazote stepped back into the deserted bedroom of an unlucky resident. Judging by the minimal decor, twin sized bed, and faint smell of body odor, it seemed to be a teen's room. He looked back to the broken window, "Arty, do you have enough Ice Dust to…"

"Yeah," Looking at the mostly-empty vial of deep blue paintballs, Arty winced, "but I'm seriously running low on anything I'd need in a fight." Using half of what was left, he made a makeshift barrier across the window. With it completely sealed with ice, he closed the door behind them as they all entered the living room.

The room was cozy, decorated with a few vases and paintings. A plush green sofa sat in front of an eerily still holoscreen. The stark white symbol of the Grimm Brotherhood took up the center of the screen as if to mock them.

Timbre shuddered at the mark, "We…" she looked to the front door of the apartment behind the couch, "We should get to the first floor and try to find a storm shelter or something. Even if the Grimm get in, we can survive long enough…"

Before anyone could give their opinions on her suggestion, the holo screen flared to life.

"I apologize for the repeated announcements," Commander Maelstrom flashed onto the screen. She tapped away at the scroll resting across her forearm, "As it seems that none of the students that I called for have given themselves up, I would like to give the go ahead to any and all agents to incapacitate the targets. It will be the least painful option to give yourselves up to any operative that you see. Those who have infiltrated teams, you have full permission to use that to your advantage now. There is no need to hide anymore."

Silence fell between Arty, Timbre, Epazote, and Curie. They all looked at each other for a moment. The unseen doubt between them was boiling up. No one moved a muscle.

Right as it seemed they were all about to dart away from one another, Arty spoke up, "I trust all of you. Curie, I've known you since we were seven. Timbre, nothing would _ever_ make me doubt a member of my team. Epazote…" He realized his reasoning was weak for the Mistrali, but he found something to grasp on to, "You've been friends with Roland for years, right? Then I have no doubt in you either… besides… we're all on their list, would they really put their own operatives on it just to throw people off? I mean… they have all of _Vytal_ under them now… what would the point even be now?"

"Right…" Timbre kept a tight grip on her arm. She couldn't afford to doubt them right now. Even if both Epazote and Curie were in the Grimm Brotherhood, her and Arty could run if they needed to. "We should get moving… We can't let them find us…"

Curie reached for the door, "Then let's go with your plan and get to a storm-"

Four gashes splintered out from the door, spraying the occupants with bits of wood and chips of white paint. The bone claws of a Beowolf sawed back from the holes. It lowered its head to stare inside with the empty glowing eyes set deep inside its skeletal face. The beast snarled, then made another set of gashes into the door. Enough wood fell away for it to push its head through and snap at the four of them.

Heavy paws thudded down the hall from both directions. Growls, barks, and screeches filled the room as the Creatures of Grimm piled up at the door. The hinges buckled. The doorknob popped. The door finally exploded into splinters.


	72. V3Ch19: Event Horizon

"What in Remnant are you guys watching?" Khimera asked to her bodyguards in the living room as she spread jelly over the second slice of bread on her plate. The sounds of screaming and a deep distorted voice echoed from the holoscreen, "You can watch your horror movie later. Change it back to the closing ceremony! Believe it or not, I want to hear what my meathead brother has to say."

All three of them sat frozen on the couch. Only Fenix turned his head to Khimera, but didn't take his eyes off the screen for even a moment, "Khi… you… you should go to your room."

"What?" she snickered. Even though she was stuck in the hotel against her will, it had been nice to just relax for the whole day. The opportunity to do so rarely came around, "What's wrong-"

"Just go to ya room, lass," Scott ran his hands back through his hair. He couldn't believe what he had just witnessed. After three years undercover, Team RYAL's mission had failed.

"You guys are acting weirder than usual…" she stepped over behind the couch. She rested her hands on the backrest and leaned down. On the screen ahead, she saw that they hadn't been watching a horror movie and that the closing ceremony was still being broadcast.

Thousands of people flooded out of the stadium seating. A scream pierced through the speakers. The camera zeroed in on the tragedy that had just unfolded, as if every viewer across Remnant needed to see the grisly scene.

Ray's body laid face down on the tiles in a pool of red and shattered glass. He was completely unrecognizable from the neck up.

She recoiled in horror, unable to regain control of her legs as she fell back against the wall behind her. Her face went ghostly pale. Her clammy hands pressed against the sides of her head. The world around her seemed to blur as a sob slammed out from her lungs. Red, yellow, and blue flashed across her body. Chaos filled her mind. Moods spun around inside her head like a typhoon of emotion. She fell to her knees, hurling up everything from the day so far. A trail of spit still hung from her mouth as she fell back against the wall, her head resting loosely to the side.

Her brother was gone. He was completely gone. She'd never see him again. She'd never get to spend summers with him again. Despite their apparent inability to get along, he was her brother. He was her family, and he had been murdered.

"R-R-Ray…" she shook as she drew her knees in close. Yellow flashed dully into her eyes, "This… this isn't real… i-i-it can't b-b-be… they… the-the-the l-l-list...~!"

"Hey… Hey…" Fenix knelt down next to her and cradled her in his arms as she sobbed. Her hand gripped tightly on the sleeve of his shirt. He looked to his teammates, "Try to get ahold of the General or Onyx."

Scott and Navajo pulled out their scrolls, but before either could dial, Navajo's began to ring.

"Speak of the devil…" he lifted the scroll to his ear, "General Léon?... Lieutenant General Kauri… what the _hell_ is going on down there?!... Yeah… I know, we saw the list… Okay, sir… okay… I understand," he closed his scroll and shoved it into his pocket, "We don't know how they did it, but the Grimm Brotherhood apparently has info on all of us… and they know she's here…"

"We need ta get 'er out of here then!" Scott shouted as he reached down to grab Khimera by the arm.

Khimera flashed blue, " _Don't touch me!_ " she shouted before shifting quickly between her other personalities.

Scott looked to Fenix for advice.

"We can't just run her out there… If we hurry to the docks, we can get her to one of the military's airships and get her away from Vytal. The island isn't safe."

"What about the others?" Scott motioned to the screen, the wheel now taking up most of the space on it. "That was a big list, and Onyx's pet team was on it. Not to mention you, Flare. If they're lookin' for one o' _us_ , that's not a good sign."

Navajo grabbed Scott's shoulder, "They got their own people watching out for them. She…" he pointed to Khimera, "is _our_ priority," Navajo gestured to Fenix, "We should go out and draw away any operatives they've got waiting outside for us. While we keep them busy, Scott can get Khimera down to the docks. His whole deal with water will be a bit more help there than either of us."

"No…" Khimera forced herself to think rationally. She refused to put other's lives at risk just to preserve herself, "No, I am not running away… My mother is still out there, and so are my friends. I am not running from this, and none of you can stop me." she slowly stood, her eyes back to bronze. She tried to relieve the shaking in her hands by clenching her fists, "If my brother is gone… then I can't stand idly by while my family, friends, and the whole of Remnant are being attacked."

Fenix waited for his team to give input.

"Then we stick to the plan, only Scott takes you inland back towards the Perch. From there you should be able to find your mom and maybe Team ARTS," Navajo explained, "Fenix and I give you cover while you make a run for it, _then_ we all get to the airship and get out of this place before the Grimm and the Grimm Brotherhood level it."

"I mean… if she's the only one left to be Pride, then she's got to fight," Scott nodded once, "She's got a right to help if that's what she's feelin' she's called to do. Prioritize getting to the airships with the lass with a detour to the Perch, like ya say, and do what we can for civilians and the like on the way."

"Okay… sounds like a plan…" Fenix grabbed Khimera's hands and pushed for her to look at him. He felt a slight headache coming on as he watched the swirling colors in her irises, but he needed to be convincing if they were going to get anything done, "You stay with him, you got it? No running off on your own like in Vale."

"How about you go with me instead? You're the one here that I actually trust to not knock me out and take me to the airship. Please," Khimera glared back at him. Sure, he was her bodyguard, but hopefully their relationship would serve as leverage, "I feel safer with you, Fenix."

Fenix again looked to Navajo to reason. It was his plan after all.

"Scott's the best at a close-range. If anyone gets a hold of you he'd be the best at getting them off," he pointed to the Dust-filled apparatus on his arms, "My Semblance, even with Dust, can only do so much before I get worn out, and Fenix is, let's be honest, hopeless unless he's far away from the enemy. If you're going to be anywhere near water, Scott's your best bet at being safe, Khim. And guess what? In case you forgot, we're on an _island_ , where we're _always_ near water."

"I. Don't. Care. Navajo. My. Mother. Is. Out. There." Khimera snarled back at him. She already lost her brother this night, and she wasn't losing her mother too, "I work best with Fenix. If we get separated, then I will still be fine. I can handle myself."

"He makes a good point, Khim," Fenix said bluntly, but as reassuringly as he could under the circumstances, "We're your guards. Our job is to keep you safe, not comfortable. With things the way they are right now, you going with Scott is the best plan."

"Bu-"

A Nevermore's shivering caw shook the building, the beating of its wings as it passed rattling the windows. Streaks of red zipped by outside. Black, white, and red littered the skies and streets.

"No time," Navajo opened the door into the hall, "They're leading Grimm here. We've got to get you out of here before the ones leading them arrive."

.

"It's funny," Gavin batted away the inky paper blade, "You really are like an animal backed into a corner aren't you? When you can't run and are about to be taken, you think the only options left are kill or be killed," he cracked Roland across the head with his staff, "It's honestly pretty pathetic, and _exactly_ what I expected from you, Roland."

Roland held Writer's Block across his face to deflect a second blow while he recovered from the first. He slid his foot back, then lunged forward. His blade slashed against one of the metal plates on Gavin's forearm, "Because those _are_ my only options!" he barked as he went in for another slash, " _I'll kill you before you monsters can kill anyone else!"_

Gavin sneered at the remark, "You heard the lady. We didn't _want_ anyone to die tonight, but if anyone does-!" he slammed his forearm into Roland, his armor all but ignoring the paper weapon, "then that's just collateral… or, rather, the price _you_ and _everyone else on that list pays_ for not coming quietly."

"My mother raised a Huntsman… not a coward…" Roland coughed as he took a step back. It didn't matter whether or not he was going to have to pay any price. All that mattered was that keeping Gavin distracted or killing him meant that his team had one less person to deal with, "I've already lost everything that matters, so losing anything else is nothing to me. I can pay any price that I have to…"

Gavin looked up upon seeing some movement in one of the corridors leading into the stands. A sinister grin spread across his face, "Well… surprise, surprise… So I'm guessing Sequins is just nothing but dead weight, then?"

Roland stepped back to where he could look to what Gavin was looking at without turning his back to him. Just over the rim of the floating arena was the flaming dancer of Mistral, and Vacuo's best indie director. Cayenne and Sepia were already running towards the arena, but both slid to a stop.

"You know, I always did kind of like her. She's pretty cute," The laser string of Gavin's bow appeared. Holding a hand over the sparking dark line, a black hole formed on its center. He slowly lifted it up and stretched it back, aiming it towards the two girls. He stopped once Sepia was in his sights. He chuckled, his mocking laugh rumbling across the platform, "It's funny how you all were so confident that your auras are strong enough to block my Semblance. Have you really learned _nothing_ from all the times you've fought us?" he twisted his hand sideways. The black hole projectile began to spark and rumble loudly as energy coursed through the bow, "I really wanted to bring you guys in in one piece, but after that little _stunt_ you pulled to help your stupid friends escape, I think a payment must be made. Maybe an arm… or maybe even a leg? That'd make it to where she can't run."

" _ **I WON'T LET YOU TOUCH HER!"**_ Roland shot forward with his blade raised. He slapped Gavin's bow to the side, sending the projectile into the empty stands. It expanded into a black orb much larger than any Roland had ever seen Gavin create. It stretched across five rows of seating, then collapsed into nothing to leave a crater in its place.

He slammed a fist into Gavin's side, stitching pain shooting up his arm from striking solid metal, then swung his blade at his gut. It connected, but Gavin didn't even flinch.

Gavin only smirked back, his face quickly disappearing as his Echo-like visor shot up to block Roland's fist, "So you _do_ have something to lose?" he shot his foot up, kicking Roland away, "Actually, judging from how much the little _mutt_ is shaking, I'd say he still has a _lot_ to lose," he nocked another arrow and raised it to aim where he had seen Sepia, but, to his disappointment, both she and the other girl were gone, "Aw… what a shame. Oh well. If she shows up again, I'll be sure to let go of the arrow a _lot sooner_ ," he turned and aimed at Roland, letting the projectile fly towards the Faunus.

Roland ducked to the side. After already taking a few hits from Gavin, his aura was struggling to protect him. He couldn't afford to be struck by one of Gavin's black holes. Even at half strength, they could have downed him instantly.

"What the hell do you even want with us, anyway?!" he shouted as he closed the distance once more. He could avoid the black holes as long as he stayed up close and personal. His paper blade locked against Gavin's staff.

" _How many times are you going to ask that?!_ " Gavin groaned, exasperated, "I can't tell what's giving me a bigger headache, trying to keep your tail in place or listening to your incessant prying!" he pushed Roland back and fired another arrow, followed quickly by a string of others, "If you want to know so bad, why don't you just come with me instead of _begging_ me to hurt you?!" he shouted as he continued firing arrows, forcing Roland to run in a wide ring around the edge of the platform.

Black pellets fell from Roland's right hand as he ran beside the edge. Ink blotches formed a narrow trail just below his tail, "I think it's gonna be really easy to pry out whatever I need while I'm _TEARING YOU APART!"_ he shouted. He back-stepped, narrowly avoiding a flying black hole, and slammed his feet down against two blotches of ink. Inkheart kicked into overdrive to send him shooting towards Gavin.

Roland's full weight slammed into Gavin, throwing the towering man backwards. His bow staff stopped buzzing and clattered across the tiles.

Both of them were sent rolling, tumbling over one another until they came to a stop.

Gavin grunted as he pushed himself up to his knees, "Why you annoying little-"

A typewriter slammed against the side of his helmet. It came down again, causing a red error message to appear across the internal display. The aim assist was shot.

Roland shot to his feet and slammed the heel of his boot into Gavin's side, "What?! Does that hurt?! Does it, Gavin?! _**DOES IT?!"**_

Gavin threw his arm out, punching Roland hard in the knee and forcing him to fall to the ground. With Roland down, Gavin pinned him, his hands wrapped around his neck. He glared down at him through the hole left in his broken visor. Sparks shot out from the sides, showing just how damaged its systems were, "You little _bastard!_ "

Roland felt Gavin's grip tighten, the armored gauntlets like a cold vice against his skin.

"I was trying _so_ hard to not ding you up too much, but you're leaving me _very few options!_ "

Everything around Gavin's broken visor began to darken. Roland's vision began to tunnel as he struggled to break free, but his strength was fading. Sepia was going to get caught up in the middle of this. Arty was going to lose his teammates. Timbre would lose the life that she worked so hard for.

"I… I… hate…" he choked out, "I… hate… you…"

"Likewise, _rat_."

 _I'm not a rat…_ his mother's greatest gift to him slipped out from behind him. His tail slammed into Gavin's side like a bat. Every ounce of force that he could get out, he put behind the blow from his tail.

Gavin fell off of Roland and back onto the ground. He came to a stop near his staff. As he pushed to his feet, he rearmed himself, "I've always… _hated_ that stupid kangaroo tail of yours… Why a big successful trade magnate like Henry Wells fathered a _mistake_ like you, I'll never understand…"

"It's an otter tail, asshole…" Roland rubbed his throat as he stood, "and I got it from my mother. If you're going to throw out names that are supposed to define me, then at least use the one that actually does…" he readied his blade, "I don't know if you freaks ever fought CiCi Oscura, but I can tell you now that she taught me everything she knew… I'm not going down so easily."

Gavin's bow sparked to life again, "I never expected you to," As Roland charged him again, he raised his bow, drew a projectile back, twisted his hand to the side, and released.

The black hole ground across the left side of Roland's head, destroying what was left of his aura. Pain burned in a line across his left eye and ended just beside his ear. The projectile exploded in the seating behind him. His screams of pain echoed through the arena as he fell to the ground, his hands clenched over the side of his face.

" _ **AAAAAAAAAAAAHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHH!"**_ his hands covered the bleeding trench over where his left eye was. He crumpled on the tile, pawing in vain at the wound. Nothing. Just blood and bone were left. The world was black on the left side. Each writhing shake brought a new searing iron rod of pain into his face.

"I know what you're going to ask next…" Gavin stepped over to Roland, satisfied with the fact that Roland wasn't fighting back or running around for the time being, "Did I mean to do that?" he crouched down in front of Roland, pleased by the sight of him writhing in pain, "I'm still a _decent_ shot without my visor," he smirked, "Do with that what you will."

The scroll laid in to his gauntlet beeped as he held it close to his mouth, "This is Agent Echo. Calling for a rendezvous ship in the center of Amity Colosseum. Agents Sanguwalker, Geist, and Team TCSC ready for pickup as well. Roland Wells has been incapacitated. Sepia Hughes also confirmed to be on site."

A hollow, echoey and distorted voice came back through the communicator, "Understood Echo. Rendezvous ship on the way."

Despite the distortion, Roland recognized the voice. It was Lieutenant Hulud, and he was pretty sure she was on her way there.

He slowly looked up at Gavin with his only seething eye, "I… I'm not… done…"

.

"Did he _seriously_ just shoot the Wells guy's eye out?" Cyan glanced over to Tox, "Echo trying to do our job for us or somethin'?" she nonchalantly blew a bubble until it popped. Even with the entire island burning and being attacked by the Grimm Brotherhood, she was bored out of her mind.

Tox paced across the top rim of Amity Colosseum with his sledgehammer twirling at his side. The blood across it had already dried, and flaked off with each turn. He looked out across the scene before them. Fires had started. Grimm were wreaking havoc. People screamed for their lives, and some of those fizzled out here and there, "Looks like it. If only there weren't two others that could fit the bill for that kid's position… what a pain."

"Well," Cobalt unsheathed his blade and began twirling it along with Tox, "We'll deal with them soon enough, right? Not like we're the only three out to kill them."

"To kill them…?" Scorpio backed up from the railing that he was leaning on. He looked at the other three incredulously, "Is that what this has been about this whole time? Killing them? We _need_ them."

"Gee, aren't you just friggin _dense?!_ " Cyan cackled, "I'm surprised you hadn't already caught on there, Scorp! Not like you, I don't know, watched that Léon guy get his head crushed by a big hammer or anything."

"I can't let you idiots do that…" he raised up his fists so that the hooks on the end were ready to strike. An oily black substance dripped from the points, "I thought you traitors were just trying to splinter off, but this is too much. Keeping tabs on you, I can deal with. Killing our targets, I can't."

"Oh? Oh, you thought we were just going to do the _same thing_ as you?! What a joke, dude!" Tox burst out with a hollow fit of laughter, "It's not the world that's the problem. It's the Virtues. What, you thought I just killed Ray because Khimera would make an easier Virtue of Pride to control?! That. Is. Hilarious…" his sledgehammer stopped twirling, "If she had been up there instead of him, she'd be the one still lying in that arena. See, the _Virtues_ are the problem in the world. Without them, a calamity can't happen! If they only appear during one, then what do you think happens if they don't exist?!"

"Yeah, but _we're_ that calamity, not them! We're only using them as a means to gain _total control_ over Grimm! What part of that goes _against_ what you want?" Scorpio was frantic. He saw the Azure twins split, each taking to one of his sides with their weapons drawn, "Don't you want to take over the world that wronged you?! Isn't that why you joined us in the first place?!"

"Oh, that _is_ why I joined, but this is just an attack. This isn't a conquest… but that's what those canisters are for, huh?" Tox took a single step towards him, "Like that blue one that Maelstrom entrusted you with…"

Scorpio's right hand flew to his side pocket, "That's none of your concern! _I_ was entrusted with it because we're closest to a prime candidate for this Guardian Geist! _You three_ aren't getting anywhere _near it!_ " he began to step backwards, "I'm going to report all of you as traitors… I'm sure Commander Maelstrom won't hesitate to send that freak Camolurker after you. You'll all be dead before you realize I've made the call."

"Oohhh… you see, that's the thing about _plans_ , Scorp," Cyan strode closer to him.

Cobalt's hand flipped quickly into Scorpio's pocket, pulling out the blue soda can-sized canister from within, "They don't always, you know, work."

"Especially if they never have a chance to get off the…" Cyan gave a quick glance over the railing and giggled, "ground."

"Look at that, Scorpio…" Tox grinned under his mask. He inched closer to his 'captain' until Scorpio stood between him and the railing, "What, you too scared to even raise those poison stingers against me? Come on. If you have the heart to kill me, then I'm giving you the opportunity, or are you just as much of a wuss as Venice…?"

Scorpio stood and could only square off with Tox, but it wasn't very effective given that he was staring into opaque glass lenses. He didn't have much of a chance, but he wasn't going down like this. He had to talk to Lieutenant Hulud. The rendezvous ship had to be close.

The blades on Scorpio's cuffs flipped out as he went to slice Tox across the torso.

"Too slow," Tox slammed his hammer into Scorpio's gut. The railing snapped under the force, sending Scorpio tumbling over the edge.

Try as he might, Scorpio couldn't get a grip on the sheer face of the Colosseum. In a last ditch effort he shot out both of his blades. Luckily for him, they dug into the metal. The chains went taut as he hung off the side, flocks of flying Grimm filling the air between him and Vytal hundreds of feet further down, "You damn _traitors!_ You really think you'll get away with this?!" he began reeling in the chain, but the winches inside his cuffs began clunking loudly, followed by dark clouds of smoke. He couldn't climb back up.

Cyan smiled as she smacked her gum loudly, "Funny how Koloss's machinery can be glopped up and ruined with just a little gum," she blew a bubble until it popped, "I'd say you owe me a pack, but I don't think I'll be able to hold you to that much longer."

"Nice one, sis," Cobalt ran a finger across the edge of his blade. He could feel his aura separating from the little slice. It was perfectly sharpened for just this occasion, "I'd say I was sorry, Scorp, but…" he swiped the blade to send a thin wave of force slicing through the air. A single link on each chain shattered, "I'm not."

Scorpio felt gravity take him as the gold links scattered above him. The last thing he saw before avian Grimm took notice of him was the three traitors watching him from the length of broken railing.

"Poor Scorpio…" Tox snickered as he walked beside the railing, "Looks like we'll have to write a report to Hulud about his unfortunate disappearance. It seems that his Grimm control device malfunctioned, and he had an accidental fall… Care to let her know about that, Cyan?"

The wind began to pick up as something large began moving up from below them. The metallic hull of an Atlesian airship rose up in front of them. On the side, the eight-spoked wheel was painted in dark black.

"Why not tell the hag in person?" Cobalt snickered.

"Fair enough…" Tox snatched the blue canister from Cobalt and tucked it away into his coat. He sighed up to the airship, "Let's just hope that Venice and Gnile don't take too much longer."

"Shouldn't we throw them off Amity, too, though?" Cyan giggled as she skipped along towards the rendezvous ship. Blue sparks filled the air behind her heels.

"They'll be useful later. Just have a little patience for once. No need to rush this along. It'll all come together either way," Tox laughed, "That is, if they survive tonight."

"You sound like you have something in mind!" Cobalt shouted over the wind, "Can't wait to see what it is!"

.

Black ink curled up from an ink grenade. It pasted itself across the wound across Roland's face with a slight red tint across it. Stinging pain shot through the destroyed socket that once held his left eye, but the pressure stopped the bleeding. He slowly stood with blood and ink dripping down the left side of his face and down his neck, "You're broadcasting this to all of Remnant, aren't you…?"

"The parts we want everyone to see, yeah." Gavin waved up at the screens. He appeared on each one, seemingly waving back to himself. "A foolish Faunus bleeding out because he got too in over his head is definitely one of those parts."

A trembling hand adjusted the hat on Roland's head. The pain was greater than any he had felt before, but he couldn't sit by. He had to fight through it. If all of Remnant saw him stand up to a Grimm Brotherhood agent despite losing an eye, then maybe that could take those freaks down a notch, "Then it's going to make the Grimm Brotherhood look real bad when that foolish Faunus kills you with nothing more than paper and ink…" The blade on Writer's Block curved at the end like a hook, willed along by Roland's hate-filled mind.

"So _hopeful._ I have to give that to ya," Gavin spread out his arms, showing off the empty stands and the smoke billowing towards the sky above them, "Despite the world falling apart around you, you _still_ think there's a chance. It's adorable, really, but let me go ahead and _snuff it out for you_." he raised his bow again, "Maybe losing the _other_ eye will finally get it through your thick skull!"

"Hope…?" Roland clenched his fists. He jolted forwards, then slid down like a baseball player past Gavin. The black hole exploded harmlessly thirty feet away. The recoil going through Gavin's arm was just enough of a window for Roland to catch him by the elbow with the hook of the blade.

" _HOW'S THIS FOR HOPE?!"_ he slid back up onto his feet, and threw Writer's Block down. The paper blade held true to Gavin's arm, and sent him slamming down on his back in front of Roland.

Roland raised the blade. His breath didn't catch. His heart was hardly beating. He just threw his blade down, nothing but the intention of executing Gavin right then and there going through his mind.

Gavin raised his staff to block the blow, but Roland persisted. Despite the hook of the blade curving mere inches away from his nose, he began to laugh.

" _WHAT'S SO FUNNY, GAVIN?!"_ Roland slammed down the blade once more, but it only glanced off of the staff.

His laughter died down as he calmly explained, "Even if you hit me, I still have my aura. _Yours_ is gone!" he began pushing back, "And your stupid little paper-mache toys won't be much of a problem for me or any other agents that _decide to show up_."

"I don't need an aura to-" Roland slammed back against the tile on his bottom. He struggled to get up while holding his blade out to protect himself. He coughed and held his stomach. The quick kick to the gut from a metal boot actually managed to send a trickle of blood out of the corner of his mouth. His hold on the ink began to falter as the traces of aura keeping it active faded.

"As soon as I found out about you and your _mother's_ Semblances, you immediately reminded me of a friend of mine," Gavin kicked the puddle of ink, sending a light splatter up. "I always saw it as a cheap imitation."

"Sanguwalker…" Roland growled back, "She's next… then Trex… then Venice… then Oro…"

"Again… that's adorable, but really, Roland, it's time to give up."

"You monsters killed my mother… I am not giving up until every last one of you is dead…" he got a foot underneath him. He couldn't keep his blade active, but he could certainly still bash Gavin's brains in with a typewriter, "She didn't do anything to deserve what she got…"

Gavin threw his foot to the side, kicking Roland in the head, "Nobody deserves anything that bad, Roland. It's just the way this world works, isn't it? It wrongs you over and over, yet driven and dedicated people like you still fight to protect it… Huntsmen and Huntresses may be able to prevent _one_ disaster every so often, but what does that do in the long term?" he kicked him again, " _Nothing!_ Remnant, the Academies, the glory-hogging bastards they throw out into the world every year… they never did a damn thing to actually stop the loss… the pain. Under _our_ rule, the kingdoms and their people won't have to worry about all that. Lurida helped you guys figure everything out last semester. Grimm will _help_ us, not destroy us. We won't _need_ the Academies anymore. Nobody will _have_ to suffer unless they don't agree with order and safety. What part of that do you not get?"

The world spun around Roland. He struggled to focus on Gavin with his right eye. Maybe Gavin was right. Huntsmen and Huntresses offered no solution, but that didn't matter. It had nothing to do with glory, or stopping disasters from happening, or even protecting every single person on the planet. Never once did CiCi ever tell him to protect people, nor did she tell him to be a solution. She told him to do what he thought was right.

"My mother was a Huntress, but you probably already know that…" another kick clanged off of Writer's Block. He pushed himself up and swung it headlong into Gavin's hip, "So if you know so much about her, then you probably know that I think that everything you just told me is crap… because she was none of what you just said… She never cared about glory or praise. She cared about doing the right thing!"

Gavin quickly recovered quickly from the blow from Writer's Block, "So be it then. I gave you one last chance Roland, yet here you are. You're bloody, missing an eye, no aura, beaten, and alone," he began to raise his bow-staff, "You won't listen to reason? Fine. You've made it very clear that pain is the only language you speak," he lifted his weapon over his head, ready to just knock Roland out. Without any aura, there was nothing stopping him from finally taking Roland in. Lieutenant Koloss and Commander Maelstrom would be pleased with him.

.

Streaks of red, orange, yellow, green, blue, and violet came down around the arena. Each laser blade stabbed into a corner of the floating center platform. Chunks of glass littered the battlefield.

A red and white coat rippled as Carmen slammed down between Roland and Gavin. She twisted and slammed her shin into Gavin's side to send him sliding across the arena. In each hand was a laser blade, one black and one white.

"First you monsters kill one of my friend's children, and now you shoot out one of _my_ kid's eyes," she stood ready with her swords out to her sides.

Gavin chuckled. Normally, he'd be annoyed by the presence of a Huntress interrupting his mission, but with it being this particular one, he found it much more amusing, "Awww, but Professor Maple. I'm one of your kids too…" he narrowed his gaze towards her, pointing his staff towards her, "Remember?"

"Yes, I do, and it pains me to have to do this," she looked back at Roland for a moment before returning her eyes to Gavin, "Surrender, and I won't have to kill one of my students to protect another."

"So I _am_ still one of your kids then? Aw, Carmen, I'm touched."

Carmen drew a slow breath, "I can only take that as you won't be backing down," she twirled her swords, "Goodbye, Gavin."


	73. V3Ch20: Ninth Circle

Poetry was the only thing that she could use to begin to describe the scene before her. Lyrical phrases passed through her mind as her eyes passed over every swarming person fleeing Amity. O, thy flock hath lost that which bound them one. Hope a fleeting morsel which falls like unholy ash upon the souls ripped asunder underfoot. Thy heart tears in m'dst of all such chaos, all that rests on those unfit shoulders to be carried through the wicked night. Thy ships that sail past the heavens shall not bring forth safety, but bring ruin by the demons soaring above. All that is good comes crashing down, and only safety lies in the deeper pit of what to come.

Dante stood helpless behind her teammates in the archway that served as one of the many exits of Amity. Her mouth was frozen shut with the tingling feeling of dread suturing them together. The pit in her chest had collapsed, but no tears fell. All she could do was watch helplessly as Grimm made grabs at the civilians at the edge. The blood curdling cries that rang out every few seconds shook her, and she had no desire to find out why it had bit at her already shaken mind. She didn't need to know about each piling casualty.

"This isn't good… What are we gonna do? We can't get through all those people to get them out of here!" Eden gripped her antlers nervously. She kicked at the ground as she looked to Robin for an answer, "Don't you guys have any other ways out?"

While Robin looked composed, his mind was reeling, searching fruitlessly for an idea. He pulled the right sleeve of his coat back, revealing what looked like a regular wrist-watch. He held its face close to his mouth, "This is Robin Cross. All of Team READ are stuck on Amity, and the emergency shuttles are going too slow to get Dante and Ahab out. Requesting evac on northern end of the docking ring."

No response came.

"Perhaps it would be best to simply give ourselves up…" Dante muttered listlessly, her hazel eyes glazed over at the terrors unfolding, "That woman said that this would end sooner if we did. My life is not more valuable than that of the people dying right now, Robin."

Robin turned sharply, his fingers gripping onto the neck of Dante's cloak.

She snapped back to reality as he yanked her towards him, "W-What? I-I just don't want to-" she trembled as she searched for a breath.

"Look at me!" Robin held her tightly, "We'll explain later, but right now, our priority is making sure you and your brother don't fall into _their_ hands. Got it? What the Grimm Brotherhood's doing now is _nothing_ compared to what they'll do if they get a hold of everyone on that first list, so will you listen to me and follow my orders until we get you two somewhere safe?"

Before Dante could respond, the sounds of gunfire and screaming came from behind them, back the way they had come before the crowds slowed them down.

"They're certainly determined to get us…" Ahab grumbed as he drew out two harpoons.

"Damn it… of course the agents on the field wouldn't be the only ones they'd have up here…" Robin quickly yanked off his fur coat. The blue color faded to a dull brown. A wavy pattern materialized as well. He pushed it towards Dante, "Put it on. We need all the firepower we can get if we're going to get out of here alive."

"I…" she held the coat gingerly in her hands, "You should give this to Ahab…" she looked over to her brother, "His Semblance is better than mine for something like this… He would be more valuable to you."

"What did I say?!" he pushed the coat towards her again, "Follow my orders until we are safe."

She put her arms into those of the coat. Her cloak awkwardly folded underneath, but a little discomfort was nothing to her at the moment. The browns and the wavy pattern in the coat faded into a solid crimson red all across it. The aura reactant material always felt jarring upon activation, "Are you certain that you can use my Semblance without Dust…? All it will do is cause pain, Robin…"

Robin turned, ready to lead the way towards the gunfire, "Don't worry about me. I can manage as long as your book is nearby. Eden!"

The deer Faunus snapped to attention, "What do you need me to do?"

"Stay with Ahab. Do everything you can to get him to the ship, and take the route around the concession stands to the northern drop point. If you find any civilians, then direct them to the evac zones," he pointed to the boy in the naval jacket, "Don't let him out of your sight. Not even for a second. If we get to the ship first, and you're not there within a minute, I'll come look for you."

"And what about me?!" Dante shouted.

"You stay on that ship no matter what," Robin replied bluntly.

"Why is that better than letting all of this chaos end, Robin?" she held her hands tight over her chest. She had to keep herself under control and composed, "This all needs to stop!"

Eden put her hand on her shoulder, "I can tell you why, Dante. If you're taken, then everything can only get worse. What those people are planning could ruin all of Remnant, and not just Vytal," she nodded over to Ahab, "Ahab, you're good to fight even after what happened back there?"

Ahab scoffed, "More than good." he glared down at Vytal burning below them, "I'm ready to get some payback."

"Good." Robin grabbed Dante's hand and began leading her away from the crowd into the maintenance halls around Amity, "Then let's get moving!" Once he heard Eden and Ahab keeping pace with them, he held his free hand out in front of him, "Let wind weave and flow, through my words, body, and soul, and bring victory!"

Both he and Dante bolted off into the hallways running past the double doors marked 'Employees Only'. She saw what he was trying, and went ahead with what she knew he wanted her to do, "Let wind weave and flow, through my words, body, and soul, and bring victory…" she whispered.

They both doubled their pace once more through the halls. She was careful to stick close to him, "The other names. If I'm so important, then why don't we go find them, too? All of Team ARTS was on that list, and they're still back in the arena, right?"

"That's not our job!" Robin shouted over the wind rushing past them, "You're mine and Eden's priority. Ahab too, by extension."

She huffed to find another breath as they turned a corner. At this pace, they could be at the northern port in no time. Eden and Ahab would still be in the middle of all the chaos once Robin dropped her off. She looked over at him, "And you're going to just leave me on some airship while you go help them?!"

A few dark figures in reflective masks appeared from the maintenance door up ahead and to the left holding the signature black Grimm Brotherhood carbines.

"Blow, blow, thou winter wind, thou art not so unkind as man's ingratitude; thy tooth is not so keen, Because thou art not seen, Although thy breath be rude!" Robin recited as if he'd done it hundreds of times before. All three figures back through the double doors by a strong gust of wind that seemed to materialize from the halls themselves, "That's…" Robin panted, obviously winded from borrowing Dante's Semblance, "exactly the plan," he looked back, still with his cold stare, "Glad you finally caught on."

Her heels dug into the tiles as if on instinct. Winds whipped around her, but only sent gusts out in every direction as her Air Dust buffs dissipated. She looked behind herself, found there to be no one following, and Robin had already taken care of those who were ahead, "No."

Robin spun around, "What?! Dante, stop fooling around and _come on_!"

"No," she pulled the flare gun off her waist, then flipped the switch for it to extend out into its fire poker form. She narrowed her eyes at her leader, "I will not be going to that airship," she forced the fear growing inside her chest down, "I'm not running away."

"Don't be stupid!" Robin ran after her, but the sound of more gunfire ahead stopped him as more goons appeared from the doors behind him. He couldn't let them get to Dante, but he couldn't stop them and keep her on track at the same time.

"Dammit, Dante!" he pulled up his musket-axe and fired at the GB grunts as he heard Dante's footsteps echoing away from him back the way they had come.

.

"No one in here," Eden shut the door of a women's restroom, then turned around to face Ahab leaning against the opposite wall, "and I'm not hearing any of those goons around. I guess if you're trying to cause fear, it doesn't matter all that much how many people slip away…" she hooked her rope to her waist, "No one in the men's room either, I'm guessing?"

Ahab shook his head.

"Right…" she looked up and down the hallway they were in. Her prey instincts were coming in handy at a time like this. Sure, she didn't have the same training as a lot of other Nexus members, but her upbringing provided way more than they ever could, "I'm guessing you have a lot of questions, don't you?"

Ahab shrugged, "Not really."

"Alright, then," she mustered a smile. Surely he was still shaken up after seeing what happened to Ray. He hadn't had the same experiences as her, so she figured that he might still be reeling from it all, "If you need me to get you out of here and to somewhere safe, then I can. You don't have to be here if it's too much for you. I'll just run back for civilians after I get you dropped off."

"Nah. I'm good here," he said, eerily calm.

She examined him for a moment. Something was fidgeting in the back of her mind, "Are you sure, dude?"

Ahab drew a harpoon from his side, as if preparing for a fight, "Definitely. Not very often you get to be in the middle of something like this."

The eagerness with which he drew his weapon made her shiver. Goosebumps formed on her arms as she stepped away from him carefully, "You can calm down, Ahab. There aren't any Grimm Brotherhood around."

Ahab glanced down the walkway, where his sister and Robin had run off, "You sure about that?" Gunfire echoed around them, "Sounds like there might be quite a few up here with us."

"They're far off," the sense of danger was sinking down into her mind. She knew where it was coming from, but she wouldn't let herself believe that he was a real danger. He was a jerk, but not someone to fear too terribly much. Her hand wrapped around her rope, "We should get moving."

He stepped to her side, "Lead the way, Eden."

Her grip tightened on her rope, "I'll let you take lead instead. I'm better in the rear…"

Ahab shrugged as he walked ahead of her, "Whatever you say."

.

Bronze plates shifted into place, then slammed into the bone mask of a Beowolf. Epazote leaned into one shield, then brought the other one over his shoulder and down onto the top of its head. As soon as that one started to fade, he pushed into the one behind it to block off the door with both shields. He wasn't going to be able to hold them off for long, though.

"Anyone got a plan?!" he shouted over the grunts and snarls of the Grimm just behind his shields. They buckled from another charging Beowolf, but he stood his ground through every red-faced grunt, "Anyone?!"

"Oh, I don't know," Curie shoved a spare battery between the teeth of another snarling Beowolf around the shields. Sparks shot through its head as it discharged, "Not _die for starters?!"_

His hairs all stood on end as the jolt passed through the bronze handholds of his weapon. The smell of ozone wafted back in through the open spaces that he couldn't fully block off, but more Grimm just piled up over the fading ones, "Timbre?! Any ideas?!"

"I-I… I don't know!" Timbre thought for a moment to use Sonora, but it was compromised after the strings were snapped. She couldn't trust it. Even if she did fight, would she be able to keep the panic from sinking in while she took something else on? If she voiced how scared she actually was, then her Semblance could kick in. She gripped handfuls of her own hair and sat back as the heavy screeching of claws raking against Epazote's shield continued, "I… I don't know…"

 _But if we don't do something, then we're done for…_ Arty thought to himself as he fired paintballs at the Grimm ahead of them, barely peeking over the bronze disk in order to make his shots. The heavy paw of one of the monsters knocked him back, forcing him to retreat. _If we don't do something, we're done for…!_ he frantically looked to his friends cowering in fear behind their weak defenses.

 _ **THA-THUNK**_

"Oh god, not more!" Arty panicked, watching as the black masses continued to storm about in the halls.

 _ **THA-THUNK**_

Something down the hall slammed down against the carpeted floor. The clawing at Epazote's shields ceased for a moment as the Grimm shifted their attention to the left passage of the hall.

 _ **THA-THUNK**_

Two more heavy thuds came from down the hall.

"Crims, do you see that stairwell on the other end of the hall? Do you think you could land a few diamonds in there?" said the confident voice that only a Huntsman could pull off in the face of destruction, "They're getting up that way, so we can slow them down if you can. It'd really-"

 _ **THA-THUNK**_

Three thuds.

"help us track down the other students."

Arty could barely believe his ears, "Is that-?"

"Professor McGouran…" Timbre clutched her chest as she let out a deep sigh of relief. Stressed chuckles soon followed as more of the Beowolves in the hall faded, their black mist mingling with a growing cloud of steam.

Archimalter collapsed back into its sphere form in Epazote's hands, "Oh… oh thank the gods…" he huffed as he fell onto his knees. His glasses rested at the tip of his nose, "Hey! Hey, we're in here!" he shouted down the hall.

"It's them!" Turf cried as he bolted down the hall, Victor McGouran and Alice Crims close at his heels. Tears streamed from his eyes as he slid to a stop in the doorway, and a sobbing gasp shot past his lips as he saw Timbre. He practically leaped over Epazote, whipped past Arty, and nudged Curie out of the way just to clasp her in his arms. She could feel his heart beating swiftly through his shirt.

"Turf…" Timbre cried as she hugged him back.

"A-After I saw what happened in the stadium… Ray… It… it could have been you, and I…" he clutched her tighter, his chin pressed against her shoulder, "I'm just so glad you're okay… McGouran said you'd be around here… I'm so glad he was right…."

"Yes, yes, that's all fine and good," Alice peeked down the hall for Grimm or GB baddies, "Glad we could 'ave our little reunion, but we 'ave bigga problems at tha moment."

"How bad is it out there…?" Epazote groggily got back to his feet. Thinking back, he'd only been worried about the Grimm, but it had to have taken a ton of people to get all of them onto the island, which shouldn't have been possible in the first place. For every ten Grimm, there had to be at least one member of the Grimm Brotherhood, and he couldn't even begin to count the Grimm flooding the streets on their descent from Amity.

"Well, you know," McGouran brushed a little ash from his sandy blond hair, then flicked a bit off of one of the hanging lenses of his goggles, "It certainly isn't good. Thankfully, there weren't too many people in the streets because of the closing ceremony, and there's plenty of storm shelters. Still… I'm sorry to say that this won't have a silver lining like the Maelstrom attack."

Curie shook her head, as if she were disagreeing with that statement, "I figured as much…" It was odd hearing her speak without her normal matter-of-fact tone. The disbelief and sadness she was conveying was discomforting to say the least.

Arty decided to take the step forward to get them all to safety, "So what now, Professor?" he gestured to the destroyed door lying in splinters under their feet, "We can't exactly stay here."

"We've got a few people in this building, and I'm guessing that they're down in the storm shelter. Grimm only started going up here when you guys landed…" McGouran heaved his weapon up onto his shoulder, a miniature engine block with a bladed arm attached to four struts coming out of the end. A barrel stuck out just under the triangular blade of the weapon, and was clearly fed by the keg like attachment for ammunition, "If we can get down to that storm shelter and calm them down, we'll have a lot easier time getting out into the streets. I need you guys to be real Huntsmen and Huntresses for them, okay?"

Turf slowly pried his way off of Timbre. He wiped his nose off with his handkerchief, "Pull myself together, got it…"

Arty nodded slowly, _They didn't start showing up until we landed…? But I swear I saw..._ he forced himself to get back to the task at hand, "Right, Professor. I mean… we already kind of are at this point, aren't we? After everything we've already done and been through?"

"I sure hope so, Arty," McGouran looked back down the hall, "I'll take point, Epazote and Turf take up the rear. Alice, be at my side. Arty, Timbre, Curie, watch both ways. The more eyes we've got looking out for us, the better," he flicked down his goggled and flipped a switch. Both lenses seemingly became as mirrors, "I'm not letting my students go down too."

Everyone agreed to the plan, not wanting to disagree with the man that was obviously the most skilled of them all. At that moment, there wasn't a doubt that Victor McGouran was their only chance of surviving the night.

.

Embers trailed down the corridor through which Cayenne and Sepia ran. Their hearts still raced after the split-second decision that Cayenne made. While Roland could have definitely used some backup, she knew that they would just get in the way. With them up there with him, he would prioritize defending them until they were out of the fray. Even in the middle of this madness, he was still the most stubborn guy she knew.

"We're gonna have to find another way to help him," she thought aloud with Sepia's wrist in one hand, and her scroll in the other. Their sprint down the corridors was making it hard to watch the shaking screen, but the image was clear. Roland was short an eye, and Gavin was close to nabbing him. They needed to act fast.

The camera feed cut out suddenly.

She slowed to a stop and banged her scroll against the heel of her palm a few times, "Come on, this isn't the time for this, scroll! Seriously?!"

Sepia's hand grasped her shoulder tightly, and she could see why as soon as she turned.

Tears poured down Sepia's cheeks. Her lip quivered, a dribble of blood trailing down from how hard she was biting it. Every inch of her trembled. In her free hand was her scroll. She had just seen the person that she cared about most get their eye shot out by someone that they all thought was their friend.

"Sepia…" Cayenne pulled her close. Sure, Roland taking such an injury made her heart sink, but that was being overridden by a drive to get him out of there. He was one of her closest friends, but he wasn't to her what he was for Sepia, "He's going to be okay… He's gonna live. We're going to save him, but running right in there might get us hurt too… and him even worse. We'll figure something out. I promise. I'm not letting him get taken, and I know you aren't either."

Sepia shook in Cayenne's embrace. What if Roland bled out? What if Gavin's arrows struck him just a little to the right or a little lower? What if he was taken from her? What if he convinced himself that it was better to die than be taken? He'd never be the same again after this, either way. He couldn't be a Huntsman like this. He couldn't read as much. If he had any trauma to his brain from that shot, then he might never recover. He might not get to be who he'd worked so hard to be. She knew what this was going to do to him even if he lived, and that hurt so much on its own.

Cayenne held Sepia at arm's length, "I know you're worried about him. I am too, but it's Roland. He's probably so angry that losing an eye isn't going to stop him from trying to take Gavin down. As long as he's fighting, he's still alive. The aftermath is something we can deal with later. You know what it means to lose a part of you like that. Right now, though, we need to focus on finding a way to get him out of there. I'm thinking that we could loop around and jump Gavin from behind… maybe get that weapon of his away from him. Something."

Before Sepia could nod in agreement, she shoved Cayenne out of the path of two large blades coming down. They sliced right between them before snipping shut.

A dark haze floated through the air around the newcomer's weapon. Arcs of electricity shot out at every angle, some connecting to random spots on the nearby walls and floors, leaving small scorch marks in their wake.

"I was _so close_ to killing both of you…" a figure in a black cloak stood before them, his voice heavy with calm disappointment, "but of course little Ms. Surprise had to go out of her way to ruin that…" he whipped his weapon to the side. They resembled heavily-modified garden shears. The blades extended as wide as possible to leave the full length of the weapon open and ready to slice into the two girls. One hand reached up to his face, which was covered by a smooth round mask with a singular eye in the very middle. How he could see through it wasn't clear.

His fingers curled under the edge of the Geist mask and slowly pulled it off, revealing the pale skin and dark hair beneath.

Samhain Hollantide threw his mask to the ground, "Why must you make this harder than it should be?!" he ran for Cayenne and Sepia, swinging his blades in a flurry of strikes, each one obviously intended to lop off their heads.

"Get back, Sepia!" Cayenne's hammer slammed down between the blades of Samhain's shears. She jerked forwards to get the blades to close more and more against the metal neck of her weapon, "You're one of those Team FSTV guys… Here I thought General Léon kept a tight grip on things."

"Obviously not tight enough," Samhain dropped his shears and stepped to the side, letting Cayenne fall forwards. He raised his blade and brought it down on her back. It slammed hard into her aura and sent her tumbling across the ground, sparks shooting across her body as she bounced on the hard floor of the hallway. Littered around her were various food and drink containers, dropped by the panicking mobs. Samhain found it fitting that she was lying among trash. Ignoring Sepia, he stepped towards Cayenne, his shears clasping together with a sharp _snip_. He raised them above the dazed dancer, ready to impale her through the back.

Lead blasted into the back of Samhain's head. His aura held up just fine, but the pain seemed to wrap around his head and rip the air straight from his throat. More bullets drilled into him, each adding to the trail of singed circles down the back of his cloak. Of course she was going with the surprise attack.

Before he could even turn to react, the butts of Sepia's guns ground into his cheek. She yanked one back for a quick pistol whip against his temple to send him stumbling away. Even more bullets peppered him as he stumbled away.

"Just for that," he lunged forward, but this time not with his shears. He clasped hard onto Sepia's wrist and drove his knee into her gut. Her grips on Avant and Garde loosened, "You get to go first," he sheathed his weapon at his side and palmed her face with his free hand, "Surprise and fear go hand in hand after all."

The dark tendrils of his Semblance began to reach deep into Sepia's mind, "It's so fitting that you two ended up here to meet your fate…"

Scenes started playing out before her. All around her, people she loved, Arty, Roland, Timbre, Opal, Aubrey, Alice, Rime, and every single other person she had met along the way all fell victim to the tragedies that she could prevent. Arty stood helpless in front of the Trex they had killed their first semester. Roland was being choked by Oro, her weapon pressed into his gut. Timbre laid crumpled and bloodied in front of Lieutenant Hulud. Opal dangled on the ledge of a crevasse. All of them could have been saved, but it was too late for her to do anything.

Sepia fell to her knees, her eyes held shut in a grimace. Her head hung low in front of Samhain.

The Grimm Brotherhood agent looked back to Cayenne, who was still dazed, but was slowly pushing herself up. _No. This runt's the bigger problem for us._

Samhain kicked Sepia, sending her sprawling. Her guns skid away and out of her reach. It was time to end her, to start the beginning of the end for all the ones on Maelstrom's first list. He reached for his shears. As he brought them up, they shifted, changing into the terrifying railgun that Remnant got to see in Team FSTV's fight with Team STON. This wasn't a silly tournament anymore. The gun wasn't just going to take someone out of a fight. It was going to take a life. The power pent up inside began to intensify, drawing closer to firing right at Sepia's head.

The explosion and buzzing of electric discharge echoed through the stadium. The ball whizzed through the air at incredible speeds.

Had Samhain not been knocked to the side at the last second, Sepia would've been dead. Instead, a snack stand nearby exploded into shrapnel.

"You traitorous bastard!" Captain Sanguwalker screamed as one of her dark liquid tendrils snaked around from her back and pinned Samhain to the wall. Like him, she was dressed in all black and red. Her bodysuit was complemented by the bird-beaked mask that Team ARTS and Atlas had grown to despise, "I knew you would end up going too far, Agent Geist!"

The tendril pulled him back and slammed him into the wall again, "Were you in on killing Ray Léon, too?!"

Another slam, " _Answer me, dammit!_ "

Samhain gasped, but he wasn't willing to spill information so early, "You're a fool if you believe this is actually going to lead to anything beneficial to you, Pohela Falgun." he stabbed his shears into the tendril, "You and the rest of those brainwashed slaves to the Lieutenants and Maelstrom don't quite understand that you can't rule the world if there _is_ no world to rule!" he squeezed the handles shut, sending a strong jolt of power directly through the paint and into Sanguwalker's back.

She screamed, breaking her focus on her Semblance. The paint melted to the ground, releasing Samhain. "You… idiot," she snarled before throwing her arm out, sending more black paint whipping towards her backstabbing subordinate, "You really think that's what this all adds up to?! Everyone knows how this works, and we _need_ them. _Nothing_ can happen if they're _dead!_ "

Samhain's shears extended again, the blades glistening with dripping black goo, "It's so easy to think that if you never considered the reverse, eh? _Everything_ can happen if they're dead," he rushed her, ready to bring his shears down on her.

Cayenne inched over to Sepia as Samhain and Pohela traded blows. She put a hand on the director's shoulder and gently shook her, "Sepia… Sepia, you there?"

Sepia's head snapped back up to attention. She looked at Cayenne carefully, as if to figure out if she was part of the illusion or not. It all started to unravel when she realized that she was in a worse situation than the ones presented to her. She was in the midst of a current situation, not a past one.

"Good, then let's get out of here while those two are fighting each other," Cayenne looked back. It was strange to see such active infighting in the Grimm Brotherhood, but it wasn't something that she wasn't thankful for. It was going to make getting away a lot easier, "Come on."

They both got in a crouching position to slide along the wall. Sepia slowly lifted her guns off the floor on their way down the hall. Her eyes left Samhain and Pohela for just a few seconds, if that.

Samhain flew backwards into the wall again after being smacked by Sanguwalker's paint. While the pain was there, he didn't care. Sepia Hughes and Cayenne Canella had to die, and if Sanguwalker got in the way, she'd die too. He ran for her and slashed down at her. It only connected with the two blades attached to her wrists, "Using your little toys, too?"

"If it means stopping you from killing our targets, then I'll use everything at my disposal to get rid of any traitorous scum that are defiling the Brotherhood!" she swiped low, knocking Samhain down before driving one of the other blades on her feet into his chest. His black aura shimmered around the impact point as it prevented the blade from piercing his heart.

As Samhain struggled to focus his aura, he managed to look up just enough to see his targets running off towards the central arena. He gripped his superior's ankle, "You wanted me to deal with Fear, remember?" he bashed her in the side of the knee with his weapon, sending her crumpling sideways. Her foot blade left his chest, allowing him to stand, "That's exactly what I'm going to do."

Arcs of power flew from his shears as they opened, revealing the railgun track within. After building for a few seconds, all of the pent up energy was released as a large metal ball was sent rocketing from within.

Captain Sanguwalker looked up just in time to feel it collide with her chest. It carried her with it and smashed her into one of the outer supporting pillars of the coliseum's wide arches. She slid limply down, her paint splashing to the ground and forming dark black puddles around her. The bird-beaked mask fell from her face, letting her black and rainbow hair fall from within. Pohela Falgun's eyes were closed, and she wasn't moving. The ball fell from her chest and rolled loudly away, leaving a trail of black behind it before stopping at Samhain's feet.

"They aren't leaving here alive." he turned and ran down the hall that he had seen Sepia and Cayenne disappear. He had to finish what he started.

.

 _We can fix this. This doesn't have to be this way!_ Dante screamed in her thoughts as she sprinted through the halls. The panic in her chest was rising, but was being slowly burned away with the horrid night. She could put an end to this somehow. There had to be a way for her of all people to pull that off.

Her eyes cast down to the fire poker in her hand. Its tip burned bright with activated Fire Dust. It wasn't much of a weapon, nor had it ever been. It wasn't something that she could reliably hurt people with. It was for defending herself and taking out Grimm. That was how she wanted it. That's what made her feel okay.

Screams still echoed into the empty corridors from the outside rim. Gunshots and Grimm roars shook in her ears. The Grimm Brotherhood wasn't holding back this time. They no longer cared about keeping a low profile. They no longer cared about civilians, and that's what made her stomach churn.

Turning a corner to head towards the center arena was her worst mistake.

"About time you caught back up with us, Sister. I knew you'd ditch our fearless waste of life leader eventually."

Dante froze at the sight of her brother, and, moreover, the sight of Eden on the ground under his sandals. The sole of his foot was planted between the points of one of Eden's antlers. Her eyes were wide with fear, her lip quivering in a silent plea for help.

"Let her go, Ahab," she demanded with her fire poker ready against her own brother, "Now."

"So Sanguwalker was right…" he sneered, pressing his foot down harder on Eden's antler. She let out another shout of pain, "She said you were getting soft on Faunus, and here I thought it was all just an act to keep our dear mutt of a brother close for when we eventually needed him. It's a shame to see you fall so low after how much the Grimm Brotherhood expected of you."

"I…" Dante's clenched her jaw. What was there to say? How could she say anything? The look on Eden's face, one of frightened realization, pierced her heart like a needle. Reluctantly, she reached behind her back, "I'm… I'm not one of you… monsters…"

"I honestly don't think _I'm_ the one that needs convincing." he pointed a harpoon down at the Deer Faunus girl beneath his feet, "If I recall, you're part of the whole reason she's in this situation to begin with."

"Please…" Eden shook as pressure was put on her antler. She looked to Dante, "Please, this doesn't… this doesn't have to be like… please…"

Her pleading was cut off as she began screaming in pain.

"Shut up, you subhuman garbage..." Ahab began forcing his foot down into Eden's antler. The sick cracking of bone couldn't be heard through her shrieking.

Dante watched as it snapped clear from Eden's head.

Ahab held up the broken antler and looked at it in disgust, "Fitting, isn't it, Sister? The Deer Faunus and the Deer Grimm?" he threw it to the side as if it was nothing. It clattered loudly as its various points hit the floor, "What do you say we go for the other?" he reached down to the other antler. Eden begged, but after so much pain, she was exhausted and too weak to fight back.

"Dante!" she sobbed, "Please! Help me!"

Black steel gleamed as it was pulled from the back of Dante's cloak. Fire Dust coated the blades of twin sets of four claws each. Embers mingled with steam from the cracks and crevasses in the weapon. She held them out in front of her, then drew them to her sides in preparation to do whatever she had to do, "Ahab, I told you to. Let. Her. Go."

Ahab snickered as he pulled his hand back, "Aw, careful there, Agent Venice. Don't want you going on as a rampaging Wendigo now do we? That might throw a monkey wrench into our _plans_!" On the last word, he punched his sister in the face, sending her backward away from him and Eden, "You mad, Dante? Are you _disgusted_ with this?" he pushed his foot harder into Eden's back, "Good. Because it has to be you or me, and nothing much disgusts me anymore."

He gripped the furthest point of Eden's remaining antler with one hand and raised his harpoon with the other. Judging by the way he was holding it, it wasn't going to break the antler. It was going to go right into Eden's spine, "Except for the Nexus and animals like her and our brother. She just so happens to fall into both categories."

" _ENOUGH!"_ Dante screamed as she bolted forwards. Her claws struck the harpoon aimed at Eden's back. For a moment, there was resistance, but then the blades sheared through the harpoon's shaft like butter. She raised her foot and delivered a swift kick to his pelvis to send him scooting off of her friend, "This wasn't part of the mission. Hurting my friends was not part of the mission. Killing countless innocents was _not part of the mission!"_

"What are you talking about?!" he fired a harpoon at her before drawing two more, one in each hand, "It became a part of the plan when our dear brother and his idiot team kept _screwing everything up!_ " he kicked Eden aside before rushing towards his sister, "Had they just come along when they had the chance, _none_ of this would've happened, but it _was_ part of the plan! You've known about that since we got here! Since we got to Beacon! Since you decided you wanted to be a field agent!"

"Becoming a murderer was never what I wanted!" she shouted back. Her claws ripped through the fired harpoon. Hot, glowing bits of metal fell to her sides as Ahab closed in. She crossed her claws in front of herself to take the blow from both harpoons, "It's not the fault of anyone but us for what is happening tonight! My brother and his team aren't doing this! It's us! It's _you_ , Ahab!"

"So what? What are you going to do about it? Cry? Tattle to mom? Become a traitor and die like the others before you who dared to defy us?"

"I'm going to be what we're supposed to be!" she barked while slamming her claws through his harpoons. She swiped at him to no avail. Each quick jab was only met with a newly slashed harpoon, or a quick step away.

"This is what we're supposed to be! You're the only one that doesn't see that!" he went to stab at her with another harpoon.

"Terrible maw gasping from below. Thou must bow to that wretched abyss, for there is no escape from its tow. Thou will die under earth's crushing kiss."

Ahab fell to the ground meer feet from hitting Dante. His harpoon clattered to the tiles. Rocks began to form across him as a light green glow outlined his body. It was an effect he knew well.

Dante froze in place, her claws still at her sides. She hadn't spoken a word. Her own Semblance hadn't been activated by her. She did, however, feel someone's eyes drilling into the back of her head.

"R-Robin…" she stammered as she whipped around, "It's… it isn't… what it…"

He lowered his musket, aiming it right at her, "Back. Away."

He looked to the burning claws hooked to her hands in disgust. He had read all about Agent Venice's aura-negating weapons. They could've possibly killed two innocent students during the attack in downtown Vale. He sidestepped, slowly making his way to Eden, who was still sobbing on the ground, "Eden, can you stand?" his eyes didn't leave Dante and Ahab.

"Y-Yeah…" Eden put a hand against a wall to push herself up. She looked back to Ahab and Dante with a mixture of disgust and fear in her eyes. It was a look that broke Dante's heart.

"Eden, Robin, I… I'm so sorry, I didn't… I didn't do… I didn't hurt any… I…" her lip tingled as her breaths began picking up. Tears welled up in her eyes. She couldn't lose her friends. Not now. Not like this. This was a choice she thought she'd never have to make, "I… I'll go with you… You can take me in… You can put me in jail if you have to… Please… Please, no…"

"You aren't going anywhere near us or the others." Robin said flatly, a scowl accentuating every word with anger and disappointment, "You can keep your Grimm-masked buddies."

Eden grabbed at his shirt as she stumbled, "But what about her being-"

"We'll figure something out. We can't afford to have a potential mole," he looked to the jagged and bloody stump on her head, "There's been a change of plans. Right now, my priority is getting you out of here."

"N-No! I'll surrender! I'll do whatever I have to do! Please! I'm sorry! I didn't… I'm not… I'm not like this!" Dante's lips shook with every rapid word. She clutched her chest plate tight. If she could just get some air, then she could calm down. If she could just say the right words, then she could be okay. It could all be okay, "I just wanted to help make a better world, Robin!"

"What part of _this_ is a better world?!" he gestured out at the burning island below them. Not once did he let his aim on her waver, "Are you _that delusional?!_ " His voice began to crack. Something Team READ had never heard before in Robin Cross. His face scrunched up as he fought back tears, "I _trusted_ you. _You_ were part of Remnant's only hope to get through this and I _trusted_ you," he lost his fight, tears flowing freely, " _We_ trusted you."

"This isn't what _I wanted!"_ Dante fell to her knees. Her claws clattered to her sides, "This isn't who I am, Robin!" tears dripped one by one against the floor. The fur coat hugging her own cloak began to fade. Brown stripes on lighter brown began to show through the red. Robin's Semblance was losing its hold. Robin's trust in her was completely gone, "Robin, Eden, _please!"_

"Stay. Away." he hugged Eden tighter to himself as she leaned on him for support, "You come any closer, and I _swear_ I will shoot you."

Dante slowly removed the coat. She couldn't bear the weight of it on her shoulders anymore. She shakingly held it out to him, her head hanging low, "Please… Please, Robin… Please… please… please…"

He stayed silent as he backed away. He kept the barrel of his gun trained on her until they disappeared around the curve of the open-air walkway.

Just like that, Robin and Eden were gone.

Dante fell against the floor, her elbows the only thing left holding her up. Each racing breath made her more and more dizzy. She didn't even hear her own screaming, sputtering sob echoing through the hallway. Her hands covered the back of her head. Her entire body shook. None of this was supposed to happen. Every moment her, Robin, and Eden had. Every smile. Every adventure. Every training session. Every time she couldn't hold her panic back. Every time they let her cry on their shoulders. Even while holding Robin's coat against her chest, her tears wetting it for maybe the hundredth time, all of that was meaningless. All of it was meaningless because she was in the Grimm Brotherhood. She was Agent Venice. They had learned the truth.

A deep laugh echoed behind her as Ahab pushed himself to his feet. With Robin's taste of Dante's Semblance gone, the stones holding him down fell away, "Honestly, Sister, I should turn you in to the Lieutenants for being a traitor that was _willing_ to go with a couple of Nexus slaves. In reality, I could be justified in killing you here and now, but this…" he laughed, "This is _much_ better. Seeing you wallow in your own pity-" he stopped as he found a better word, "No… _self-disgust_. Is that it, Dante? Are you _disgusted_ with yourself?"

"Shut up! Just _SHUT UP!"_ she screamed back at him. She tried to whip around, but only fell over with her arms and Robin's coat against her chest, " _I HATE YOU, AHAB, AGENT GNILE, WHOEVER YOU ARE! I HATE YOU! I HATE WHAT YOU DO! I HATE EVERYTHING YOU ARE!"_ she shakily stood, drawing her claws up with her. Her shallow breaths passed in and out of her lips. The world spun around her, but one thought was clear. Maybe she could be a murderer if just to make him pay.

She darted forward faster than he could process with his one functioning eye. Her claws whipped through the air. Four gashes appeared in the upper part of his left arm. Another slash whipped out before he could step back. Four more burning gashes sliced across the right side of his chest. She raised her arm again only for it to be jerked to a stop. Thick black liquid flowed between her fingers.

"Agent Venice!" Captain Sanguwalker, her mask missing, strode forward determinedly, despite her slight limp, "What do you think you're doing!?" she held her arm out, willing the paint flowing from her pack to hold Dante's arm in place in order to prevent her from harming Ahab any further, "You know how the leaders feel about Brother on Brother violence, but _now_ of all time-"

Dante lunged at her. After all, Sanguwalker only had one of her arms in place, and that was already beginning to ignite the paint through the Fire Dust in her claws. Her free claws extended, one of them piercing through the center of Sanguwalker's right hand, " _I NEVER WANTED ANY OF THIS, POHELA!"_

Pohela reeled back, holding her hand. She observed the burnt flesh through her glove before throwing her other hand out with an angry shout. A second tendril shot from her back and connected with Dante's chest. The wall cracked with force as Dante was slammed into it. The oozing paint held her as she thrashed and cried.

" _I'M NOT A MONSTER! I'M NOT LIKE YOU! THIS ISN'T ME!"_ Dante was hysterical. Every thought passing through her head just disgusted her even more. She hated them. She hated herself. That little girl with the antenna, the one she gave up her cake to, was going to hate her just the same… if she survived the night, " _THIS ISN'T A BETTER WORLD! THIS IS A LIVING HELL! THIS IS A HELL BY YOUR DAMNED HANDS!"_

Pohela slapped her across the face with her uninjured hand, "You calm down right now! I told you it was going to get like this. I told you that necessary sacrifices had to be made, _but you wouldn't listen to me because you were caught up in your own damn childhood pleasures!_ Now look at you! You're a sniveling _mess_."

" _I-"_ Dante bit her lip in a vain attempt to calm herself down, "There… there is no such thing as a necessary sacrifice of a _life, Pohela!"_

"If you think that, then why didn't you quit when you still had the chance?" she drew back her paint, letting the now less-violent Dante fall to the ground. She turned to Ahab, "Agent Gnile. Against what's been suggested to me considering your… past failures, I have no other choice than to request your assistance."

"What? Only using me because you have no other option, Captain?"

"Shut up. We have a traitor that's about to _kill_ two of our targets. I need someone to help me take him down."

"Aww, can't handle it on your own?"

Pohela glared at him, "If I recall correctly, you couldn't handle _one_ of our targets by yourself. When I failed last time, it was because of a successful Huntsman. _You_ got a two-bit retired Huntress has-been," she pointed up to her left eye, "And I didn't lose an eye in my fight. So stop wasting our time and help me deal with Agent Geist before he kills Sepia and Cayenne. If they die, we'll have a _lot_ more work to do in the future."

Ahab considered making another smartass comment, but instead he looked over to his sister, who was still crying on the ground, "Fine. I'll help, but what about her? She's technically a traitor, too isn't she?" he pointed to his wounds, still stinging from the burn of Fire Dust, "She attacked not only a member of her own branch but a Captain of another. That's gotta run some trouble her way, right?"

"One of our traitors, Agent Geist, gave me my wound, and yours came from a Ripper that got a little too rebellious. Agent Venice suffered the effects of Geist's Semblance, and that set her off on a panic attack," Pohela looked down at Dante, who was huddled up to the wall with her arms around her knees, "That will be the story that she tells if she wants any further opportunities in life."

Ahab sneered, "Sounds like you're being a bit too lenient with her."

"Shut up. Let's go take care of Agent Geist before things get any worse," she walked up to Dante and crouched in front of her, "Go to the rendezvous ship. We'll take care of things now."

To Dante, the way she said the command wasn't meant to be comforting at all. It was almost as if the words 'you're a disappointment and worthless trash, we'll pick up the pieces you couldn't put together' were what were really being conveyed.

"I…" she clutched the coat harder, "I… I need to help… I need to help them…"

Pohela stood, "In this state, you can't even help yourself. Now get to the rendezvous like I said. I still have my job to do. I don't have time to play babysitter."

In one last show of emotion, Dante buried her face into Robin's coat and stood. She held it tight as she took a step. Then another. Then a third. She inched her way down the corridor until she was finally keeping up a good pace. Pohela and Ahab's voices faded behind her. Her life as a Huntress in training was over. She finally fell into her own personal circle of Hell.

As she made her way to the rendezvous, she couldn't decide which name disgusted her more. Was it Agent Venice? Or was it Dante Wells?


	74. V3Ch21: A Teacher's Work is Never Done

Carmen's feet moved on their own. Her black and white blades crossed over each other to deflect an incoming black hole. Gavin was clearly more trained than he had ever let on, but he wasn't a fully trained Huntsman. He didn't have her experience. His eyes couldn't glaze over like hers when going after a tough target, nor could his hands move without so much as a thought. Both blades came swiping down as parallel beams of burning light over his head.

Gavin ducked low and kicked against his instructor's stomach. He stood and strode casually between her and Roland, "What's the matter, Carmen? You're holding back on me! Don't tell me you still _care_ about me?" he laughed, the look of desperate rage on Carmen's face making him grin in response, "I'm the kind of person you're supposed to help take down, so why aren't you using that Huntress training to its fullest potential?!" he ran for her, bringing his staff down on her head.

Dazed for a moment, she stumbled back a few steps. Seeing that look on his face hurt her more than just having to make an attempt on her own student's life. Every time she saw him hanging out with his team, or coaching the other students, or consoling them, or… being an actual role model to them was fake. There was, however, something strange in all of that.

"You helped make the people that are going to bring you down if I can't, Gavin," Carmen leapt back further, blocked another black hole, and threw one of her blades square at his head, "Even if you were lying the entire time, the advice you gave still led to important lessons for each and every person you tricked!"

Gavin batted away the laser sword, letting it stab into the ground a few feet away, "Spouting your usual foolish wisdom even when faced with demise," he went for another swing, "Same old Professor Maple!" his staff missed on the first swing, but he managed to catch her off-guard with the second, bringing it sideways into her pelvis.

She tumbled back. Her hand shot out to the side and wrapped around the handle of the blade piercing the ground beside her. With white in one hand, and bright yellow in the other, she shot to her feet with both at the ready. Gavin was far too quick for someone with so little experience, or maybe it was the fact that she wasn't quite as young as she used to be. Fighting a Creature of Grimm was far different from fighting a person.

A black haze flowed around his body in her vision. It was beginning to waver, which was thanks to Roland. She passed a glance over to him, seeing precisely what she had seen in him when she met him. The only thing keeping the violet mist around him alive were streaks of blood red. That was the only reason that his Semblance was still able to hold up, and the only reason he was still conscious.

"Did you ever love any of my students like I thought you did?" she didn't so much as move with that question. She stayed locked in place as she stared him down.

"Oh come _on_ , Maple. The stereotypical appeal to the enemy's morality?" he shook his head, "You need to stop watching so many movies!"

" _Did you love my students, Gavin?!"_ she barked back.

"Will you just _shut up?!_ " he fired another string of black hole arrows at her, "No! No! _No!_ I never loved any of them! I could barely _tolerate them_! Every single one made me want to kill them right then and there, but I had to keep up appearances!" he pulled back the laser string and twisted, "What part of that is so hard to understand?!"

She ran in a semicircle around him with her white blade twisting at her left side. Any black holes that didn't whiz by bounced off of the laser blade. The yellow one went flying upwards as she snatched the red one from its spot on the battlefield.

"I knew you were always a thick-headed ditz, but I thought you'd be able to think straight for at least two _minutes_ when faced with actual danger!" the barrage of arrows continued, "You're pathetic, Maple! Not only did your team die so you could go on, but now your students will too!"

"You think I'm not thinking straight?!" Carmen tossed up the red blade as well. She yanked out the green blade, threw it up, and then grabbed the blue. Her ankle pivoted, reversing her path around Gavin before her crossed blades slammed into his staff, "I'm thinking about protecting my _children!_ "

Her fingers uncurled from the white and blue blades, and, as if by magic, the red and yellow blades fell into her hands. She slashed them across his middle. Glowing hot streaks of molten metal appeared in the black plates across his stomach.

Gavin let out a shout of pain and anger, "Protect them?!" he swung his staff, trying to bat her away, "You can't even protect yourself!"

A streak of green fell down between them, and Carmen's red and yellow blades slammed her green blade horizontally into Gavin's staff, "Is that what you think, Gavin?" her heel clipped the base of the white blade laying at their feet. It bounced off the ground and slashed another hot molten line into the plates around his calf.

His legs buckled as he fell to one knee. His teeth gnashed as he fought through the pain, "I don't think that, I _know!_ " With the smell of his own burnt skin wafting into his nostrils, he threw his left arm around, slamming it right into Carmen's back.

The blow might have done more had she not been ready for it. Pain didn't matter with her kids on the line. Her knee rocketed up into his unprotected chin. Cracks clattered from his mouth. As soon as he began to fall back, she threw her foot down into the bridge of his nose. It pained her to do this to someone that she thought was her student, but that didn't matter with two of them, one dead and one bleeding, on the field nearby, "You should have brought backup, Gavin…"

As he slowly pushed himself to his feet, he let out a sinister chuckle, "Who said I didn't?"

"There are no other auras nearby," she raised her red blade over his head, "and yours is close to breaking."

The chuckle continued, "I always hated that stupid magic trick of yours. Although, it did make it easier to hide in plain sight," he looked up at her, blood dribbling down over his eye from his hairline, "Don't tell me you _ever_ suspected me, Carmen. I was one of your prized pupils. I ran so many errands for you with the Twinkle Twins and the mutt. I listened through every single story of your 'glory days', even the ones you'd already told before," he took a step towards her, his staff dragging along the floor behind him, "We worked so well together on that mission in Mikado, didn't we? We saved all those _people_ ," another step, "But does it really count if I helped set all that up?" another step, "Well, Professor? I still get an A?"

"Gavin…" her hand shook just slightly as she raised her red blade higher, "I'm giving you one last chance…"

"Aw… taking pity on me?" he swiped her shins with his staff, making her fall to the ground, "I don't want anymore pity, from you or anyone else! Pity and sympathy mean _nothing!_ " he pointed the front end of his staff towards her face, "They don't do _anything!_ If you want anything to change in this world, you have to do it yourself!" he brought his staff up before bringing it down on Carmen once more, "The Grimm Brotherhood has already made the first steps. Tonight is just the beginning!"

She palmed the end of his staff and shoved it to the side. A jolt shot through her arm at the touch, but it still wasn't quite enough to deter her. Her red blade swiped to give herself some breathing room to get up, "The Grimm Brotherhood isn't going to win, Gavin, but we can-"

Gavin interrupted her with a deep guttural laugh, "Oh, 'we' as in the Nexus? Stop kidding yourself, Carmen. We both know the Nexus hasn't gotten anything done in _years_ because you're too scared to come out of the dark. If you all decided to grow a pair and be a bit more active like we are, maybe you could've prevented all this."

"You… you all did this. Not us," Carmen's eyes passed over Ray's body for a split second. He was nowhere near her favorite student by any means, but he was still hers while he was at Beacon. Then there was Roland, who was laying helpless just a ways away. She had done well to get Gavin away from him. He wasn't getting up any time soon, and that scared her to no end.

For the sake of Remnant, she had to protect him at all costs. She already failed with Ray, and she wasn't going to again.

"I can't do much more than be a teacher, I know," she steeled herself in the knowledge that she was probably about to have to kill one of her own students. She couldn't hand out any more warnings, "but my students _are_ going to be the ones that can change the world for the better. They're not going to terrorize all of Remnant to fix what they see is wrong."

"You're right about them changing the world, Maple. They're just going to end up being the tools to help us do it," Gavin pulled back another arrow and aimed it for Carmen's face.

.

The boiler room of the apartment complex was just about as moldy, dark, and hot as one might expect. Professor McGouran had explained that he guessed that the storm cellar would be at the building's lowest point, and the signs leading down into the boiler room indicated that he was correct. The weighted steel door across from the stairs leading down and just past the massive deactivated Dust-powered boiler had to be what they were looking for, but no chatter could be heard. No crying kids or panicked adults. Not a sound came from that door as far as any of them, even Turf, could hear.

"If the people living here didn't come down here, where did they go?" Arty asked as he looked to the door. Like the rest of the room around them, the storm cellar door was in poor condition. Dark red rust speckled it in places and scuff marks marred what used to be bright stainless steel. The absence of Grimm on the island for so long probably contributed to its poor maintenance and lack of use. Arty did note that the hinges stood out. They were shiny and dark-colored unlike the surrounding metal, reflecting any light that passed over them. He shook his head, to get back to the question at hand. _Not a time for that to act up_ , "They're obviously not here."

"Hopefully somewhere safe. Judging from the oxidation and excessive mildew down here, the residents probably didn't even know this room existed," Curie observed before covering her face with her sleeve. The dust in the air was thick and the moist smell was almost gag-inducing, "And I'm guessing maintenance workers were the only ones to enter this room… until us that is."

"Maybe everyone was just up in Amity," Turf surveyed the room with his shotgun shouldered and cocked. He didn't feel quite right about being down here. His ears stood at attention underneath his hat. A few bugs scuttled around, and the faint sounds of the building settling were certainly present, but he couldn't hear the shuffling that he would expect from a ton of people huddled up in a storm cellar. He did, however, hear running water below, "Think that they could have slipped into the sewers to get away from Grimm? It'd be safe for the most part, unless a Tuu is what you'd call terrifying."

"Be on guard, Turf. Somethin' tells me they wouldn't have bothered bringin' Tuu along. For all we know, the sewers are how they're letting Grimm out into the city," Alice chided as they walked closer to the door, "So, what now, Professa? Should we go out and try ta find-"

"You're all on the list. It'd be best for you guys to stay down here," Professor McGouran pointed at the steel door with his weapon, "You guys go ahead and hunker down in there, and I'll hold off any baddies until we can get some real backup. The sooner I can hail down an Atlas patrol, the sooner we can get you kids out of here."

"What was all of that about being real Huntsmen and Huntresses, then?" Epazote scrunched up his brow at the instructor, "If there isn't anyone here, then…"

"It means that less people are going to be at risk when I'm protecting you guys. If this place is already evacuated, then it makes things easier. I didn't get to actually check too thoroughly, considering I was killing a horde of Grimm at the time, after all," steam shout out of the sides of his weapon as he primed it, "Just hunker down for now, and this'll be a lot easier."

"But what about everyone else outside?!" Arty nearly shouted, "Everyone on this island is in danger, we're training to deal with stuff like this. So what if we're on the list?" he stood his ground, making sure his instructor knew what he wanted to do, "If we can help those people, why shouldn't we?"

"There's no telling what those creeps are going to do with you guys. I can't let that happen to my students," Professor McGouran looked over each of his students. None of them were Huntsmen or Huntresses just yet, even if they needed to be for the people of Vytal. He didn't expect them to fend off thousands of Grimm, "Please just put this old dude's mind at ease and stay safe, okay? I know you all want to help, but it's going to be harder for me fend off Grimm _and_ look after all of you."

"He's right." Timbre mumbled.

Everyone turned and stared at her.

She threw her arms up, "We can't fight all those Grimm… and the Grimm Brotherhood," tears fell from her eyes, "You guys saw Gavin… if he's with them, then we don't know who else could be in the GB," she walked for the door, "We're safer here than we are out there. We'd probably just end up getting in the way or worse… get caught," her hands wrapped around the handle and pulled the door open, "I know we've gotten used to fighting back against them, but this is too much, Arty. We'll have a better chance if we just stay here."

Arty wanted to say something back, but couldn't. She was right.

Turf looked around at the others. He followed Timbre just as closely as he had been since finding her, "Add that to the fact that they said that all of us are expendable aside from Arty and Timbre. The Grimm Brotherhood's gonna pursue us, right? If we're as far away from other people as possible, then no one else is going to be put in danger because of us."

"But…" Arty gripped Palette tighter. Like Timbre, Turf was right. They would be putting more lives in danger being around them, and Arty wasn't going to do that. He felt a hand on his shoulder. Looking over, he saw Curie's neon green eyes looking back at him from behind her glasses.

"We can't fight this alone, Umber. They've obviously been planning this since we got here. Before, even," she shook her head in defeat, "The best thing we can do is stay out of their reach to prevent whatever they're planning as their end game."

Arty wanted to argue. He wanted to point out that people were in danger, that people needed help, but in reality, they needed help as well. No matter how many times he said it or how many times a teacher went out of their way to confirm it, he was no Huntsman. Not yet. "Fine…" he stepped towards the door, Curie stayed in place.

It hurt her to see him so defeated.

Epazote began to follow. As worried as he was about Cayenne and Sepia, he trusted them to hold their own. They could handle whatever came their way. Both of them could help Roland get out of Amity, but he was practically useless up in a superstructure with hardly even a potted ficus nearby.

Alice didn't know why she was on the Grimm Brotherhood's list, but she wasn't sure she wanted to find out. She marched into the storm cellar behind Epazote and sat down on one of the heavy cushioned benches lying within.

Curie was left alone with Professor McGouran. She looked over to him. It was strange, only a couple of months ago she was helping him analyze the broken half of one of the Grimm Brotherhood's weapons while he made notes on the weapon's mechanisms and what went wrong during the fight with Team ARTS and Vincentas Saurus and the Grimm Brotherhood agents. Standing in a damp cellar on an island far from home as Grimm and psychos rampaged not ten feet above their heads made that feel like it was years ago.

Professor McGouran gently put a hand on her shoulder, "You're going to be alright. I can promise you guys will be perfectly fine. It sucks, yeah, but it's better than what could happen if the Grimm Brotherhood got to you guys," he jostled her towards the door, "Trust me."

"I can walk on my own." Curie pushed her glasses up the bridge of her nose as she observed the Huntsman. The whole situation bothered her, but she decided it was best to just go along with it just as everyone else had. As she stepped through the door, she looked to the hinges. She had caught Arty staring at them earlier. Normally, she would have attributed it to his short attention span, but as she looked closer, the shiny dark gray color looked familiar.

"I'll stay out here and keep watch. I'm not letting anything happen to you guys. Hopefully help gets here sooner rather than later."

As McGouran slowly closed the door behind her, Curie reached a hand out to the hinge.

She was immediately filled with dread as she sensed the complex mechanisms hidden all around the door. She went to turn around, but it was too late. Clicks and sliding metal could be heard all around the rusty door. She sensed each part moving and sliding into place.

They were locked in.

"Now _that_ sounded a bit odd," Alice stood, staring at the door, "You don't need _that_ many bells and whistles in a bunka on an island that's not supposed ta have any Grimm. What kind of expensive bloody system does this place have?"

Curie shook her head, "It's not that, Alice."

Arty grabbed Curie's wrist, "Hey. Curie. It's alright, we're safe for the time bein-"

" _No_ , I don't think we are, Arty," Curie kept her voice hushed. She snapped her head over to Alice and Turf, "How did you guys get to _this_ apartment building specifically?" her mind was reeling, but she needed to explain everything first. She had to be sure before she started panicking.

"He just lead us here," Turf shrugged, "He said that he saw you guys flying down from Amity, and told us to come on. We were already looking for Navy and Ebon, but didn't have any luck…" he looked to Alice, "Sound about right?"

Alice nodded, "What exactly are you on about, Curie?"

"You two didn't find it at _all_ strange that he saw us flying down from Amity among all those Grimm? You didn't find it strange he was looking up at Amity and not the chaos all around you?" Curie rattled off.

"Curie-" Arty reached out to her.

"Shut up, Arty." she kept her eyes locked on the pair from Team ANTE, "Did he leave you two alone when you first got here and fought off those Beowolves? At all? Even for a minute?"

"A little bit, yeah," Alice looked up at the door. Sure, it was dark, but she could make out the bits and bobs on the metal frame just fine, "Five, maybe ten minutes, yeah? Nothin' much. Just told us to keep safe while he inspected the first floor. Left us with a few Beowolves that we made quick work of. The Professa came back, an' we went up the way ta you four."

Curie held her head, "Oohhh my god…" Curie began to pace, "Did he say _exactly_ what he was going to do when he split up from you?"

"Will you get to tha point already?" Alice snapped.

Curie wasn't having any of the attitude, "How the hell did you guys know we were all the way up there? The building was _full_ of Grimm. Even if they were heading for a specific location, you wouldn't have been able to notice the pattern. Beowolves may be pack hunters, but they'll look in every nook and cranny for prey if they know there's some around."

"Now's not the time for your game facts, Cu-" Timbre started before being cut off.

"Answer my damn question!" Curie snapped to Alice and Turf, "Did you not find _any_ of his mannerisms _really friggin weird_ and out of the ordinary? He's _your_ teacher!"

"Ya panickin', and ya need ta calm down, Curie," Alice bit the nail of her thumb. Even aside from Curie, she herself was beginning to feel nervous. She chalked it up to the Grimm, but she still couldn't shake the feeling when out of their reach, "Well… There might have been…"

"His goggles were down when he came back to us…" Turf thought back to how McGouran rounded the corner into the lobby in quite a hurry, "I thought it was weird since he probably wouldn't need them if he was just peeking into rooms, but he's a Huntsman. He knows better than we do."

"Peeking into rooms? First floor and basement would've been first," Curie gestured around the room, "I don't see any civilians in here, do you? Besides, kinda weird since you two are the only ones from your team on that list, and he just _happened_ to find you both."

Despite knowing already, everyone passed nervous glances around the room.

"Yet he led us down here saying that residents would've come here first, but if he already checked when you first got here-"

"Then why did he say we needed to come down here to check for survivors and then lock us in this room?" Arty's face went pale.

Curie nodded and pointed to the lock, " _That_ … that whole system… this room… there's so many things that aren't supposed to be in here. They're not for safety. _None_ of it should be here. It doesn't match the level of degradation or even the material," her breathing quickened as she explained herself, "That metal you were looking at, Arty… the hinges… I've seen the metal and that handiwork before… It's the same that was on Agent Trex's weapon. Whoever made this system makes the Grimm Brotherhood's weapons. And we were just led into a trap laid by that same person… It was laid _after_ we landed on the roof."

"That's just mad talk," Alice shook her head. What Curie was proposing might have made sense had it not been McGouran of all people, "Sure it's just a misundastanding," she turned around and beat on the door, "Professa! Gonna have ta ask that ya ta let me out for a bit! Gotta stop by the loo!" she hit the door again, "Hello?! Professa?!"

"I can hear all of you perfectly well, Crims," McGouran's voice radiated from a speaker box in the top left corner of the storm cellar, "Thanks for making that all _waaaaaaay_ easier than I thought it'd be. Here I thought you kids would catch on before I could lock you in, but nope. Guess I just caught you guys at the right time! I was _hoping_ you'd all just keep quiet, but now you guys get to freak out for the next few hours!"

Timbre began sobbing as it became blatantly clear to them all.

Victor McGouran was a member of the Grimm Brotherhood.

Alice began pounding on the door again, "Let us out of hea, you bastard!"

Arty threw a punch at the metal, but of course, all it did was hurt his knuckles, " _Dammit!_ " he shouted in anger and pain. He looked frantically around the room, "I'm such an _idiot_! We walked right into this…"

"What's the problem, Mr. Umber?" McGouran laughed from the speaker overhead, "Six of the list all wrapped up in a nice big box with a pretty red bow, ready for Commander Maelstrom to open, and all it took was a few gadgets to keep that room locked up nice and tight."

Alice stepped back and readied some of her cards, prepared to blow the door off its hinges.

"I wouldn't do that, Ms. Crims. You might hurt somebody. That room's pretty tiny. Exploding cards might damage the goods, if you catch my drift."

Turf raised his shotgun.

"Same goes for any kind of ammunition, Mr. Fescue. It may not look it, but that metal's still strong enough to send most projectiles _ricocheting_. All six of your auras would be gone before even one of those hinges pops off. You really want to take that chance?"

Turf shouted in frustration and threw his weapon. The shovel head stabbing into the cushions of one of the benches, "You enjoying this? Tricking a bunch of kids for a year just to pull this little number?!"

"Uh…" McGouran clicked his tongue a few times from the other end, "I mean, it was pretty entertaining. For instance, it was really fun to sick Grimm on you guys, and then I got to take notes on what you guys could and couldn't do. It made something like this super easy."

Epazote lowered his arm cannon away from the door, "Great… So they've got everything on us on top of that…" he looked around at the other students, "but there's gotta be a way out, right? It's all improvised. There's a weakness in his plan somewhere."

A few people stomped their feet, a few pulled at their hair, but nobody could think of anything. They could all practically see McGouran smiling as he watched them struggle.

"Anybody got a spoon? We could dig a tunnel and join the rats in the sewers below us like in one of Sepia's movies…" Turf said, slumping to the ground in defeat.

Arty immediately got an idea, "Yeah… but I think you already have one, Turf."

Turf cocked his head, "Wait, wha-"

"Can you see where he's got cameras hidden in the shadows?" Arty asked, knowing Turf had the well-known Faunus night vision they'd learned in their history class.

"Just the one. Up there," Alice pointed into the corner before showing it Sepia's favorite finger, "Piece of rubbish."

Arty could see the faint reflection of a camera's lens, "Awesome." he stood up, "Everyone get ready…" he waved Palette towards the camera, "Hey! McGouran! I think you forgot something pretty obvious!" he lowered Palette, aiming it at the lens, "Cameras don't need to be shot down or blown up to stop working," he fired a paintball, this one a bright green. Rocks encased the camera. It didn't destroy the mechanism, but it did cover it completely.

"Not very nice, Umber, but you're still stuck in there," McGouran grumbled over the speaker, "I've thought of every failsafe imaginable to make sure you all stay put."

' _But I don't think he thought about how our Semblances and weapons interact with each other.'_ Arty signed to Timbre, who was still crying.

Timbre looked confused and scared, ' _Arty are you crazy?! What if he gets pissed and comes in here and-'_

' _He just proved he wouldn't. He knows we're still here. He just can't see us anymore._ '

Alice punched him, having the sense of mind to not speak up in fear of McGouran catching on. She shrugged, asking silently to let everyone else in on whatever he and Timbre were talking about.

Arty completely forgot that he, Curie, and Timbre were the only ones that knew sign language. _Oh…_ He pulled off his backpack and scrambled around for a piece of paper, but all he found was a receipt from one of the Amity concession stands. _It's limited, but I can work with this_. After pulling a pen from his pocket, he laid the receipt flat on the floor and began drawing out the plan he had in mind. Using his Semblance, the single picture was able to act everything out for him. After it played out, he wrote 'Got it?' at the bottom of the paper.

Curie pulled out her scroll but then thought better of it. McGouran was probably able to tap into their virtual communications. Though it pained her, she snatched the pen and made a small hand-written note next to Arty's. 'I don't know how you thought that up after hearing the word _SPOON_ , but let's try it.'

' _I'm glad you pay attention to people as much as you do, Umber. A lot of people misinterpret Turf's Semblance and Epazote's weapon has confused me since I met him._ ' Timbre signed as they all stood up. A faint smile passed over her face. For once that night, there was a glimmer of hope instead of another painful twist.

' _I try._ ' Arty replied with a quick flick of his wrist.

Turf held a hand over the center of the floor. It was all solid concrete, which wasn't what he was used to working with, but it still had relatively the same components that actual earth did. He couldn't do much, but making a small depression in it was relatively easy. With a divot made with his Semblance, he looked to Alice and Arty.

Alice nodded quickly while shuffling out the cards marked with hearts from one of her decks. All of them burned with the faint red glow. She laid them all out around the rim of the sort of bowl that Turf had made, then motioned for Arty to put in every bit of Fire and Magma Dust as he had on him. With all of that in place, they looked to Epazote.

Archimalter took shape in his hands. He placed down one of its two shields so that the face of it was pointing upwards. He kept the second shield over his chest, then looked over to Timbre.

Timbre fired a wire at the ground near the shield and then clipped it, firing the other end at the opposite side. She repeated this process a couple more times until the shield was held firmly in place against the concrete.

Working in two groups of three, they moved the two large cushioned benches to the far side of the room as far away from the tied down shield as possible. They all jumped behind their makeshift barricade, Epazote holding the other half of Archimalter's shield form to strengthen their defenses.

Arty looked to Curie and gave her a thumbs-up.

She nodded and pulled the battery she had managed to grab during all the chaos from her pocket. She flipped the side, turning it on to her favorite taser setting. For a moment, it made her wish Midas was there, but she had no time to worry about the rest of her team. She threw the battery to the middle of the room, arcing towards Epazote's shield.

.

McGouran just finished pulling on his black and red leather jacket, and his mask was just going on next. Even with the camera out, it wasn't like the kids were going to be able to do all that much. He finished strapping on a mask resembling a six-eyed demon with bared teeth. His weapon fit right over the sleeve of his jacket without an issue, and the mask itself was outfitted with far more gadgets than his goggles offered. Naturally, his enthusiasm when designing his devices came out while working on his actual projects.

He began speaking into the built in microphone of his mask, "You kids sure are being quie-"

 _ **BANG!**_

The ground rumbled, and then the sounds of distant splashing came from inside the booby trapped storm cellar. That could only have meant one thing.

"Dammit, they had enough Dust packing!" he shouted as he began jabbing at his scroll to unlock the door. The locks came undone quickly, but he could already hear the students shuffling out.

The door slammed open. A fractured hole broke through the center of the room. Bits of concrete and rebar were scattered, and even chunks of brick and mortar had found their way inside. Only two students remained inside: Alice, who was just jumping down into the busted sewer below, and Epazote, who was snatching up his shields for his getaway.

He raised his weapon before Epazote could jump down. A pair of steel balls with a chain between them shot out from a hidden mechanism in the base of the weapon. They wrapped around Epazote before he could grab the second shield. McGouran nabbed him by the chain as an electric pulse shot out from the bindings. It didn't take long for Epazote's scream to fade out.

.

"Oh my god! _Oh my god!_ " Timbre screamed as they ran down the sewers with Arty leading the way. She had heard the sounds of electricity crackling and she knew it wasn't Curie's battery. Looking back, she didn't see Epazote running with them, "Oh my god! He got Epazote!" she ran faster, pushing her body to exert itself harder than she was used to.

"Just keep running!" Arty shouted.

"Where are you even _takin'_ us, Umba?!" Alice yelled from the back of the line.

" _Away from him!_ "

"But, we can't just _leave_ him!" Turf shouted from just in front of Alice.

Timbre reached back and latched onto his hand to keep him from going back. She wasn't going to lose him through this too. She couldn't.

"If we can-" Curie stopped herself. If McGouran proved anything, then it was that they couldn't trust anyone in Remnant right now. Even the instructors could be with the Grimm Brotherhood. There was almost no telling who was and wasn't with them. All she was relatively sure of was that Arty, Timbre, Alice, and Turf weren't. Even Epazote fell into question with him gone.

"We just need to get as far away from him as possible!" she finally said. The smells of sewage and waste were overridden by the fear of being caught.

As they ran down the grimy walkway, Arty saw a culvert on the right. The pipe was just big enough for them to line up and hide in the shadows.

"Hey!" he whispered harshly, "In here."

"Is that such a good id-" Alice began.

"If we stop making noise for a little bit, he can't follow the echoes," he shot back quickly, "I don't see a manhole ladder anywhere but if you want to keep running and hope you find one before McGouran finds you, be my guest, Alice."

Alice looked back. She could hear the echoing thuds of someone running their way. She grumbled before shoving past him and entered the pipe.

Timbre, Turf, and Curie ran in after her, followed shortly after by Arty. Being so deep in the shadows, someone with average vision on the outside wouldn't be able to see them hiding in the small concrete tunnel.

However, McGouran wasn't the average person. The night vision setting in his mask turned everything a bright shade of green. A red arrow near the top of his vision pointed in the direction that his targets were heading. He could see the rim of the sewage pipes just fine, as well as the branching pipe that his students decided to run down, "Hey! How about you guys just stay put and stop running! It's not like you're going to shake me off your tails anytime soon!"

"Got any other ideas, Arty?!" Turf yelped. Even with McGouran far back, it felt as though someone was breathing down his neck, "He's onto us!"

"He's bluffing… he has to be…" Arty could barely hear anything over his heart pounding in his ears. If he didn't know better, he'd think that that alone would blow their cover.

"Then let's test that," Alice turned down the next left they came across. When she was sure that everyone was still behind her, she made a left, "Just follow my lead, and I'll get us all twisted up an' away from 'im."

Turf listened as they kept running. He could hear McGouran's clunky footfalls behind them. They paused, then resumed once more. They still grew closer, "Uh… guys?! It doesn't _sound_ like this is doing that much..!"

"How? We're being as quiet and confusing as possible!" Arty whispered, occasionally looking back to see if he could see their pursuer, "There's no way he could know where we are."

"Apparently he does, but how…?" Curie tried to think back and see if there was anything he could have tagged him with. The only thing that came to mind was when he pat her on the shoulder, but any kind of tracker would have been detected by her Semblance the moment it touched her, "Alice, Turf, did he ever lay a hand on you…?"

"Not me, no…" Alice huffed.

"Same…!" Turf tried his best to hold in the panic.

"Arty? Timbre?" Curie went on.

Both shook their heads.

"One of us has to have a tracker of some sort… it's too warm in here for thermal optics to do much for him," Curie wracked her brain for a solution, "Do any of you have something on your person that you haven't had long? Like somebody gave you something?"

"What kind of time frame is covered by 'long'?" Turf asked.

"A few days, weeks, months, since we started training. Anything where another infiltrator could've gotten a tracker on you."

Arty's eyes widened in realization, "Timbre…"

"What? What is it?" She looked back, trying her hardest to not be too loud.

Whoever had the tracker had to be one of the priority targets, meaning her or himself. If they'd had it long, the Grimm Brotherhood agents in the Maelstrom attack would've ganged up on them much easier. One of them had the tracker and they had got it recently. Arty hated to say it, but it was the only logical option, "Are you still wearing that necklace Titian gave you earlier today at your party?..."

Timbre and Curie fell silent.

"Arty… no…" Timbre grabbed the red medallion hanging from around her neck. She didn't want to believe what he was implying.

"Give it here." Curie reached out and yanked the necklace, making it's cord break. After a short pulse of neon green light passed through it, Curie found the truth lying within, "He's… he's right… There's a transceiver inside of this… They've heard everything you and anyone around you have said since you got it. They've known your _exact_ location all night… _our_ location all night!" Curie angrily threw the necklace.

There wasn't a splash as it landed square in the leather palm of Lieutenant Koloss's glove.

"So you can pick up on the fact that the room is booby-trapped, but it took you this long to realize one of you had a tracker?" McGouran's cold voice echoed from behind his mask, "Honestly, Ms. Geiger, I thought you were a bit more observant than that. You've been living and training with one of our agents for a year now, and you never suspected a thing. I guess Ms. Mars is a much better actress than I thought." he threw the tracker aside, seeing no more need for it.

There was no time to think. Turf only had time to move, and he wasn't going to let Timbre get taken. She was going to be a priority if McGouran had a choice. He swiped his shovel between McGouran and Curie and caught the flying chain and steel balls before they could wrap around her.

A jolt of electricity shot through him as he slid between McGouran and the others, "Go!" He released his grip on his weapon as he fell into the water.

"Turf! No!" Timbre yelled as the others struggled to move her along.

"Timbre! We have to move!" Arty yelled.

"We can try ta lose him again," Alice looked around, "We need ta find an exit!"

"We need a manhole or… drainage to the ocean!" Curie tried to figure their bearings as they ran, "If we keep moving north… we should hit the coast! We'll come right out and we can lose him that way!"

Timbre yelled and cried as she finally broke free from Arty and Alice's grasps, "No! I'm not leaving him!" she glared at the other three with tears streaming down her face. How could they leave Turf behind? How could they all leave Epazote behind? She wasn't losing Turf, not like that. She turned and ran back towards McGouran.

"Timbre!" Arty shouted. He looked to the other girls, "He can't take her."

"He can't take you either, Umber," Curie grabbed his sleeve, "You need to keep moving. She's hysteric. She'll only get us _all_ caught!"

"No." Alice got up in Curie's face, "That psycho's not gettin' my friends. If I recall correctly, these people are _your_ friends, too. If that was your boyfriend gettin' zapped by that masked loon, would you keep runnin' sayin' that we'd need ta keep movin' or would you go back and fight?"

"We don't have time for moral hypotheticals, Alice!" Curie glanced over to see Turf jumping back a step at a time to avoid McGouran's weapon, "He told us to go, we need to-"

" _ **AAAHHHH!"**_

Turf slammed down into the muck with his arms bound against his chest. A chain around him arced with electricity. The smell of ozone filled the air as his screams died down into a bubbling murmur, then nothing.

"Haven't you _children_ ever heard that you need to respect your elders?" Two targets had been secured, and only four remained. If things kept going this way, then Lieutenant Koloss would be a name that was revered among the Grimm Brotherhood and feared across Remnant.

"Turf!" Timbre slid down into the water and latched onto him to shield him from McGouran. Luckily, the electricity in the bonds had already fully discharged. Even with McGouran standing over them, she held onto Turf for dear life.

"There you go…" McGouran reached out his hand, only for a ripple of force to send him rocketing back a few feet. Just across from him, Alice held a hand full of cards.

She cast out a few more of her Force Dust infused Spades, each immobilizing McGouran for a second or two, "Runnin' out of options 'ere, guys!"

Arty looked to Curie, "You get out of here."

"No, Umber, I-"

"You don't have your weapon. You can't be caught up in this. Alice and I can fight back for a little bit, but you need to go," he hugged her tightly, "Please."

She stood her ground, "No."

"You have to get out of he-"

"I will fight him with my bare hands. You've all made your decisions, and I'm not letting any of you out of my sight."

Arty knew he wasn't going to win the argument, "Okay… fine." he held out a vial of paintballs. Bright cyan blue, "He gets anywhere close to you, you launch him through the wall, you hear me?"

"Got it," Curie nodded. She watched as Alice finally worked herself between McGouran and Turf and Timbre.

"You've only got thirteen of those Spades, Crims! You've used twelve!" McGouran batted away the thirteenth Spade. He huffed behind his mask, "You finally done…?"

McGouran ran for her, firing bolas to either side of her. With fast twirling side steps, she managed to dodge both, but not without one grazing her left arm. She shouted in anger as she threw another handful of cards.

Every single card exploded against McGouran's chest. The shockwave sent him tumbling back down the sewer and into the foul water flowing below them.

Alice strode confidently up to where her opponent had fallen. She sneered down at the bubbles slowly rising to the surface before she saw the glowing eyes of the mask break the surface, "If you actually paid as much attention as you give yourself credit for, Professa," she held her hands up. Between each finger glowed a bright red Heart, "You'd know I always carry a spare deck."

"Oh, did that give you a little confidence boost…?" McGouran chuckled as his feet hit the slippery bottom of the sewer, "Let me fix that."

Steam gently curled off the surface of the water around him. Then, all at once, a blinding haze of it exploded outwards from him. This was the Semblance that he had never shown them in action. This was exactly how he planned to get them if need be. Thick steam billowed down both ways of the pipe. Visibility was low in the dark, but at least they could see a few feet ahead. Now any and all visibility disappeared with the hot steam around them.

Alice coughed and sputtered as the hot steam filled her lungs. The heat made it hard to breath or see in the dank sewer. While she could see McGouran perfectly fine not a second before, she had no clue which way was which. She felt someone grab her by the back of her collar and shove her against the brick wall of the sewer.

Victor could see her perfectly through the x-ray setting on his mask's visor. It couldn't see far, but his target was within its range. In his hand was a petite skeleton frantically clawing for a way out of his grasp like scared prey caught in a trap, "The spoiled brat with one of the weakest auras in all of Remnant honestly thinks she can stand up to _me?_ How pathetic," Victor threw her to the ground, sending the Hearts sliding, "Considering who your father is, I honestly thought you would've ended up a shoo-in for our organization," he scoffed as he aimed his weapon at her, "Guess I was wrong."

Alice screamed as electricity jolted through her body. Every inch hurt as the smell of burnt hair mingled with the steam.

"Aw? What's the matter, Ms. Crims? No more tricks up your sleeve? Little weak girl can't fight back anymore?" he clicked his tongue and shook his head, "I'm sorry, but I'm going to have to fail you on today's assignment."

"Turf… please. Wake up." Timbre pleaded as she pried at the bindings holding her boyfriend. The jolt obviously hit Turf pretty badly considering he had fallen in the water. "Please!"

"Yeah, that ain't happening. That jolt's gonna keep him down for a bit. You know how well shock collars work on filthy dogs. Same thing," McGouran raised his weapon at Timbre, "But they also work well on idols too."

Glass shattered on his sleeve. Baby blue paint coated his arm. He'd seen it enough times to know what it was, "Sh-"

Another baby blue paintball slammed into his sleeve amidst the paint. A wave of force sent him slamming into the curved brick wall of the pipe. The clouds of steam shot down the surrounding pipes, partially clearing the air around them. He coughed to clear out the dust filling the vents of his mask, "Force Dust… Again…" he growled.

Curie stood defiantly. With the thick clouds of steam thinning out, she could make out the dark silhouette of a man struggling to push himself to his feet. The bright red dots of Grimm eyes and the blue glow of Dust made him more apparent in the fog. With McGouran down, she ran for Alice and began working at the bolas keeping her down.

Alice coughed, "Curie…"

"I'm working on it." she looked down into the water, "Timbre. Hurry up and get Turf out of the water! It'll be easier to get him back on his feet."

"Oi!" Alice rolled around to try to meet Curie's eyes, "Right pocket!"

"What?"

"Right pocket! At the edge of my dress where the black hem meets the red. There's a pocket where I keep my cards. Pull out a Club. It'll be easia to cut me out."

Curie rummaged around the outside of Alice's dress until she felt the hard block of a deck of cards. After struggling with the hem, she finally managed to pull out one of the aforementioned Clubs, "I don't know how you dress this formally all the time, Alice..." she began working at the wires.

"Now's not tha time ta criticize my fashion choices, okay?" Alice stretched her arms as the wires finally snapped.

"How are you still moving?" Curie watched on in awe. Alice had just taken a beating fighting McGouran, but there she was, back on her feet and ready to get back into it.

"Starting to get a higha pain tolerance. Kinda comes when you're beaten down ova and ova."

"Come on, keep pushing him!" Arty reached out and grabbed Turf by the arm before dragging him up the slope of the sewer to the walkway, "Okay… we're good… we can get out of this," he let go as they got Turf onto flat ground. He let out a sigh as Alice went to work on his bindings.

"No. You're. Not."

Arty turned to see Lieutenant Koloss aiming his gun right at him. He heard the whipping of the bolas heading right for him.

The jolt never came.

Curie grunted and grit her teeth as electricity discharged from the weapon wrapped around her torso, "Umber… go!"

Koloss held his wrist up to his mouth, "This is Lieutenant Koloss. If any of my wonderful subordinates happen to be in the Mistrali quadrant of the island or anywhere close to it, would you kindly enter the sewers and rally at my location? I have six targets primed for pickup."

Another bolas was fired, aimed right for Timbre.

Curie jumped in front of it, too. Another blast of electricity, this time followed by a scream.

Arty couldn't stand seeing Curie in pain, "Curie! Stop! Come on!"

"I said go, Umber!" she snapped her head back to McGouran, "Bring it on, old man! I work with more electricity than your piddly little yo-yos can dish out on a daily basis! I carry live batteries as tasers everywhere I go! This is _nothing_!"

Another set of bolas latched around her shins, sending her to the ground. She screamed again as another jolt passed through her.

"Curie!" Arty shouted, disbelief and fear plastered across his face.

"Just… go…" Curie said weakly.

Alice had just finished freeing Turf when she saw McGouran getting closer. The sounds of footsteps and Grimm were echoing from all directions. "Umba, listen to her!"

Arty didn't know what to do. He looked back and saw Timbre on the ground. Even though Turf was free, he still wasn't moving.

 _Pick him up, dammit! You can carry him!  
But those GB guys are almost here! And what about Curie!?_

 _She's down too, so carry them both!_

 _But we'll be caught!_

Arty grabbed at his head as he had yet another internal conflict.

"Turf! Please, wake up!" Timbre cried as she shook her unconscious boyfriend, "Wake up!" she was suddenly yanked away as someone grabbed onto her arm. The next thing she knew, she was running, "Arty! No! Let me go! We can't leave him!"

"We have to, Timbre!" Arty felt the tears coming, too. He didn't want to, but they had no choice. It was either them, or all of them.

"Up there!" Alice pointed to a ladder down one of the tunnels. Looking back, she saw the shadows of Grimm and more people in Grimm masks. "We need ta move!" She pushed Arty and Timbre towards the ladder.

Arty and Timbre moved on pure instinct. They didn't even realize they had climbed until the fresh sea breeze and the cold night air filled their lungs.

Alice kicked the manhole back in place before freezing it with one of her Diamonds. They couldn't rest, even for a minute. She pushed the pair from Team ARTS along as they were still stuck in their stunned stupor.

Out of the six that entered that cellar, only three were left out of the Grimm Brotherhood's grasp for the time being.

.

All eight swords were around her. Six stood with their handles facing up. In Carmen's hands were her red and violet blades. Her cheek was covered by streaks of wiped blood. Her hair was matted and wet with sweat. She huffed, slumping over slightly as she stared Gavin down. He was in a similar state, but had certainly lost more blood than her. Neither of them were looking great, but she was clearly handling herself better than him.

"Your aura is wavering… Gavin… One good hit's gonna bring you down…" she huffed, "Retreat or surrender… or I'm going to kill you…"

Gavin wiped a mixture of sweat and blood from his brow before cracking his neck. "You're not looking too good yourself, Professor," he held his staff at the ready, prepared to pull back another black hole arrow, "I don't know if you fully understand this, but one way or another, if one, or even both of us, die, Roland Solferino Wells is coming with the Grimm Brotherhood," he laughed, obviously exhausted from fighting, "But here's the thing… I'm not planning on dying tonight."

"None of us are…" she batted the other six swords up into the air. They spun with each repetitive slap, each sending a streak of color around her. Even when Gavin fired, a sword was there to deflect the projectile.

Carmen darted forwards within a bright blizzard of color. Beams of light shined like ribbons of stained glass as her violet and red blades clashed with his staff. She let go of them, grabbed another set out of the air, slashed with those, and repeated the process in one rapid flurry of prismatic motion.

"Finally pulling out the big guns, Maple?!" Gavin laughed as they exchanged blows, him occasionally throwing in a punch or a kick, utilizing his armor to do extra damage, "About time the famous laser sword juggling came out! I'm hurt. You waited _this_ long to finally do it? And here I thought you were trying to kill me!"

She didn't say a word. She didn't need to. A streak of green burned down into his left shoulder. Orange pierced his right thigh. Carmen Maple's technique relied on the speed that she had trained over the years, and she was pushing herself to her absolute limit. A third blade, her black one, pierced his left side just above his hip.

"When I was an active Huntress, I specialized in taking down Remnant's worst criminals... but I was also good at leaving them alive for questioning. It helps that a blade of light can pass through aura without much of an issue..." she pierced his right bicep with her white blade. She had already promised to kill him, but that was only an option that she would take if he absolutely forced her hand. She couldn't bring herself to do that if she could just subdue him.

"I wanted to save the world, Gavin, and I thought I could do that quickest like this." her red blade embedded itself in his left calf, "Then I became a teacher. I didn't want my students to be this," the yellow blade tagged him in the left forearm, "to become what I am."

She caught her red and violet blades.

Gavin gasped and fought against the pain. The burning of the laser blades searing through his flesh, "And what exactly are you, Professor Carmen Maple of Beacon Academy, former member of Team APCT?" he spat as he grimaced in pain, "Member of the Nexus, the incompetent shadow organization that can't even keep one _island_ safe, much less the entire planet?" he nodded over to Ray's body and Roland, "The woman who couldn't keep her own students safe and let hundreds if not thousands of people die for her group's misguided idea of justice and safety?"

"Then I guess I have to," she crossed her blades over one another like a pair of scissors. She put them around his neck, then steeled herself to slice them together.

Gavin ripped out the black blade stuck in his left side.

"I'm sorry that I have to do th-" Carmen stopped mid swing, mere inches from decapitating Gavin. A few muttered gasps escaped her mouth as her legs went weak. She looked down to see the dark beam of light forced through her chest.

Gavin smiled to his former instructor warmly, putting a hand on her shoulder, "Oh… I'm not."

Roland finally came out of the haze consuming him just in time to see the blade streak burning out from Carmen's back. His eye widened as she fell to her knees, her head slumped forwards. He watched her cough, red falling from her mouth. Those last words echoed as the black laser blade blinked off. When CiCi passed, he was at least thankful that he didn't have to watch. Now, seeing Carmen weakly turn her head with a look of despair on her face, her eyes becoming glassy as she silently apologized the world over to him, he felt the feeling that he had only dreamed of. Once again, he was losing the greatest teacher that he'd ever had.

Gavin swung around the keychain of the weapon he had just used to murder one of Beacon's best instructors, "Nice little keepsake." he tore the other blades from his body and stretched his joints, "At least the hag didn't leave me bleeding too much."

A buzzing came from his wrist.

"Agent Echo!" A modified woman's voice came over his transceiver.

"What is it, Hulud?" Gavin said with a hint of disgust in his voice.

"Where the hell are you? You were supposed to be at the rendezvous with Team ARTS ten minutes ago! From the looks of it, all you've managed to do is damage Wells and kill a Huntress. If you didn't have one of our priorities bleeding out next to you, I'd activate you and Koloss's code early!"

"Yeah yeah, I'm on my way." he pressed the button to hang up on her, "Annoying old bi-"

" _ **I'LL KILL YOU, GAVIN!"**_ Roland screamed as he forced his arms to work beneath him. He was already beginning to push himself up off the tiles. Visible wisps of what could have only been aura curled off of him. The feeling that he hadn't fully felt when CiCi passed was the pure, incomprehensible rage that lied at the very core of his being. The red around him burned brighter than any natural aura could, " _ **ARE YOU HAPPY?! ARE YOU HAPPY WITH WHAT YOU'VE DONE?!"**_

Gavin watched a pulse of red emanate off of the Otter Faunus. As it crossed over him, he felt the fair bit of aura he still had instantly shatter. Dark lines of black crossed Gavin's body. He could hear his armor's system blare an alarm indicating his aura wasn't protecting him anymore.

"What?!" he saw Roland push himself to his feet, "No… not now!" Gavin backed away from Carmen's body. He could feel nothing but anger, but it wasn't his own. It was unnatural. It was something that his mind couldn't quite process.

Roland was already back to his feet. Each slow, aching step seemed to shake the ground around them. He bent over slowly, grabbing onto the red blade that Carmen had left, " _ **YOU THINK IT'S FUNNY THAT YOU KILLED HER?! HUH?!"**_ he slashed at Gavin wildly, " _ **I DON'T THINK IT'S VERY FUNNY."**_

Gavin turned, now fearing one of the blades that were being thrown around at him meer moments before. He had no choice. Being so wounded and having no aura, he couldn't take the chance in fighting Roland. There was only one option. He turned and ran for the rendezvous.

The red around Roland dulled, " _ **Where the hell do you think you're going, Gavin?!"**_ he took a step forwards, but his knee fell out from under him, " _ **Get back here!"**_ he screamed as he fell on his stomach, " _Get…"_

The world began to go black. He could make out Gavin's silhouette stopping as the platform lowered. Gavin started to move back towards him now that the rage had subsided. He suddenly looked shocked before he continued to run away.

A flurry of wind sent a chill through Roland as the arena faded away.


	75. V3Ch22: The Fall of Amity

Cayenne ducked low and pressed her back against the cool metal siding of one of the concession stands. Had it not been for the Grimm Brotherhood's infighting, then they wouldn't have been able to even get this far. Something was up, and at least a few people wanted them dead instead of captured, but that was keeping them from being taken in. She didn't want to look that gift horse in the mouth, "Did we lose them?"

Sepia slammed her eyes shut. Orbs appeared down the hall from which they came and all around in the adjacent rooms. While it would give away that she was watching, it wouldn't give away her location completely. Samhain and Captain Sanguwalker, who they now knew as Pohela Falgun of Team FSTV, were nowhere to be seen.

She gave a thumbs up to Cayenne.

"Thank the gods…" Cayenne peaked over the concession stand to see an archway leading out to the arena. Strangely, all had gone quiet, and she knew Roland well enough to know for sure that it wouldn't be if he was still alive and fighting, "We're in a good position to help Rol… but I don't think he's…"

Sepia slid around the stand and sprinted through the archway. All she could do was hope that she saw everything wrong. Her orbs had fizzled out at the sight of the second body in the arena.

 _Please be wrong… Please be wrong… Please…_ she stopped when she caught a glimpse of the arena. Her hand latched onto one of the stadium seats to keep her from completely falling over, _No… Gods, no…_

Carmen Maple laid motionless just a few yards away from Ray's body with a seared hole through her back. It was right over her heart, undoubtedly made from one of her iconic laser swords. Six swords were around her, and two of them were missing. The color from her lips and cheeks had faded. She was gone, frozen in a blank stare at the puddle of blood and ink across from her.

Black and red streaks led up to another smaller puddle that was swept to the side. Carmen's sacrifice had seemingly been in vain, as Roland was missing and Gavin was gone. Just like that, some of the things that made her love Beacon so much were gone. The teacher that she admired most was dead, her boyfriend that she loved so dearly was gone, and her role model had turned against them.

"Professor Maple…" Cayenne stared down at the arena next to Sepia, "She can't be… She…" she couldn't believe what she was seeing. Even in the short time that she had known Carmen, she had learned that the woman was nothing to sneeze at, "Sepia, I… I'm so sorry…"

"Don't worry, you'll be seeing her again soon enough."

"They just never let up, do they…?" Cayenne wiped away the tears brimming at her eyelids and turned to face Samhain. It wasn't too terribly surprising that they'd know how to avoid being seen by Sepia's Semblance, "When is all of this enough, huh?"

Samhain extended the blades of his shears, "Only when all of the Virtue lines are destroyed," he flew at Cayenne, ready to slice her to ribbons.

 _Virtue…?_ Cayenne hopped back with her hammer held straight out in front of her. The gas line from the canister on her back kicked on. A tiny flame burned near her wrist. Fire spewed out of the nozzle at the peak of her weapon. Waves of flame bathed Samhain's path.

Samhain disappeared among the towering ring of fire burning across the stadium seats.

Cayenne searched for him. Any of the shadows cast around among the bright embers could've been him, but none had made a move yet.

"Looking for someone?"

Neither she nor Sepia had time to react. Only Cayenne caught a glimpse of the embers slipping to her left. She felt a hand slam around her neck and hoist her up, then watched as a railgun was lifted towards Sepia.

"Ah, ah, ah, put the guns down, or you won't even have a chance to save her," Samhain's trigger finger ached to slam down and take one of the girls out, "I don't mind to kill you, but it's going to make things a lot easier if you're second. Those odds are a hell of a lot better, huh?"

Sepia grit her teeth. She had heard what Samhain's Semblance could do from Opal, and she experienced it firsthand. It wasn't lethal. It took time. That was time that she could use to save Cayenne. Considering her options carefully, she lowered her weapons to her sides.

"On the ground."

She clutched the handles of her guns tighter.

"I said, on the ground."

Hesitantly, she dropped Avant and Garde to her sides.

"Good, now…" he looked back at Cayenne with his dark ringed eyes, "What could the very embodiment of Fear possibly be afraid of? The usual spiders? No… The dark? No…" His grip tightened further as he dug deeper into Cayenne's mind. A wicked grin spread across his face as he found it.

"Ah… there we are..." he wrapped an arm around Cayenne, holding her in front of him to use as a shield against Sepia, "So the little thief is afraid of being alone. Nothing scares her more than her friends, her family, even her own _enemies_ abandoning her. Isolation seems fitting for someone as popular as you seem to be," he chuckled as he held his blades up to her neck, "Don't worry, you don't have to be afraid of being alone."

The screams and gunfire from the outside rim of Amity fizzled out. The bright stadium lights dimmed. Not a bit of popcorn or spilled drinks littered the stands. Any sign of life was gone from Amity Colosseum. Every presence around her faded. The hand around her neck disappeared, and she fell to her knees on empty stairs.

"Because you already are…" said an unknown, echoing voice that faded out into the vast, soul crushingly empty coliseum.

Something shifted around her. A gust of air whipped across her face, a few creaks came from the nearby seats, and then everything went completely still. Not even a rat scurried around in the shadows.

"S-Sepia…?" Cayenne looked around. Her friend was gone, and so was Samhain. It couldn't have been real. It had to just be his Semblance… but could it replicate that feeling? Could it bring back the sense of loneliness that only came when no one was there?

She looked down to the arena only to find what she had been horrified of seeing before. Ray and Carmen were still there, but that was all. No one else. Was it all over? Had she blacked out, and the Grimm Brotherhood was gone? Had everyone been evacuated?

"Sepia?! Epa?! Rol?!" she called out. All she heard was the echoing of her own voice. No one was there, "Saf?! Pep?! Anybody?!"

No one.

She scrambled to her feet and ran for the archway. Everything was cleaned and packed up. Every food stand. Every souvenir stand. All packed up. All ready for storage. Not a soul wandered the halls.

She ran through a corridor to get out to the outer ring of Amity. No one was there. No airships. No civilians. Nothing. Just past the edge was where the city underneath was supposed to be sprawling. Even if the attack was over, then there should have been evidence of something. Fires burning. Grimm still kicking. Something.

Nothing.

She stood at the edge of the outer ring. No lights shone up from below. No fires burned. No Grimm crawled the streets. Not a person was seen. The only living person left on Vytal was Cayenne Canella. She was completely, utterly alone.

"Someone?! Anyone?!" she fell back and away from the edge, "Please?! _Somebody! Please!"_ she screamed with her arms wrapped around her chest. She couldn't handle this. Not again. Never again. There had to be someone nearby. There just had to be.

White filled her vision like wisps of fire. It pulsed out into the empty space around her, then slowly began to fade. The loneliness, her greatest fear, sunk down into her deeper than she could have ever imagined. She was completely, utterly, and undeniably alone. There was absolutely no one for her to see, hear, or even talk to.

Cayenne Canella laid crying within her own greatest fear.

* * *

Gavin Quasar's limp was already starting to fade. The built-in injection systems in his suit pumping painkillers and adrenaline into his veins were working overtime to keep him moving. The suit wasn't just made for enduring a long battle and dealing damage, but also for making an escape when needed.

"Dammit!" he cursed and laughed as he stretched his muscles, parts of his limbs going numb from both the damage and the chemicals, "Looks like the hag did much more to me than I thought."

A loud humming reverberated down the walkway, growing even louder as he drew closer to the source. An Atlesian airship rose up in front of him, taking up one of the large archways leading out to the open air below him. While it was definitely Atlas make, it wasn't theirs anymore as indicated by the eight-spoked wheel painted in black on the side.

The open passenger bay was filled with a few familiar faces, as well as a few familiar masks.

"Agent Echo! What in Remnant happened to you?!" a woman in a mask made up of rings of triangular teeth shouted at him. Her voice was filled more with disbelief rather than concern for his well-being, "You didn't even get Wells after killing that woman?!"

"Yeah… well, things changed." Gavin cracked his neck, "Pesky Huntress, awoken powers, oh, and getting impaled. Stuff like that tends to throw a monkey wrench into even the most well thought out plans, _Lieutenant Hulud._ " he snapped at her. He despised working with agents from other branches, save for a select group of old friends. The three Lieutenants other than Koloss got on his nerves the most.

She threw back her head, "Whatever. Just get in the ship. You have other places to be, remember? Kokonatsu and Deathstalker are waiting for you to bring the last member to your little surprise party." she pointed to his belt, "You didn't happen to let them get destroyed in your tussel, did you? The Commander wouldn't be very pleased to hear about that if y-"

Gavin held up two canisters, one glowing a bright red, the other a bright orange, "Don't get your panties in a twist, Hulud. I got them." he climbed into the ship and sat next to one of the others that weren't wearing their mask. He looked down at the girl in the red cloak. She looked shaken up and her cheeks were wet with tears, "What's up with you? What happened out there?"

Dante stared down at the fur coat bundled in her arms. It took everything within her to just sit upright. She pulled away from Gavin in her seat, not wanting to even be near another agent, "Why… why did you hurt my brother like that…?"

Gavin looked away from her. The other glowing Grimm eyes in the passenger bay looking back at him. He could tell they were expecting him to make a mistake, to do something wrong, "He would've killed me had I not done that," he gripped the canisters tighter, as if fearing they'd fall out of the airship, "We didn't get him, so what does it matter?"

Dante didn't look at him, she still clutched the coat.

"Okay, what would _you_ have done if you were the one that had to confront them? You were there too, you know."

"Back off, Echo." Pohela Falgun flipped back her black and rainbow hair as she cleared some of the frazzled strands from her face, "She's been through quite a bit tonight, especially now that one of our traitors has finally shown themselves," she clenched her hand a few times, showing him her bandages, "We don't have many of the potentials from Maelstrom's main list, but we have plenty of the ones from her secondary priorities." she pat the wall behind her. A few muffled shouts came back from the cargo area, "You may have failed at retrieving all of Team ARTS in one fell swoop, but I'd hardly call tonight a failure."

"Not to mention that the night's still young!" The man in a Trex mask added jovially as he held up a green canister similar to the ones Gavin held, "So cheer up, both of you. Life's going to be so much easier for us now that we don't have to pull double-duty with our missions and pretending to be goody-two-shoes students. Right, Echo?"

"Will you… will you both stop acting like that…" Dante murmured. The sounds of their captives, each scream and shout, made her hurt more and more. She had already lost friends, and now she was betraying them. She hated those around her. She hated herself, "This isn't funny… we _killed_ people tonight… we… we…" she drew a shaky breath, "we did _this_ …"

Captain Trex crossed his arms and went silent, "Well, the night's almost over, and your part's done."

A scoff came from the far end of the passenger bay, "The first night out in the open, and you don't even take part in the festivities. What a shame. All this work, and you don't even try to enjoy it, Sister." Ahab shook his head as he played with one of his harpoons, "Thought you'd at least try to finish off the two you wounded back in Va-"

Pohela threw her arm up, letting a tendril of paint cover Ahab's mouth, "You'd be best to keep your mouth _shut,_ Agent Gnile. We've already had enough infighting tonight, we don't need to have any more." she threw a glare to Dante, "Especially between siblings."

"Please just… just stop… I don't want to be here anymore… I don't want to go through this hell anymore…" Dante turned her head away, "Please…"

Trex began to walk over to her, his hand out and ready to console her, "D, you're being a little-"

"I said that I don't want to go through the hell we've created!" she snapped at him, "Just get me out of here. _Now."_

"Fine, fine," Captain Trex sighed, "That alright by you, Lieutenant?"

"We're heading out anyways. You and Agent Echo are needed elsewhere." she held her wrist up to her mouth, "Commander Maelstrom. All operatives are on the airship, minus a traitor. It appears Agent Geist has a few problems with our end goal. Captain Sanguwalker and Agent Gnile tell me he's still on Amity. I'd love for you to go ahead and activate Agent Echo's virus, but I believe that one of our primary targets is still up here. Shall I send one of our agents back out to retrieve her?"

"Oh, don't worry about Sammy. I pushed him off the side of Amity," a woman clad in a loose fitting black cloak and a mask resembling a snake that was half black and half white. She raised up the mask, revealing the spunky face of Tinsel Comet, "Nabbed his weapon when I did, shot him through the chest, and let that dude fall. Too bad Cayenne got away…"

"Unfortunately, Canella managed to get away with some Nexus jerk. What's even more unfortunate is that she's still not awoken. Samhain's Semblance didn't do what we thought it might… but that could be a good thing from the right angle. The girl would've been a lot harder to deal with if she actually knew she was a target _and_ Samhain got a hand on her," said the man in a bird skull mask, though one that looked far more rugged than a Nevermore or a Sanguwalker, behind Tinsel. He took off the mask as well to reveal his curly pink hair. Valentino wore his usual fake smile, "I can confirm that Samhain is dead, though," he held up Samhain's shears, "We even retrieved his weapon as proof. We thought that Captain Sanguwalker might suspect us, but we began getting close to Samhain so that we could put him down if we needed to. Trusting us was his biggest mistake. It made taking the treacherous bastard out all that much easier."

Pohela sat back. She didn't know whether to be impressed or suspicious, "His weapon is no _proof_ of his death, but I guess the fact that he doesn't have it means he's less of a threat if he is in fact still alive." she looked between the pair. Ever since their team match against Team STON, they had been acting strangely. She guessed that getting in with a traitor was a possible explanation, "You two will answer to Lieutenant Chiman when we're through here. I'll let _him_ decide what to do with you, but if I detect even a _hint_ of further treachery from my unit, I swear I wi-"

"That is certainly enough, Captain Sanguwalker," Lieutenant Hulud cut in, "Unless we are sure of treachery, we must keep up relations within the Brotherhood. Do not let previous quarrels shroud your judgement."

Pohela wanted to talk back, but she had to accept facts, "Well…" she glanced to Valentino and Tinsel, "I guess FSTV did go for its assigned objective, despite the obvious snafu. It was TCSC that went against direct orders from Commander Maelstrom."

" _Exaaaactly_ , Sangu!" Trex gave her a thumbs up, "Your guys followed orders, despite not getting the results we wanted. Me and Hulud's guys… however…"

"Those under my command have fallen short. It would seem that Team TCSC was far more insidious with their methods. However, let's not complicate any further investigations," Hulud took her seat, "Let's be off."

The airship slowly moved away from the superstructure.

Hulud returned to her conversation with her superior, "Did you catch all that, Commander?"

"Yes, I heard everything. You may all trust that I will handle this with the utmost care," said the familiar voice of Commander Maelstrom, "I hate that we must do this, and I dearly hope that we gave civilians enough time to get down. Let us all pay our respects to those fallen tonight."

Everyone turned to face Amity as they flew around it in a wide circle. The entirety of Vytal lay sprawled out before them. Some watched in anticipation, some with indifference, some with abject glee, but Dante in particular watched on in horror, her fingers clutching Robin's fur coat tightly.

The lights at the base of Amity flickered out one by one. The giant white crystal underneath it slowly began to dim, as if the light inside it was being snuffed out.

.

Amity's lights were dying off one by one up the superstructure. Arty, Timbre, and Alice had all seen it power up on the first day of the festival, and it seemed that the power down sequence was just the reverse. However, it shouldn't have been happening while it was still airborne.

They all had the perfect view in the cobblestone courtyard of the Mistrali quadrant that they were using as a safe spot to collect themselves. With nothing but a few small, scattered buildings and cherry blossom trees around them, they watched the calamity beginning to unfold.

"What… what in the 'ell is goin' on…?" Alice murmured, her fearful blue eyes locked onto the gently tilting structure. They were a mile away, sure, but there had to be hundreds, if not thousands, of people still up on Amity or around it. For a split second, she was halfway thankful that the only dangers they were dealing with were lunatics and Grimm that they could reasonably hide from, but then the reality of what was happening began to set in. Everything that they trained for, worked for, and studied for was falling apart. Those people on and around the focal point of the disaster were they ones that they strived to, lived to, and swore to protect, but they couldn't. None of them could do a single thing to keep those people safe, and that soul-crushing realization fell over all of them like a numb haze. Hope was falling with Amity Colosseum.

Rubble exploded out of the open-air arched peak of the Perch of Amity as the colossal white crystal crashed down upon it. The creaks and groans of metal echoed across the island as Amity Colosseum didn't stop on its usual resting place, falling at just an odd enough angle to stay in gravity's embrace. Now sideways, the superstructure continued its descent towards the hill at the center of Vytal.

Timbre fell to her knees and screamed as Amity hit the ground, crushing half of the colonnade surrounding the Perch's base. Buildings came next, falling instantaneously as the stadium rolled into them.

"Oh my god…" Alice couldn't believe what she was seeing. She took a step back when she heard metal clang against the cobblestone and rubble next to her, "U-umba?..."

Palette had fallen from Arty's hands as he fell to his hands and knees, wretching as he watched the stadium come to a stop. Like Timbre, tears flowed freely down his face. They had the chance to do something, they could've prevented at least part of the chaos, but all they did was run and hide. They were alive, but at the cost of some of their closest friends being taken and the loss of who knew how many people that were still in and around Amity.

"No…" he reached out and grabbed Palette as he grit his teeth, "I'm sick of them doing this. I'm tired of running and being scared of them."

"This is far from runnin', Umba… We…" Alice's arms folded in so that each elbow rested in the palm of the other hand. It was about the only thing that she could do to stay grounded in this situation. She had to ignore her racing heart, flowing tears, and uneasy stomach. She had to ignore how eerily silent the island had become; how many of the deafening cries and screams had been squelched, "There wasn't a single thing we could do… nothin'..."

Arty shook his head violently, unwilling to accept what was nothing but a failure on their part, "There are people still up th-"

"What are you gonna do, huh?!" she shouted before he could begin getting even an ounce of frustrated hope across, "Ya gonna go up there an' search for survivors in the middle of all _this?!_ Ya gonna go an' try an' take on the other psychos that are gonna be crawlin' all over that place?! I know you are _not_ gonna have the heart to kill someone after all this _bloody MESS!_ Ya not a hero right now, and I ain't eitha! I can't do a _thing_ , an' you, an' Timbre, and whoever else can't do a thing either. We…" her arms fell to her sides in defeat, "We're nothin' right now…"

Arty grabbed her by the sleeves, "As far as I know, my _friends_ , my _team_ …" he fought back tears as he gripped her tighter, "my _family_ could've been up there."

"An' there's a whole lot more than just them that could've been too, but _we_ aren't. If we go up there lookin' for _anyone_ , then they'll be caught in the crossfire if those goons or Grimm come afta us," Alice froze as a secondary feeling of dread began to was over her. She could feel those red eyes drilling into her from every angle. She glanced over to Timbre, who was still on the ground, "Timba, ya need to get up…"

Timbre hugged her arms closer around herself, "How can you do that?..."

Alice drew cards, her intuition telling her something was coming, "Now's not the time, Tim-"

"How can you sit there and say that as if there wasn't a chance?!" Timbre shouted, the swirl of emotions coming out full-force, "Two of our best friends are up there, fighting for their lives! They're doing something when we just _ran_!"

Heavy swoops came down the alley from behind her. Through the darkness, there wasn't any way to see what was coming, but it was obvious that it was big.

"The world's falling apart around us, and we _ran_! The ones we've been trained to help, the ones we love, even the people we couldn't stand for the most pathetic of reasons could still be up there! There are survivors, I know it, and you know what, Alice!?"

"Timba!" Alice shouted as the massive beast leaped for the raging singer.

A mass of coarse black feathers appeared behind Timbre. The painted mask resembling the skull of a raven appeared from the shadows, bright yellow lights singing deep within its sockets. The wounded Nevermore's head reached just above the second story windows of the buildings behind Timbre, and its crumpled wings were crammed between the street. Its beak shot down towards her like a black spike.

"Timbre!" Arty shouted, raising Palette, despite knowing he wouldn't have the time to shoot enough Dust to keep the beast from hitting his teammate.

Timbre grabbed the hilt of the damaged sword strapped to her back, " _I'm tired of running!_ " she dashed between the Grimm's spindly legs, barely avoiding its massive beak, "All it does is get those around me to get hurt!" she slashed back, slicing right through the Nevermore's ankle. It's left leg buckled, unable to support its weight anymore.

She leapt up, stabbing the blade into its back, causing it to roar in pain, "I will kill every damn Grimm on this island as long as there's a chance to save somebody!" Using the blade as leverage, she pulled herself higher up the monster's back. She stood, her boots against its shoulders.

The Nevermore weakly craned its neck around to peck the pest standing on it. Its maw went to snap around Timbre.

"I don't care if I get taken!" Tears flew as she reared the sword back, both hands wrapped around its hilt, " _I refuse to lose anybody else!_ " she drove the blade between the Grimm's eyes. It's head fell as the bright lights within its skull dimmed and blinked out.

Black mist faded into the air as Timbre fell to the ground, using Sonara as a rest. She glared up at Alice, "I'm. Not. Done. Not until I know I've done everything I can. You will _not_ stop me."

"I…" Alice wanted to run, but she knew full well that Arty would go with Timbre, and she didn't want to go at this alone. Maybe if they were lucky, then they could find some of their friends alive.

"I'll take point…" she sighed as she began speed walking towards the fallen superstructure, "If ya ain't gonna stop, then I haven't a choice. We find survivors, and hope for an evac ship. Come on."

Timbre didn't say another word to Alice before turning to Arty.

"Don't worry. I'm with you." he reassured her.

She nodded back before the three of them took off down the street towards Amity Colosseum as fires burned around them.

.

 _Why is everything so cold?_

Cayenne's eyes fluttered open to the sounds of people shouting and running far away. Fire crackled nearby, its warmth burning her skin. She pushed herself up, confused by the sudden shift in temperature.

"I could've sworn…" she stopped, realizing that she could hear _people_. She rubbed her temples, glad that the illusion was gone.

"Oh my gods!" She jumped to her feet, but stumbled, barely managing to regain her footing before falling flat on the ground again, "Sepia! Roland!" she called out, but she didn't get a response. That's when she noticed she had no idea where she was. _This isn't Amity… where am I?..._ Looking around, she could see large pillars surrounding her, each veined with bright light.

"I'm at the Pillars?... How did I?..." she stopped, her breath catching in her throat as she noticed something large towering over her to the left, where some of the pillars had fallen. Her heart sank when she realized it was Amity Colosseum, lying on its side just down the hill from where she stood.

She stumbled back in shock, "Oh my gods… Amity… Amity _fell?!_ " she looked up the side of the Perch. Jagged stone protruded where the top observatory used to be, "Oh my gods!" _How did I get here, then?... How did I survive that?!_

"Ga…" a cough came from someone to her right, "Gavin…"

Cayenne swivelled towards the voice, her hammer drawn and ready for a fight, despite her dizziness. She almost screamed when she saw the hat, "Roland?!" she ran to the Faunus's side.

"Cayenne…?" he groaned as he slowly opened his eye, "What… _agh…!_ " he cupped his hands over the left side of his face, his fingers passing over the burning trench left where his left eye used to be, "What… what just…" he looked up at the fallen superstructure, "That… that _**BASTARD!"**_ he scrambled to stand, but tumbled back over immediately, his right arm keeping him from falling over completely, "Where the hell is he?!"

Cayenne could only stare at Roland's face. She had seen the blood on the feed, but she had no idea that the wound was _this_ bad.

"Where-" he tensed as the pain crashed into him again. All the adrenaline flowing through him was wearing off. He was starting to feel what his body was so graciously letting him ignore. The sharp, hollow pain in his face was more than he ever knew was possible.

" _What happened to me?!"_ he screamed as he finally came to the full realization of what he was missing. So much had been going on before that he hadn't fully processed that he couldn't see anything on his left side. It wasn't even dark. It simply did not exist anymore, " _ **What happened to me?!"**_

"Roland…" She covered her mouth. No matter how hard she tried, the words just wouldn't come out.

" _ **I can't…"**_ the words couldn't come out, "I can't…" he looked down at the hazy reflection on Writer's Block's reel. It was curved, and certainly wasn't a great mirror, but it was good enough to see the meaty red line on the left side of his face, "My… my eye… it's… Gavin…" his fist clenched, but he didn't raise his voice. His lip quivered with each agonizing word, "It's gone…"

Cayenne reached out to him in an attempt to keep him calm, but she was never good at being calm herself, much less helping others calm down, "He's not here, Roland…" she had to keep his mind off of the pain and off of his rage, "How… how did we get here? The last thing I remember was-"

She stopped, remembering the empty fear and loneliness she had felt while under the effects of Samhain's Semblance, "fighting off some of those GB guys on Amity… but…" she looked to the downed stadium. "What the hell happened, Rol?"

"I don't…" he grit his teeth as the burning sensation flared up, "I don't know… I passed out after Gavin ran away… after he…" he fought back tears at the thought of Carmen's sad, blank eyes, "We… we need to find help… now…"

Cayenne looked back up the Perch of Amity. A few stones crumbled and fell off its side to her right, "I don't know where to get help, but I do know we can't stay here. The Perch got damaged when Amity fell… I don't know if it'll stay standing much longer," It pained her to think of her first sight of Vytal no longer being there by the end of the night, but it was a reality she knew they might have to face.

"An airship might see us if we're out in the open…" he reached out an arm to her, "My balance… can you…?"

"Yeah! Yeah." her hammer folded up and clasped to her side before she knelt down, wrapping an arm under Roland's to help him up, "Come on... there we go."

"Thanks…" he stood carefully, the world spinning around him. He kept his left arm to his side so that Cayenne wouldn't have to support Writer's Block's weight as well. He gestured weakly towards one of the crumbling holes left by a falling beam between the pillars. It wasn't a formal exit, but it's be the fastest way out so that they might catch a few spotlights, "Let's get moving…" he groaned as he took his first step, "Sepia… is she… already looking for survivors…?"

Cayenne turned away as they began to walk, "I… I don't know what happened to her, Roland… One minute I'm fighting Samhain, the next… I was here… I'm sorry."

"She's… she's probably fine… it's Sepia…" he cast his gaze up at the pillars that they passed. He could see cracks running through their marble faces, but they seemed to be holding for the moment, "Probably gave him hell and ran off to find us…"

Cayenne didn't want to point out that she was up in Amity along with them, and she wasn't with them down in the pillars. She couldn't help but shake the feeling that something went horribly wrong once Samhain's illusion set in, but she couldn't let Roland see that, "Yeah, she probably did… Come on, don't stop now. We're almost out of here."

"Yeah… yeah, I…" he heard the air shift above him. Bits of stone began to litter the ground one by one. The ceiling and the columns around them were beginning to crumble, "Cayenne, you need to go…"

Cayenne looked up and saw that Roland was right. A large piece of the ceiling fell, missing them by mere feet. She tried to pick up the pace, but, with Roland's weight on her shoulder, she wasn't able to do so by much. "Come on! You need to move, Rol!" she shouted, panic in her voice, "This place is coming down!"

He had to do something, but he couldn't feel the familiar hum of his aura. Inkheart wasn't going to be of any use to him. All he was at the moment was a weight across Cayenne's shoulders, and she wasn't going to just let him go.

As a sky-blue-veined pillar began to lean to the side, Cayenne felt a hand planted against her back. Even after the wounds he sustained in his fight against Gavin, Roland shoved her away towards their crumbled exit. She whipped around in time to see him begin to run after her, but it was too late. One of the pillars slammed down. The roof above caved in. She was left facing the explosion of rubble to follow, and Roland was left inside.

All she heard as the ruined structure settled was the horrible, gut-wrenching scream of her friend.

.

Anubis and Set both stood motionless on the rooftop of the hotel reserved for Beacon students. Grimm flooded the streets, Grimm Brotherhood grunts ran effortlessly between them whilst toting their signature black carbines, and Amity laid lifeless on the hillside. They watched in horror as the Pillars of Vytal fell around each other one by one like dominos. Only the half ruined Perch of Amity stood in the rubble.

"This can't be happening…" Anubis said quietly as he watched on in horror. He and his twin had decided to watch the closing ceremony from Team ASHS's hotel room. That seemed like ages ago to him now, as their night had turned into a fight for survival. Before communications went out, they had learned that Cerb, Hati, and Sköll were with their parents and Yamuna was with Xannie, but there was no telling where their family and friends were scattered about now.

"It… it shouldn't be… it's not…" Set babbled in his state of shock. This wasn't what Gavin promised. This wasn't what he thought he was signing up for. Even to him, it was painfully obvious why Amity fell. The Grimm Brotherhood had gotten into the system, and he knew exactly how, "We… we need to find Gavin. _Now._ "

"What?" Anubis turned to his brother, "N-no. You _saw_ him up there. He's _with_ those monsters! We need to find our family and stay as _far_ away from him and the rest of the Grimm Brotherhood. In case you forgot, they named _us. They want us, Set!_ "

"And _he_ told _me_ that he was turning against him, Anu!" Set snapped back, "He played me, and now… now this is my mess to clean up. You can go and hide, but I need to do this."

Anubis grabbed Set by the shoulders, "Hey! Set! What in Remnant are you talking about?! Turn against who? What mess?"

Now wasn't the time for more secrets. Set couldn't let more people get hurt because he was scared to fess up, "Gavin convinced me that getting him into Amity's system could prevent the Grimm Brotherhood from doing this, and told me that he was working from the inside because they weren't doing what he originally signed up for. That's what I was doing in the announcer's booth, and… I think I helped get a virus into the system. So much of this is happening because of me, Anubis."

Anubis couldn't believe what he was hearing. His fingers loosened from Set's jacket, "Set… Now's not the time for jokes…"

"I wish I was, man," Set yanked away from his brother, "I… I thought I was doing the right thing… I thought that I was saving the day. I didn't have any reason not to trust him, and he said everything so cleanly that I thought… well, I thought he had to be telling the truth. He took advantage of me, listened in on me telling you about who I am, and used it to manipulate me."

Anubis was dumbstruck. He had thought the worst thing Set had done since arriving at Vytal was pull a stupid prank that backfired with him being disqualified, but this, this made that look insignificant, "Set… people _died_ …" he pointed to the Colosseum, "What made you think it was a good idea to trust _anything_ one of them had to say!?"

"Because it was _Gavin_ , Anu! He was our friend! He was one of the few classmates we looked up to! If anyone was in the Grimm Brotherhood to take them down from the inside, then it was him! It had to be! I trusted him! _You_ trusted him!" Set pulled at his hair, "I know that people died. I know that this is my fault. I know that everything is, just as it always is, _my fault_ ," he let go and stomped towards the stairwell, "So I'm going to go fix this before it gets worse."

"How? How, Set?!" Anubis looked back to the island in ruins around them, fires pouring smoke into the sky to blot out the stars above them, "I understand that Gavin tricked you… I honestly do… but… _Look_ at what they've done! How can you stop this?!"

Before Set could respond, Anubis grabbed him by the jacket again.

"This is too big for us, Set. We need to get out of here. They called us out, that means they're actively searching for us."

"Then it's going to be that much easier to find Gavin," Set shoved him away, "In case you forgot, they want Yamuna, too, and Lurida and Xannie. Our sister and friends. Fixing this somehow means that they're all out of harm's way faster, so it doesn't matter how it gets fixed. It only matters that it does by any means necessary."

Anubis shook him, "What means, Set?! I know who's on the list but what can _we_ do?!"

"Keep them from getting our friends and family. Maybe we can capture them. We are, or at least I am, going to make that happen. No, I don't have a plan. No, there isn't time to make one. Yes, I'll still go no matter what you say," Set looked his brother in the eye, "Lunacy's gonna make them a lot easier to find, so are you with me or not?"

Anubis looked off into the inferno below them, "As if I have a choice? I'm _not_ letting you go off alone with them out there."

"Then come on," Set whipped open the stairwell door.

* * *

The restaurant that Hati and Sköll had gone to in the Vale quarter with Cerb and their parents was completely empty. Broken plates, shattered glasses, and bullet casings littered the rows of tipped over tables across the outdoor seating area of one of the many seafood restaurants on the boardwalk. Overlooking the ocean, everything smelled like salt and fish. The foul sulfurous scent of Grimm was everywhere, especially in the claw marks that marred the hardwood flooring. Smoke, perfume, cologne, and natural human scent mingled in as well, despite there being nobody around. A few smoldering fires were scattered around tipped tabletops where candles had fallen into the tablecloths.

A red jackal stood sniffing at one of the tables just across from one of the tables across from the entrance, his nose buried in a used napkin. It smelled of booze, fried fish, and wet dog. It was definitely Hati's, and the one next to it could only have been Sköll's. His nose followed the path of Cerb and their parents. He wished that was the only scent, though. Those weren't the ones that led him and the black jackal standing in the doorway to this particular restaurant. It was the sharp, metallic scent of ozone, and the putrid stench of burning flesh and hair that brought them. It was Gavin, and they knew well that he had at least been wounded.

The red jackal disappeared in a rush of red sand and left Set in its place, "Do you think that Cerb got Mom and Dad out in time…?"

In a flurry of black shadows, the black canine standing guard transformed, "I don't know… There's too much here to get a good enough scent to tell if they left or not." Anubis closed the door and locked it. Despite there being a surprising absence of the Creatures of Grimm, he wasn't taking chances on them getting cornered and overwhelmed.

Anubis walked over to his brother, stepping over shards of glass and ceramic. The cube-shaped lamps hanging above him were dark, the only light came from the decorative strips around the bar in the far corner, casting an eerie green-gray glow throughout the interior space of the restaurant, "What about Sköll and Hati? Anything?"

Set kicked at a few of the familiar bullet-casings from Hati's gunblade. "They're all over the place… so I'm guessing they were fighting off a lot of Grimm," He looked around the restaurant for any other sign of their brothers or Gavin, but he and his brother were the only living things there, "They couldn't have gone far."

Anubis tried to pinpoint anything that could sound like their brothers, but for a few grueling seconds, he heard nothing. His pointed wolf ears perked up when he heard what sounded like a shoe rubbing against tile. He spun holding out his khopesh pistols towards the noise, but was sent to the ground as a heavy fist collided with his face.

"Anubis!" Set whipped around and snatched the folded fan axe from his belt. It extended out so that the semicircle edge was pointed towards the newcomer, but it instinctively jerked back when he realized who it was, "Ledning…?"

Having taken off his Kokonatsu mask a few hours before, Ledning stood in his black combat suit. He knew the Luna boys well, having been well acquainted with them considering his girlfriend was on a team with their sister. Even upon being recognized, Ledning didn't flinch as he delivered another punch directly into Set's nose.

He staggered back, then held the flat of his weapon towards Ledning, "Gah… what… what are you doing, man?!" he gasped as his nose began to bleed, "Seriously, what the hell?!"

With a quick spin, Ledning slammed his heel into Set's shoulder, sending him to the ground, "Shut up."

Set held his weapon out to catch the sole of Ledning's boot as he went for another kick, "If you're with them, and she's on the list…" he strained to fend him off, "Lurida. Where is Lurida, Ledning?!"

Ledning's brow furrowed and he sneered as he whipped his hands forward. The lead coating his fists shot out and around Set's fan axe. With a quick jerk, the masses of silver metal flung the weapon to the side.

Set didn't get a direct answer before everything went black. The last thing he saw before getting knocked out was the silver-haired boy crouching down over him and driving a lead-coated fist right into his face.


	76. V3Ch23: Blotting out the Stars

Amity laid dark and motionless behind her as she ran into the streets of the Vale quadrant of Vytal. Khimera had gotten just what she had wanted: an excuse to get away from her bodyguards. Fenix, Navajo, and Scott were at the Pillar too, but she made vitally sure to run the moment she saw the chance. This wasn't about protecting her mother anymore, for she had already learned from her "teammates" that she was safe. This was about protecting her people. This was about taking down the monsters that took her brother from her, and she could see just fine where the stolen Atlesian airship was heading as it flew away from Amity.

Tartarus weighed down on her back with each racing step on her way towards the shoreline. Even in the dark, her enhanced Faunus senses let her see the airship even against the black sky. She could fight them. She was one of the only people in Remnant who could, who had to. With Ray gone, she had a duty to uphold. Her night couldn't end when her friends and family were safe. It could only end once Remnant was.

.

The ruined restaurant began to fade back in around Set as he came to. He tried to pull himself up, but his arms were caught behind his back. He tried to move his legs, but his ankles were stuck together as well.

"What… what the…" he looked around. At some point, he was propped upright and his wrists and ankles had been bound up. He was leaning back against the glass panels serving as guardrails over the ocean. To his left was Anubis, and Hati and Sköll were propped up to his right. All three of them were out cold, "Guys… Guys…!"

"You're awake!" Gavin's voice called out from the shadows, the same chipper optimism filling both words.

Set's eyes darted around the restaurant. Only the balcony that he and his brothers laid on was lit by the moon, and the fires and dim lights inside were all put out. He squinted, relying on his better than average sight to get a look at what was going on. He could barely make out Gavin's face amongst the tables and chairs inside, "You lied… didn't you?"

"Gee…" Gavin stepped out onto the balcony, the moonlight reflecting off the black and red armor he had shown off to Set a few days prior. He looked up the central hill of the island towards the downed stadium, "What gave you that impression?"

Set watched him for a moment. Molten holes dotted the armor, each with a red tinge inside. He moved slowly, like a wounded animal. Gavin was worse for wear, and trying not to show it. However, there was only one person with weapons that could leave marks like that on his armor, ones identical to those he and his brothers saw on the way up the CCT tower at Beacon, "How did you manage to get away from Professor Maple…?"

"How about you keep quiet until the others get here, okay? I don't want to explain everything twice."

"Set…?" Anubis groaned as he came to, "Set, are you…" he opened his eyes in horror as he realized who was standing before them, "Gavin?!"

"I've been through it already with short, red, and gullible over here. As I've already said, I _really_ don't want to repeat myself, so how about keeping your muzzle shut until everybody's here, _okay_?" Gavin walked back into the restaurant, holding his wrist up to his mouth. They could hear him talking, but couldn't make out the words.

Anubis snapped his head to Set, "Set… what's happening?"

"Something that I'm gonna fix… just chill for a moment," Set whispered back.

"Bro…?" Hati shifted beside Set. He glanced over his other brothers, seeing that they were all disarmed, "Anu, Set… they got you too…"

Anubis would've been happy to see his older brothers alive had they not all been tied up. "What happened before we got here? We couldn't get a good enough scent trail to figure everything out."

"Got ambushed by some Grimm and Grimm Brotherhood goons… Cerb got Mom and Dad outta here, and me and Sköll stayed to fight to keep the bad guys busy so they couldn't chase after them. Sobered us up real quick, but not enough to keep from getting blindsided by..." he nodded towards Gavin. Hati lowered his gaze, "I'm sorry, bro… we just… I don't think we could've seen any of this coming…"

"Bastard's bleeding out and limping and he still managed to knock us both unconscious," Sköll spat angrily, "I'd go full Lunacy on him if my aura wasn't broken."

"Not like Anu's or my Lunacy could put up much of a fight…" Set rested his head back against the glass, "Guys, I… I'm sorry… This is all my fault…"

Hati tried his best to lift his brother's crestfallen spirits, "Oh, come on, Set… You didn't do this, man… We'll-"

"Well, he isn't exactly wrong," Gavin snickered as he stepped back into the light, "Sorry, couldn't help but butt in. We'll get to that in a minute." Gavin stumbled weakly, almost drunkenly, before grabbing a nearby post to steady himself, "You can explain everything now that the guests of honor are here."

The front doors of the restaurant burst open.

"Heeeeeeey, guuuuuuuys! I brought those Twinkle Twins and their stupid dog, too!" Titian laughed as she dragged Xannie and Lurida in by the ropes binding their arms and legs together. They both squirmed and shouted, but it didn't so much as phase her on her waltz in. She held that same sickening smile, which fit uncomfortably well with the fractured red and black Grimm Brotherhood coat she wore over her new set of black plate armor, "Ol' Koko's got the mutt."

"Could you shut up for five minutes?" Ledning, a bound Yamuna thrown over his shoulder, closed the door with his foot, "You've been talking non-stop since we met back up." he watched as Titian dragged the Rheas into a table, both hitting it pretty hard, "Hey!" he ran up and grabbed her shoulder with his free hand, "How about yout try not and hurt them too much?"

"Oh, waaah…" Titian rolled her eyes, "I gave you the chance to get them, or at least your _girlfriend_ , over to our side, but you couldn't even pull that off. They're targets, so they both either come with us, or… well, things won't be pretty." she looked him in the eye as she threw a kick into Lurida's stomach.

The gravity around her lessened as she gasped, but quickly returned to normal as she regained her composure, "How could you…?" she stared back at him with tear stained eyes, "I _trusted_ you!"

Ledning dropped Yamuna to the ground and grabbed Titian by the throat, slamming her into another support, "Do that again. I dare you."

Titian grabbed his wrist, but instead of struggling, she just laughed, "Hey, you should be _thanking_ me, Led. The whole reason Purp's on the list is because of you. The Commander just wants to keep one of her greatest assets happy, so when I put in the word," she nodded towards Lurida, "onto the list she went."

Her smile faded as she grabbed Ledning's hand and slammed his face into a nearby table, "So I think you should be _nice_ to me unless you want me to play a bit more rough with her."

"You people are crazy!" Xannie cried, unable to cope with what was happening. While she was confused by Lurida's boyfriend and his teammate attacking them and kidnapping them, it was nothing compared to what was to come soon after.

Yamuna laid motionless on the ground, staring up at the three Grimm Brotherhood agents in the room. She caught his gaze and locked eyes with him as if to hold on.

All three girls, just as Team ARTS, Carmen Maple, and the Luna boys had already that night, couldn't believe that one of their closest friends was with these monsters.

"Hey guys!" Gavin clapped his hands together, "Now we can _finally_ get to the fun!"

Titian rolled her eyes, "Your suit's really workin' overtime, huh, Echo?" The effects of the painkillers in his system were very apparent now.

"Yeah, yeah. Shut up, Deathstalker." he waved them over to the balcony, "Just bring them out here so we can finish up our night."

Ledning looked down to Lurida, his tense expression softening a little as if he were making a pathetic attempt to apologize.

No one said a word as Titian and Ledning dragged the girls of Team GLXY over one by one. The night was growing eerily quiet. Screams were dying down from being either saved, or from being snuffed out. A light breeze carried the smell of saltwater and smoke in from the balcony and into the ruined restaurant, and the moon hung solemnly over the swath of destruction stretching across Vytal. Huntsmen and Huntresses worked overtime, but the only sign of that that any of them could hear was gunshots, the wailing roars of Grimm, and the earth shattering crashes of buildings collapsing from the spreading fires. No homes, no lives, and no place could be spared, for all of it was forfeit if it meant saving one more person. The Grimm flooding the streets were clearly nothing but a distraction to keep the Grimm Brotherhood's targets from getting help.

Team ASHS, Xannie, Lurida, and Yamuna all sat in a row against the glass panels overlooking the ocean.

Gavin looked up to the sky and sighed deeply as he stood over his former friends with pure confidence and superiority. The first group of targets may have caused him trouble and gotten away, but this group wasn't. "You guys made this _way_ too easy for us." he began to pace in front of all of them, "All of you just kinda… walked yourselves into corners just to be caught, and Set, I'm sorry, Agent… did I ever make up one for you? Well, whatever, the class clown has been in a corner for a few days now! Honestly, bud, I never expected you to lead your brother straight to us, too," he shook his head, clicking his tongue as he looked down on the Faunus brothers, "Poor little Anu."

"Don't you dare call me that!" Anubis snapped.

"What do you even want with us? I already did your dirty work, man…" Set glared back at Gavin, "What more could you want?"

"Dirty work?" Xannie looked to Set confused, "What do you mean, 'dirty work'?" she shrieked as Titian jerked her arm painfully upwards.

"If you keep your mouth shut and _listen_ , maybe you'll find out." Titian held up a menu from a nearby table, "But… you know, you're kind of in the more risky positions right now, Oracle." The laminated paper rotted and crumbled to dust in her hand.

"Back off for a minute, Titian." Gavin ordered, "Don't play too rough unless you have to." he walked over and knelt down before the Rheas. His usual warm smile was unnerving and borderline terrifying, causing Xannie to whimper and back away from him, "To answer your question, Xannie, a good chunk of everything that happened tonight is _his_ fault. He decided to work with us! Set betrayed his family, his friends, and his home. It's _his_ fault you're here." A gauntleted finger pointed to the giant mass of metal lying on its side near the Perch, " _He_ was the one that put our virus into Amity's systems. It's _his_ fault it fell from the sky! It's his fault that we were able to tap into the broadcast system and let our wonderful Commander talk to her masses! It's _his_ fault all those people are dead! Isn't that just _horrible_?"

Xannie's eyes widened in horror as her Semblance suddenly helped her piece things together. Everything began to line up between how she assumed Amity Colosseum's system worked and the prank that got Set disqualified from the doubles round. It had been Gavin that told her what Set did, or at least the lie of what happened. The percentages that came to her mind were undeniable, "S-Set… Set, no… You…"

"Yeah… I did…" he hung his head low, "I… I was tricked into thinking that Gavin… was actually trustworthy…"

"Well, it's not _completely_ your fault I guess." Gavin stood and continued pacing, "I mean, you _did_ just tell your brother your biggest secret which he added to his plan to get rid of your family's oppressive and barbaric traditions. Who else could you go to but your best buddy and mentor, Gavin Quasar? Disgruntled and angry with the world, you helped what Remnant sees as an insane cult _destroy_ the place representing its peace and safety because the world just wasn't fair to you."

"That's not what happened!" Set shouted at him.

Gavin chuckled, "And who's going to believe that? Once the story gets leaked to news outlets, 'Disgruntled Son of Menagerie Founding Family Despises Heritage and Aids in the Destruction of Vytal' will be spread across Remnant and be in the forefront of everyone's minds." he bent down and grabbed Set's chin forcefully, "I'm sure a few of those news outlets will take it a little further. How an angry Faunus from such a long line of beasts couldn't hold in his violent tendencies any longer and let countless people die because his family would never let him have a boyfriend."

"Stop."

Gavin turned to look at the third girl next to the Rhea twins, "So the pup found her bark. About time," he stood over her, looking down on her gray-haired head, her eyes hidden by the silver locks and massive furry ears, "I couldn't quite catch that. You wanna speak up?"

"Stop." Yamuna growled, her eyes strained shut. Her head snapped to attention. Bright gold burned in both of her eyes. It was taking everything within her to keep her from activating her Lunacy, "Stop talking about my family about that."

Gavin's sick smile faded as he crouched to be eye-level with her. He'd done it to most of his captives already, but he enjoyed giving each of them the sense of discomfort and reinforce the betrayal. He felt a twinge of glee as he noticed her blue eye was now gold. Lunacy was starting to take hold, "What is a dirty Faunus like you going to do about it? Cry? Scream? Try to kill me because I'm a human and that's what every single one of your kind wants deep down?" he sneered, "Subhuman filth. You _honestly_ think you're better than us? Why? Because you can see better? Because you have extra ears or a tail? Oooohhh… so _fancy_. You're no better than the Creatures of Grimm. As far as the Brotherhood's concerned," Gavin held his hand parallel to the ground above his head, "Humans, up here at the top." he lowered it a foot or so, "Grimm, here, to be the tools of the human race," he lowered it again, hovering a few inches above the ground, "All the other life on Remnant, here, and I'd need to dig a hole from here to Menagerie to tell you where you animals belong."

Yamuna tensed every muscle in her body to keep the beast within her from coming out. Her mind screamed, furious at every insult coming from Gavin's mouth. _I trusted you_. _You lied to me._ Her nails dug into the flesh of her palms as the berating continued.

"Stop talking to her like that!" Sköll shouted at him, before receiving a kick to the ribs from Ledning.

"Why mutts like you were even brought into this world, I'll never know."

 _You were my friend._ Yamuna felt like her teeth were going to shatter as she grit them harder. _I cared about you, and I thought you cared about me_. Sweat poured down her face, she knew she couldn't hold out at this rate. Gavin knew that as well.

"What's the matter, pup? Angry?"

 _You were the one that taught me that not all humans were monsters._

* * *

The first semester at Beacon for Team GLXY was beyond rough. Between Lurida perfecting the use of her Semblance with her team, Xannie learning how to use a little bit of tact when announcing what results her Semblance was giving out, and Gavin figuring out how to pull the reins on his team, Yamuna was at her limit. Five weeks into the semester, she had her first incident with her Lunacy.

At three o'clock in the morning, she had woken up on the edge of the cliff that Beacon sat on with nothing but a positively massive jet black blanket over her. Her eyes had returned to their mismatched blue and yellow hues. As she sat up, she wrapped the blanket tightly around herself. The silver wolf ears on her head rotated to the sides on instinct.

"What do you guys want…?" she snarled without even turning around to face the footsteps approaching her.

"To make sure you're okay for one thing." Gavin spoke first. He stood about ten feet behind her. The Rheas were even further back, taking refuge near the tree line as they were obviously scared to get anywhere closer to the bonafide werewolf on their team, "People here in Vale know about your family and its gift pretty well. We just never thought we'd get see that in action."

"Right, because any of you care," she crouched and sat back in the grass just a few feet away from the edge of the cliff. Her ears rotated back forwards, the gold earring on one of them reflecting the light of the moon. The blanket drew tighter with her white knuckled grip, "Alabaster's going to kick me out for mauling one of our classmates, anyway… But at least I'll be back in Menagerie… and away from people like you…"

"People like _us?!_ " Lurida, refusing to show her fear and confusion, let it all come out as anger instead, "You could've seriously hurt somebody! You didn't tell us that you couldn't control your Semblance when we got put on a team together! _We_ never did anything to you except become roommates."

"I mean, there was a 64.763% chance of this happening… like I told you after the first time her eyes did that flashy thing…" Xannie murmured as she looked over a bright yellow holographic panel, "And we were the ones who let her storm out without saying anything the other day… which brought that up to an 87.92335% chance of happening…"

"You looked at me like every other disgusting human in Remnant… Why the hell would I tell _you_ that I couldn't control my Semblance?!" she wanted so desperately for her Lunacy to kick in again, but she was far too tired at this point, "Just… Just go. I don't need people like you guys near me right now…"

Gavin stood strong, "We're your team, now, like it or not. So what if we're humans? So what if you're a Faunus? Why does _any_ of that matter in the long run?"

"I didn't ask to be put on a team with a bunch of good-for-nothing humans," Yamuna grit her teeth hard enough for a scraping noise to be heard by her teammates. She shook with rage, but also with fear. Having them behind her, crowding her made her feel like she was cornered, "Even after the Great War… your kind treats us like dirt when none of you can do what we can. You're all _nothing_ to me…"

"And we didn't ask to be put on a team with someone who judges others based on nothing more than what they look like." Gavin replied sternly.

"You think I care about what you all look like?!" she snapped her head back. Tears were boiling in her eyes, but she didn't dare let them flow down her cheeks, "I care about the way you all look at me, at all of us. That hint of disgust. That… just that _look_."

"We grew up on the border of Vacuo," Lurida spoke up, "We saw Faunus just as much as we saw humans throughout our childhood. If there's one thing you learn from that, it's that there are good and bad people from all walks of life-"

"regardless of whether they're human or Faunus." Xannie finished for her.

"I don't care where you grew up. You didn't grow up on the island that another race of people forced your kind to go to so that they wouldn't be a nuisance to the rest of the world. You weren't segregated like us. You weren't looked down upon like us," Yamuna stood up and turned around to face them. The feeling of them breathing down her neck was beginning to get unbearable, "We didn't kill your kind for the way you looked."

Gavin quickly ran up to her, pulling her into a hug. He was careful not to push the blanket off of her, but he still wanted to hold her tightly. Before Yamuna could push away, he spoke to her, "We didn't either. I've always been a firm believer that people shouldn't have to answer to the actions of their family before them, good or bad. You are your own person, and whatever actions you take are yours and yours alone." he could hear the Rheas shifting nervously behind him, "Don't let bad humans you've never met from a hundred years ago define what you think of all humans now."

"Let… go… of… me…" she tried to pull away, but her body wouldn't move. She felt at ease, despite being so vulnerable in the presence of a human. The warmth, the comfort, and the safety that Gavin made her feel in that moment resonated with some sense of belonging that she only got from her family, "I…" she leaned into him almost instinctively, "How are you doing that…? How are you okay with touching me…?"

"Because I want to get to actually know you before I judge who you are. That wolf that attacked another student wasn't you, I get that, but that's why I want to know who you _really_ are. Get to know us, and let us know you. Maybe we can actually end up a decent team in the end, but I don't want us hating each other because we never tried to talk." he pulled back, "Let me prove to you not all of us are bad, okay?"

For the first time in her life, she actually trusted what a human was saying to her. She actually felt like there was one of them that was on her side.

* * *

All of that had been a lie.

"You made me love the humans around me…" she muttered through clenched teeth, "You made me love _you_."

Gavin laughed as he saw the changes starting, "And what a fool you were."

That was it. She couldn't take the roaring in her ears anymore. She couldn't hold back the thing brewing inside of her, howling to get out, "I never wanted to use it on you…" she snarled.

The moonlight reflecting off of her hair began to brighten. Its light shone across the balcony as the sounds of snapping rope echoed across the open ocean behind them. Silvery wisps phased out around Yamuna, and the rush of air carried them in a wide circle around the three Grimm Brotherhood agents. Only six students remained tied up with a seventh set of frayed ropes laying in the spot that Yamuna once occupied.

The silvery wolf crouched in the middle of the restaurant floor's snout was scrunched up to show off the set of devilish off-white teeth. Tiny golden rings flashed in its eyes with near luminescence. The only thing still resembling Yamuna was the gold earring in its left ear, for its size far exceeded even that of Gavin.

Ledning jumped back at the sight of the creature. He had heard of Yamuna's particular variant of Lunacy, but never had he seen it for himself. This form completely defied what he thought he knew about Semblances, "Are you sure that was a good idea, Echo?!"

Gavin chuckled, "Good idea? It's exactly what we wanted!" With one hand, he held out his staff towards Yamuna, with the other, he reached to the pair of canisters hooked to his belt.

"Yamuna!" Xannie and Lurida yelled in unison, fully-knowing how quickly the youngest Luna sibling could lose control of her wolf form. Even with her Lunacy, there was no guarantee that Gavin and the other infiltrators would leave her unscathed.

"You leave her alone you bastard!" Hati struggled against his ropes, but without aura, he couldn't escape the same way his sister had. He along with the others could only watch helplessly as Yamuna pounced towards Gavin with Titian and Ledning ready to jump in.

.

"Almost there…" Khimera huffed as she leaned against the side of a dumpster. Tartarus was propped up against the brick wall of the alley that she occupied for cover.

The Grimm had begun to thin out with the combined efforts of hundreds of soldiers, students, Huntsmen, and Huntresses, but there were still plenty around to give her trouble. The night was a disaster, and the casualties were still racking up. However, only the Grimm released onto the island would be a problem. It wasn't like any more were going to cross the ocean from the mainland.

"Can't just sit around forever…" she snatched up Tartarus in its shield form. Even with Grimm every which way, dozens of psychos hunting for her, and having lost some of her only family, she pushed on without hesitation. This was the pride that her mother taught her to have as a Léon. No matter what, she was to uphold her duty, and this night wasn't going to be the exception.

As she stepped out into the open street, she noticed something rather strange. Only a few fading Grimm remained, and sand dusted the vacant cars and sidewalks. It was something that she had seen before in photos of the Maelstrom incident, as well as in the first round of the tournament.

Leaned against a glass storefront was a semi-familiar face, one that she had seen in passing. Namib Sahara of Team STON from Shade Academy.

Blue flashed across her as Tartarus took its sword form in her hand. She had to remain cautious. Anyone could be an agent of the Grimm Brotherhood, " _Namib."_

The Vacuan swiveled, pointing one of his sand-filled chakrams towards her, the Air and Fire Dust shining brightly along its serrated edge as his aura poured through his weapon.

" _Lower your weapon."_ she ordered with her blade raised. She couldn't take any chances with him now that she was so far from her bodyguards, " _Now. I don't want to fight unless you give me a reason to."_

Namib suddenly recognized the girl aiming a bronze sword at him. He slowly lowered his chakram and pulled down his scarf, "Wait… aren't you General Léon's daughter?"

Her grip tightened on her blade, " _What does it matter if I am…?"_

"I'm assuming you're not one of them…" he slowly went to raise his weapon again, "Unless you give me a reason to think otherwise."

She kept her weapon ready to strike if needed. She still wasn't completely certain with him, " _Your team. Where are they?"_

Namib fully brought his weapon back up, restarting their stand-off, "Torbern got separated. Shorla and Opal got kidnapped by Trex and Oro, the two Grimm Brotherhood agents that have been causing trouble across Vacuo, Remnant, and Vytal for the past year. That's why I'm out here, to find my team, but most of all get Shorla back. I'm not letting _anybody_ , enemy or not, get in my way of doing so."

Khimera watched him for a few moments. He didn't seem to have an idea of where the Grimm Brotherhood airship had gone, nor did it seem likely that he was lying with how defensive he was acting. Deciding that it was best to have someone to lend her a hand, she finally lowered her blade. Tartarus returned to its base shield form, "The Grimm Brotherhood ship is a few blocks south of here. Probably near the boardwalk. I saw it fly over," her lion tail swung behind her, "It'll be your best chance to find your friend, and I'm heading that way anyway."

"I can do it on my own." he turned and began to walk away, no longer concerned with the General's daughter.

"I have my reasons to confront them as well." Khimera followed his path with Tartarus tucked under her arm.

Namib didn't even bother asking. He had the information he needed to find Shorla. Whatever Khimera had to say now wasn't important.

"My brother was just taken from me. I can't get him back, but I'm not watching someone else go through a loss like that again tonight," she stared him down from behind, sticking to the path that he was choosing. Thinking of someone going through that grief was almost more unbearable than pushing her own to the back of her mind until this was all over, "If you want her to see you alive, then you're going to need my help."

Namib honestly appreciated the offer, but he wasn't one to drag strangers into his issues, "I can do this on my own, but your kindness is duly noted." he kept walking.

"It wasn't an offer," she slipped her shield's handles onto her right arm, "I was telling you that you're not going alone."

"You're stubborn, just like your mother, but I guess that's a good quality to have when you want to save people," he pulled his scarf over his mouth and raised his goggles to his eyes, "or fulfill your own personal vendettas. Just don't get in my way of saving her."

.

As the giant wolf leapt through the air towards him, Gavin twisted the top off of one of the canisters. It's contents glowed a deep orange before being released with a loud hiss.

Orange smoke whipped out around Gavin, then shot directly into Yamuna's face. She stopped dead in her tracks, squirming and snorting to try and keep it from slipping into her nose and mouth. Her head whipped from side to side to keep the last bits from going in.

The wolf froze, her eyes wide and blank as a ball of orange and yellow light coalesced on her forehead. White smoke solidified around it, leaving a flat, white mask of bone covering her eyes.

"Yamuna!" Set struggled against his restraints. This was all his fault. He didn't know what exactly was happening, but he knew two things: a Grimm was inside his sister, and it was all his fault. "What did you do to her!?"

"Gave a wonderful little Geist a new home." Gavin smirked as Yamuna's writhing began to slow down as the Grimm settled into its new form.

"Geists can't possess living things! They can't get through aura!" Xannie yelled.

"Even if they got in when it was broken, they'd get pushed out as soon as aura reformed!" Lurida continued. Seeing Yamuna slow and act calm made her pulse quicken. She knew the Geist had completely taken over.

"Yeah, well, you see." Gavin walked over and put a hand on Yamuna's head. She didn't snap at him or claw at him. She didn't even snarl. He held a small black box in his hand, one that the students who attended prom knew well, "This is no ordinary Geist. This one is older. _Stronger_. Something beyond the understanding of the general public. Now here it is." he looked to the four ASHS boys, "And it has completely taken over your sister. Using her wretched Lunacy form like a hand in a sock puppet."

The possessed-Yamuna sat like an obedient dog at Gavin's side.

He held the black box closer to his mouth and spoke into it, "Why don't you go cause some mischief for us? One last order as your team leader." Gavin pointed to the door of the restaurant, gesturing for Ledning and Titian to open the doors.

Titian enthusiastically opened the door.

Ledning watched apprehensively as Yamuna ran out into the streets beyond. He understood fully what had happened to her, but seeing it in action, especially on a wolf five times his size, was unsettling.

Hati and Sköll both struggled to get up, their arms and legs straining hard against their bonds. The veins in their necks even showed as their faces turned red, but there was nothing that they could do. Still, they kept tugging and struggling away.

Anubis, however, sat motionless. He was at a complete loss. Had he done anything differently, perhaps even just handled Set's situation a little bit better, none of this would have happened. For once, he wasn't blaming his brothers. He was blaming himself.

Xannie remained calm despite the scene that had just unfolded. She just glanced over at her sister and nodded.

Lurida felt the rope around her wrists loosening. _Xannie, you're a genius and I'm glad you're always wearing your weapons._

The small ring hovering just behind Lurida spun quietly as it cut into her binds. Xannie's hands were already free, but she was pretending to still be tied up until she finished freeing her sister. They didn't know what Gavin and the other two agents were planning, so they didn't even know if they had time to free the Luna boys. They had to act now, and they were confident enough in their synergy to take all three of them down. They wanted to get to Yamuna and get the Geist out of her before she got away to… wherever Gavin had sent her off to.

Gavin, satisfied with letting the Geist go to wreak havoc in Yamuna's body until the end of their mission, turned back to the rest of his captives, "Anyone else wanna try anything? Or can we get to destroying the expendables?" Gavin glared at Sköll and Hati.

Titian's snickering was cut short when she saw the twin girls jump up from their spots against the railing, "Echo!"

A black and violet fist slammed into Gavin's cheek in a flash, and another swooped in from the left to take a crack at his jaw. Lurida ducked and weaved, just how Ledning had in every fight she'd ever seen him in, and sprung back up with her fist angled towards the melted hole in the gut of his armor. She ducked back, both fists raised and ready to fight.

Xannie's rings splayed out around her, each ringing as they spun through the air. A flurry of yellow metal ripped towards Ledning and Titian both from every angle that she predicted that they might move. Even if she couldn't predict that they would be traitors, she was more than adept when it came to countering them. She had seen them fight for an entire semester.

"Naughty, naughty, Twinkle Twins." Titian held up her energy blasters, one at each Rhea, "If you had given us the chance, we could've given you the ultimatum that Agent Kokonatsu should've given you a long time ago. You know, _before_ all this went down!" she fired, rushing towards Xannie as Ledning ran for Lurida.

"We refuse to negotiate with people like _you_." Xannie ducked back below a ball of red energy before launching a couple of rings towards Titian. She felt heat hit her thigh as a second shot hit her. She winced in pain, but she refused to let them win.

Titian batted away the rings with the blades of her guns, "And here I thought you were the _smart one_!"

"I am," Xannie whipped her hand to the side.

A ring closed around Titian's hair, then jolted upwards. For a few seconds, she dangled from the ring, but then she flew across the room and crashed into the wall. The ring was embedded in the drywall to the side of the restaurant's bar, Titian's hair was caught, and she yelped and scratched for a way to get it out of the ring's grasp. An involuntary scream rattled her throat as the ring twisted to bring her feet farther off the ground.

Lurida kept bobbing and weaving around Gavin, not giving him even a moment of reprieve from her onslaught. He was weak, slow, and dotted with stab wounds. No matter how hard he faked it, he had to know that he was in trouble.

"Really, Purp?" Gavin sluggishly tried to dodge the punches and kicks, but in his wounded and drugged state, he couldn't keep up, "I learned about everything you could do when you first showed up at Beacon. Everything else you picked up was because of _me_." he made a lucky grab, latching onto her right wrist. He pulled her closer to him, "You have no surprises, you're outnumbered, and outskilled."

Lurida could see the guy she once saw as her boyfriend running up from behind. Still in Gavin's grasp, she threw a leg out, her heel hitting Ledning square in the nose, "You'd like to think that, huh, Gavin?"

Ledning fell back with his hands cupped over his face. He looked up just in time to see Lurida slam the sole of her boot directly into Gavin's Adam's apple, then kicked again for added measure. Once she was out of Gavin's grasp, she turned to face him without even a hint of mercy in her eyes.

He jumped up with his fists raised as she approached. She wasn't bothering with any words. Just behind him, Xannie was readying her rings to incapacitate him like she had Titian. She and her sister had gained the upper hand.

Xannie and Lurida both faced Ledning, who raised his fists, ready to fight. The look on his face made it obvious he didn't want to now that he was alone.

"Don't make me hurt you two!" he shouted at them. He tried to make himself sound as tough as he did on the boardwalk during the Maelstrom attack, but as Lurida glared at him with seething hatred, he felt weak, puny, and insignificant.

Lurida stepped closer to him, made a quick note of how hesitant he was to take a swing at her, then drove her fist directly into his eye. As he stumbled, she took another shot at his teeth. He blocked the third with crossed forearms, but then lurched forward when Xannie's rings slashed at his back.

"Xannie… secure Gavin… I'll handle this creep…" Lurida seethed as she readied her fists again.

"Lurida! Please!" Ledning readied his fists again, "I don't want to hurt you!"

"That's funny, because I'm perfectly fine with hurting you."

"Please… come with us!" he readied himself as he pleaded with her, "You can avoid getting hurt any more in all of this. You could help the Grimm Brotherhood take over. You could do whatever you want in this world. Xannie can come, too!"

Lurida sneered, "Pathetic."

"You took the words right out of my mouth, Purp."

A bolt of pain shot through Lurida's back, forcing her to the ground. Titian stood above her, her rooster's comb now cut down by about three fourths. The tips of her hair singed by the burning blade of her weapon. She held Xannie by the back of her head as she kicked Lurida to the ground. She glared at Ledning, "Why didn't you try to convince them _before_ tonight?! I told you when your last chance was. You didn't take it. Therefore, you gave up trying to keep your precious little girlfriend through all this," she looked down to the purple Rhea sister underneath her boot, "Not like it was ever guaranteed." she strode over to him, dragging Xannie behind her, "I think it's time to make your break-up official." she dropped Xannie at his feet.

"Titian… I-" he stammered before being cut off.

"They were designated as priority targets for reasons other than your lovey-dovey feelings, Led! They're too smart and too dangerous for their own good. I thought I made it perfectly clear that if they weren't with us, they were going to end up against us!"

"Yeah… but-"

Titian pointed her blade towards Xannie, energy coursing through its edge, "And anyone against us-"

"Is dead."

Titian and Ledning looked back to Gavin, who was pushing himself to his feet. How he was still able to move despite all of his injuries was anyone's guess.

The shards of ceramic and glass scattered across the floor began to levitate on their own. Titian and Ledning began losing their holds on the Rhea twins. After a few panicked moments of uncertainty, gravity returned to normal as a half ton of metal fell onto Lurida's back. Gavin planted his hands against her spine to force her to stay down.

"I've… had… enough with this kind of crap for one night…" he grit his teeth through the pain. Each of his metal covered fingers pressed into Lurida's ribs, causing her to scream out. Without room to think, her Semblance would be useless, "Titian… Ledning… get on with it…"

Titian pushed Xannie towards Ledning, "I think that, since you were the one that wanted to convince them and you _failed_ , you should be the one to do the honors of killing the Oracle first. If either of them _needs_ to be taken out, it's her." she pat Xannie's head as she began to cry, "Can't have all those numbers getting a bit too precise and cause trouble for us now, hm?"

Ledning didn't move.

"Don't just stand there!" she shoved him, "Do it!"

Lead collapsed around his hand as he slowly reached it forward. It was wrong. He couldn't just do this to Lurida's sister, but his arm moved anyway. It was for the betterment of the world. It was a necessary sacrifice, like Captain Sanguwalker was always talking about.

His grip wrapped around Xannie's neck. He didn't want to waste anymore time. He couldn't. He didn't want to hear her sputter or cough. The lead closed around her throat like a vice, crushing her windpipe deeper into her neck.

Xannie gripped Ledning's wrists, trying to pry them away from her in hopes it would break the lead's hold on her neck. A tinge of red began to rush to her face as she struggled.

"Let her go! _Let her go!_ _ **LET HER G-AH!"**_ Lurida struggled to get free of Gavin's hold, but the pain was too much. Her arms were going numb as she slapped the floor for a way up, " _ **XANNIE!"**_ she screamed, her voice cracking as she sobbed, " _ **XANNIE!"**_

Set fell forwards, trying desperately to get out of his binds. He struggled to get free, but nothing worked. He was hopelessly stuck.

"No, Titian, I… I can't…" Ledning began retracting his hand, the lead around Xannie's neck starting to flow along with it.

Titian immediately noticed what was happening. She wasn't going to let him stop now. He hadn't reached the point of no return yet.

Before the lead could completely leave Xannie's neck, Titian grabbed her under the arms and yanked her out of Ledning's reach, breaking his contact with the lead.

"Titian!" he yelled after her.

"We can't have any weak-willed runts like you screwing things up for us, Led!" Titian hoisted Xannie onto a table. She was grabbing at the ring of lead around her neck, still unable to breath. Her lips were beginning to turn blue, "Just know that you were just as much a part of this as I was!" With both hands, she shoved Xannie into the glass pane. It shattered and she was sent tumbling over the edge.

Xannie disappeared into the black depths of the ocean below.

Ledning and Titian both slammed down against the floor. Gavin tried to stay over Lurida, but slipped and fell to the side under the extra ton that he suddenly felt bearing down on him. Lurida, however, pushed herself up without a problem.

" _XAAAANNIEEEE!"_ she screamed at the top of her lungs as the gravity around her doubled once more. A circle of broken floorboards cracked around her, the plates of Titian and Gavin's armor began to groan and flex, and all three of the Grimm Brotherhood agents yelled for her to stop.

Yellow shimmered around her body, and the gravitational hold let up. Her mind filled with possibilities as she redirected gravity towards the entrance of the restaurant. The three agents slammed against the wall.

Gravity returned to normal, but Lurida was far from done. She already had one of Xannie's rings in each hand as she stomped towards them.

Ledning quickly realized who she was going for first, and made a mad dash for the exit. He didn't even look back for Titian or Gavin.

Lurida raised one of the blades towards Titian. She knew exactly which way this monster was going to move. She knew exactly what was about to happen next. All of it was flooding into her mind like a bright yellow surge of information, "I have a 90% chance of ending you for what you did."

Titian disconnected the halves of her blade and held up both of the newly-formed energy blasters towards Lurida, "And you have a 100% chance of ending up just like her-"

Lurida moved in a flash. Xannie's rings bashed the girl's blaster away, then Lurida ducked down to avoid the reflexive kick that Titian made before it even happened. Ledning was the one who she had to make pay for this. Titian could wait for a few minutes.

She bolted out the front doors, her head moving just to the side to avoid being shot by Titian. Ledning was nowhere to be seen, but she knew that he had to have gone towards the buildings just before the boardwalk. He would take refuge in the brick and mortar buildings of the Vale quadrant. With that in mind, she ran off to track him down.

"Great…" Gavin coughed as he tried to pull himself up, "Titian, help me get to the-"

"Get there yourself." Titian wiped her lip on her sleeve, "The mission was clear. If the Rheas didn't join us, we kill _both_ of them. _You_ got your ass handed to you." she looked to the remaining four captives, "I'll let you finish up with the mutts. They were under _your_ watch for the past two years if you recall."

" _I am your superior! Do as I say!_ "

Titian sneered as she headed for the door, "What is it you're always whining about? Working with other branches when they should be kept separate, handling missions within their own kingdoms and all that?" she scoffed, "Were you _that_ mad about Oro taking over dealing with Team ARTS? You really think _you_ would've done any better without blowing your cover in the process?"

Before Gavin could snap back, Titian raised a hand, "I'm going to help foxy-boy so he doesn't end up dead from tall, purple, and angry. That whole Twin Dynamic thing is obviously _much_ stronger than the Commander let on, but at least we know half of the Rhea situation is taken care of!" she pointed to Team ASHS, "Be careful. If the Twin Dynamic can turn a regular person into a killing machine, no telling what it'll do to these flea-ridden pests over there."

"I'll," he stared in awe as she ran out after Lurida, " _ **I'll report this to Lieutenant Chiman, I SWEAR!"**_ he shouted after her. It was too late to do anything. She was gone.

"Fine, then…" he grumbled. It took a bit, but he managed to get back up onto his knees. The wounds that Carmen left were growing unbearable, and his suit wasn't releasing any more numbing solution at the sites. He couldn't lug all four Luna boys out on his own.

He raised his wrist to his mouth, "Agent Echo requesting backup. Someone swing the dropship around so we can load up-"

 _SNAP!_

"the Lunas…" he lowered his wrist and slowly turned his head towards them, "What did… _**DAMNIT!"**_

Sköll stood with his left arm hanging to the side. His wrist was dangling awkwardly and already beginning to swell, but his hands were free. At his feet was a cut bundle of rope from his ankles. Clutched in his right hand was a pocket knife. The broken bone was more than a fair price to pay to save their sister, "Should've pat me down, Gav. You knew a guy like me always has a pocket knife on him. Did you really get a big enough kick out of showing a couple of _mutts_ where to shove it that you forgot to check?"

"You guys really are just animals… just like chewing your own foot off to get out of a trap…" Gavin seethed. If only he had just left Hati and Sköll with their auras intact. Maybe then they wouldn't go as stupidly far as for one of them to break their own wrist.

"Yeah, well," Sköll sliced off Hati's bonds, his tail unconsciously wagging, "I only got that desperate when you messed with my sister and killed my friend," he pat his brother on the shoulder, "Hati, can you cut Anu out so we can nab this creep? I'll grab Set."

Both of them went at freeing their brothers, neither worried about Gavin getting any closer. With no staff, no aura, and a ton of wounds, he wasn't exactly a threat.

Sköll began cutting at Set's bindings with his knife.

Set couldn't believe what his brother had just done. Right after watching everything they knew being flipped on its head and destroyed, he had purposely injured himself to save them. "Sköll…"

"You screwed up, but you didn't make Amity fall, man. Whatever you did… they would have pulled it off themselves," Sköll finished slashing through the ropes on Set's wrists, then moved to his ankles, "Now come on," he stood back up, "We sure as hell ain't leaving you behind, bro."

That immediate understanding was something that Set was still surprised to see in his brother. Even in the face of everything that was happening, these were still his brothers, "Thanks…" he stood up, finally freed, "Anu, I… I'm sorry I got us into this mess…"

Anubis led him towards the door, "You can apologize later. Right now, we need to go find Yamuna and get out of here."

"That's not going to be so easy, Lunas!" Gavin shouted as he stumbled after them, "With your sister wrecking Vytal, everyone will see what monsters you really are!" he began to laugh, "Especially with proof that one of you made Amity fall!"

"What?..." Set stopped.

"That's right… you really think we wouldn't keep track of that? Amity is… sorry, _was_ full of cameras recording every single step every single guest took while they were up there." he smiled at Set, "That story about the disgruntled Luna heir will be a lot more interesting with footage of said heir uploading a virus into Amity's system."

Set stared on in terror, "No… no, you…"

"We'll burn that bridge when we get there. Don't let this guy get into your head," Hati cracked his knuckles, "Let's get out of here. A Huntsman will find him."

"And the military will find you." Gavin mocked, "Your bridge might be coming up a little sooner than you anticipated! Atlas already has its hands on the footage of Setty-boy here! Don't think they're not already looking for you!"

"Then we'll comply if they find us," Sköll put his hand on Set's shoulder.

"Yeah…" Anubis began heading towards the door, "Come on, guys… I'm sick of hearing him talk."

Gavin couldn't fight. Causing pain wasn't an option. He wasn't letting them walk away so high and mighty, "Yeah, you may, but will Yamuna?"

That wasn't something that Set could just ignore. He snapped back around to look at Gavin, "What did you say…?"

"Big wolf attacking civilians along with the Grimm? If you ask me, that fits the criteria of 'things to shoot until it stops moving' in the Atlas military handbook."

If that was Gavin's plan for putting that thing into Yamuna, then he made a mistake. Set was never quick to anger, but that was his sister he was talking about. The thought of her being gunned down because of the first human that she ever trusted drove him over the edge. He stepped forwards and raised his fist.

"Still got some bite in you after all," Gavin laughed, "I'm sorry. Did that upset you?"

"Set, no!" Anubis shouted after his twin. It was painfully obvious that this was exactly what Gavin wanted.

As Set drew closer, Gavin reached for the second canister at his side and twisted the top.

Red smoke launched Set onto his back before his fist could connect with Gavin's face. He began to writhe and shout as the crimson mist condensed around his face. He stopped struggling and went still.

"Set!" Hati shouted, "Set!"

No answer.

Set laid motionless on the floor. Why wasn't he getting up like Yamuna did?

Gavin held the black box from earlier up to his mouth, "Get up." he spoke into his gauntlet forcefully.

Slowly and robotically, Set pushed himself to his feet. He suddenly snapped his head towards his brothers.

Anubis, Sköll, and Hati weren't looking into the eyes of their sibling, they were looking at the one singular glowing orb in the center of a Geist's mask.

"There we go… getting him angry helped out a lot…" Gavin put a hand on Set's shoulder for support, "Don't worry, guys. I'll take good care of him."

Anubis jolted forwards only to be stopped before taking even another step, "Let go of me!" he shouted back at Hati and Sköll, each of which held one of his arms.

"And lose you too?! No!" Sköll pulled him away, "We've got no choice, man… I'm sorry."

Hati glared back at Gavin. There was no telling how many more of those canisters he had. They couldn't risk losing any more of their friends or family, and it wasn't like Gavin was going to be able to chase after them.

He, with Sköll, pushed Anubis out the door.

Gavin could hear the whirring buzz of an airship approaching. His backup had arrived, and if his guess was correct, the three ASHS brothers would be running right into an Atlesian battalion. Having agents in the right places made it too easy to pin blame on Set and make Faunus look like the monsters he and his organization saw them as.

"About time you showed up!" Gavin shouted up to Lieutenant Hulud, standing in the passenger bay as the ship lowered down towards him and his new lackey.

"You look like hell." she pointed out, not even a hint of concern in her voice.

"Thanks for reminding me again. You too, lady."

Her eyes darted to Set standing beside him, "I see you got one to work, but where's the other?"

"Sent her off on a walk, but I can have her back here in a minute. Do we really even need to bring her with us? Why not just let the Atlesians put her down? It'd save a lot of trouble for us later."

"She and that thing inside of her are both important to the final goal… Do not let your hate cloud your judgement," Lieutenant Hulud stepped down onto the balcony, "I'll be sure that Lieutenant Chiman is aware of her status. If she's harmed, then it will be on your head. Your performance has been rather… lackluster tonight."

"And what's _that_ supposed to mean?"

"It means that Team ARTS is still out there."

Gavin stepped onto the airship, Set close behind him. "The night's still young, Lieutenant. Besides, not _all_ of Team ARTS is still out there if I remember correctly," he pat the wall separating the passenger area from the hold, where the muffled shouts of captives could be heard.

"Yes. The unawoken one… but that wasn't _your_ doing." Hulud hit the button to close the hatch, "Let's just be off… We still need to extract two operatives and find your wolf."

.

Lurida bounced between buildings with bits of debris following her path. She felt the fatigue slipping into her muscles. Her Semblance was working overtime, and the fleeting memories of Xannie's Semblance were weakening by the minute. Still, she knew generally where Ledning was heading. He was close.

" _ **SHOW YOURSELF!"**_ she screamed out across the street.

Breathing heavily with his back against the brick wall of an alleyway, Ledning tensed up as he watched a car hurl past him. He couldn't believe what he had just taken part in. He had just helped flat-out kill someone. He had just killed someone who trusted him, and now the one person he had actually grown to care about since joining the Grimm Brotherhood was hell-bent on killing him as payback.

One of Xannie's rings cut into the bricks at one end of the alley. Lurida floated around the corner. She didn't even bother with words. She just dropped down onto the pavement and ran towards Ledning with both circular blades crossed. If he didn't keep moving, then she was certainly going to kill him.

Ledning tripped as he tried to back up. He fell to the ground, landing in a pile of garbage.

Both blades whistled in their arcs on the way towards Ledning's neck. They stopped just short of his throat. Lead had wrapped around his chest and neck to shield him from the blow.

Lurida forced the blades harder against Ledning's neck.

He could feel the metal starting to give.

" _WHY?!"_ she screamed as a groove began to form on the surface of his lead armor.

He honestly didn't know anymore. What did killing Xannie have to do with using Grimm to take over the world? Why did the Grimm Brotherhood see her as such a large threat? "I… I don't know…" He felt the cold metal start to hit his aura.

A loud pulsing pop rang out down the alley, followed by Lurida screaming as a ball of red plasma exploded against her back.

She fell to the side into the pile of garbage. The clunking of metal plates came from the other end of the alley. She looked up to see the other killer making her way towards them from the same way that she had come in.

"Nuh, uh, uh," Titian pushed her guns together to form the oval-shaped blade again. "Unlike you and your sister, _he's_ not expendable." She raised her blade over Lurida, ready to bring it down.

A gust of wind exploded down the alley from behind Titian, and it was followed by a blast of heat. Two serrated chakrams bounced off the walls. Chips of bricks rained down from new scrapes across the walls.

The blades slashed across Titian's chest, sending her spinning into one of the alley's walls.

" _Get away from her!_ " Wreathed in a stark azure blue, Khimera held her snake sword at the ready.

Namib stood at her side. He held out his hands and caught the chakrams as he guided them back to himself.

When Khimera saw the familiar black and red outfits along with the neon purple, she knew Lurida might be in trouble. After hearing the screams and seeing a bit of the fighting, all of her suspicion she had left towards Beacon's Gravity Queen was gone. She knew she was innocent and that they shared a common enemy, two of them being some of her own classmates standing before her.

Titian's fingers dug into the rust colored holes forming on the bricks. She pulled herself up to get a look at the two newcomers, "Geez…" she coughed out a laugh, "What's the deal with you guys sticking your noses where they don't belong?"

" _It's part of being a Huntress. You clearly didn't take it to heart,"_ Khimera held out her sword. She finally had faces behind two of her enemies from back home, " _You're outnumbered, and both of us have full auras. Surrender, or we'll do what we must to force you to."_

Titian glanced to Lurida, who was beginning to stir. She glared at the General's daughter standing before her, "In case you forgot, both of you are on Maelstrom's list, too." she broke her blade apart again, aiming a gun at either of the two newcomers, "Purp isn't a problem for us, obviously. She's been a blithering mess since her sister went to take a nice long swim. I think you should be more worried about who's going to help _you_."

Namib had seen the sisterly bond between the Rheas first-hand during the fight against the Maelstrom before the tournament began. While he didn't know them too personally, he admired how much they synergized, despite being almost complete opposites in terms of personality. Seeing Lurida tense and raging on the ground, wisps of yellow and purple curling off of her as she struggled to control her aura, told him one thing loud and clear. Lurida just lost her own sister to these monsters.

If Xannie was on the list just to be killed off, then that meant that the same could happen to Shorla.

Namib charged at Titian. He wasn't going to let them hurt her too.

" _Namib!"_ Khimera didn't have time to argue with him. She ran in behind him, her sword shifting into a cannon as she ran headlong into danger with him. Lurida was one of her people too, and that meant that she was going to protect her at all costs.

"I just can't seem to catch a break tonight…" Titian snarled as she held her guns up, the blades sparking as they clashed against Namib's weapons. She blocked repeated slashes from the Vacuan, occasionally throwing a few herself accompanied by plasma shots.

"Where is she?! Where did you take her?!" Namib shouted as streaks of fire sprouted from the serrated edge of his blades.

Titian didn't dignify him with a response. She kicked him back and fired twice. He had interrupted her mission. Once the other Rhea twin was dead, she could get to him. She passed a sinister smirk to Khimera, "Hey, Led! Why don't you leave your girlfriend to me? Go be useful and capture our new guest. Maybe you could actually accomplish that without _chickening out!_ "

Ledning looked back to Lurida, who was beginning to get up with Xannie's rings as support. They were about to be squashed in the middle of an alleyway by three of Remnant's precious Huntsmen and Huntresses in training. Even with their special gear, that wasn't a good scenario, "We need a better idea than that…"

Titian nonchalantly ducked backwards as a fireball was launched her way. She huffed. "Maybe you have a point. Agent Raach hasn't gotten to the Sahara kid yet. Looks like we weren't the only ones to have something go wrong." she glanced at Khimera charging her while fire burned in her cannon, ready for another shot, "Oh, but Khimera Léon is _all alone_. Her stupid bodyguards have finally buzzed off. Now would be the _perfect_ opportunity to take her!"

She watched as a few pebbles began to slowly lift up from the ground around her. Lurida was ready to go again, and she was pissed. Titian considered her options carefully. Either they failed their mission and ran away, they failed their mission and died at the hands of a mentally unstable girl that could control gravity, or they fought their hardest in the hopes they actually succeeded in taking in two targets and eliminating a third.

"What to do, what to do?" She clicked her tongue against her teeth as she held a palm flat against the wall.

Namib began to make a lunge at Ledning and Titian, but Khimera held out a hand to stop him.

" **Hold on…"** she ordered with her cannon still aimed at Titian. She had seen Titian's Semblance in action before. It seemed to rely on touch. The rust colored shimmer traveling across the brick wall put her on edge.

Lurida saw the same, "No… no, you two are not running away…" she seethed. The gravity around her began to intensify slowly. Her strength was waning, but her fury was able to pick up the slack, "I am _not_ letting you murderers run away!"

A large hole collapsed in the wall, revealing a hallway. The bricks turned to dust as a result of Titian's Semblance.

"Come on, Led! I doubt you want to stick around your crazy ex much longer." Titian gestured for him to follow her as she dashed into the hall as bricks began to crumble from the apex of the opening's curve.

He didn't have much of a choice anymore. He was far beyond the point of no return. After a moment of hesitation, he ran in after her without looking back. The sounds of the building creaking and groaning muffled Lurida's screams of rage. All he could do was hope that she and the others made it out okay.

Lurida, on the other hand, began to run in after them through the growing cascade of falling brick. Each chunk of stone of drywall that neared her became caught in the zero gravity field around her. They dropped back to the ground as she dashed down the hallway after Ledning and Titian.

Khimera turned yellow as she watched Lurida disappear into the darkness beyond the hole in the wall, "W-w-wait!"

It was already too late. With Lurida already down the hall after Titian and Ledning, the wall was allowed to collapse, bringing the entire side of the building down with it.

Khimera and Namib could only watch as four floors of brick and glass began to descend upon them, but the pain of being crushed to death never came. A dull ache did spread across both Namib and Khimera's bodies.

Ice branched upwards to catch well over a ton of falling stone, brick, and glass. The man that it came from was struggling to hold it all up with the double bladed scythe in his hands. That red cloak and sandy blonde hair was unmistakable. Vincentas Saurus stood in front of them with his arms held out to catch the debris with his scythe and the ice coming from the blue half of it.

"What are you kids waiting for, huh?!" he shouted back at them, "Get out of here!"

Khimera was awestruck. She hadn't even heard him approach, nor did she feel him touch them to activate his Semblance. Both her and Namib were sharing the pain that he was experiencing. It was growing worse by the second, as if their arms were going to be blow apart if they waited much longer.

Tartarus shifted back to its shield form, and she threw it back onto her back. She grabbed Namib by the wrist and ran for the other end of the alley.

"It's…" Namib murmured in disbelief. Looking back, he still couldn't believe what he was seeing, "He… he saved us…"

Vincentas felt his feet beginning to slip. He couldn't hold up so much weight much longer, but he wasn't going to have to much longer. The kids were out of harm's way.

"Finally…" he grunted. He broke his scythe apart and ran for the street as crackling shards of ice shot out from underneath a pile of what was once a building. Had he been any slower, then he would have been caught under the last crumbling walls.

"What were you two thinking…?" he huffed. He fell back against the asphalt beside Khimera and Namib. A red haze flickered around all three of them, and the collective pain of holding up a building flooded back into his freshly torn muscles.

Khimera knelt down beside him, "Mr. Saurus… you… thank yo-"

"Yeah, yeah, save the thanks for Orchid… She told me where you kids were…" he coughed. He didn't even try to sit up. That definitely wasn't going to happen any time soon, "Gah… always making my job a pain in the ass… Always running off and meddling instead of just hunkering down like everyone else…"

Namib could only stare at the man. He had blamed him for not taking action all those years ago, but here he was. Vincentas Saurus had saved him.

"Hey, kid. You alive?" Vincentas turned his head to get a look at Namib. For once, he was only concerned that this kid, one that wasn't even his own, was safe. He didn't want all that work back in Oases to go to waste, "I figured the General's daughter would play hero, but you're a surprise…"

Namib didn't respond. He didn't know how to.

Khimera stepped up, "Lurida Rhea went in there after two Grimm Brotherhood agents from Atlas. They're hell-bent on killing her."

"Who?" Vincentas winced as he rotated his arms.

Khimera groaned. They didn't have time for this, "An innocent student who's about to _die_ just like we almost did!"

"Oh… The girl that was bouncing around the streets…" Vincentas slowly forced his way up. This certainly wasn't the first time that everything hurt so bad, and it never got easier to move in this state, "Those Grimm Brotherhood agents left in a hurry… she's probably still in there…" his eyes darted around the ruined building. Just as he had been trained, he mentally broke up the area into quadrants and surveyed each. He locked onto the far side of the building.

Rubble was arranged in a circle like a nest. In one final burst, it seemed that Lurida managed to use her Semblance to cradle herself inside the rubble. Even after everything that had happened that night, she was passed out with a grimace on her face in the center of the pile.

"There…" he gave and aching nod towards Lurida, "Everyone's safe and sound… for the most part…" in his peripheral vision, he could see the white combat uniforms of Atlesian soldiers rushing down from both ends of the street. He fell onto his back, "If you kids run, then I swear… I'll make it my personal mission to track you down again… We're not losing anymore people tonight."

"I'm not doing anything until I get Shorla back." Namib growled. He had come this far to get her back from the Grimm Brotherhood. He wasn't giving up now. "We have to go after them an-"

"If you get out there and get hurt, then I'm gonna feel pretty bad, kid. I saved you twice already… and I don't want to save you a third time just yet…" Vincentas looked over at Namib, his eyes tinged an off shade of pink, "Just cool it for an old man's sake. We'll track Shorla down later… If you go get yourself killed, then it'll just be me tracking her down and you'll never see each other again… so just… don't, kid."

A bright spotlight passed over them as the loud thuds of many armored feet approached. After the spots in their eyes cleared, they could see soldiers and robots in stark Atlesian white aiming guns at them.

Vincentas, still lying flat on his back, raised his hands so they could see them.

He didn't like it, but Namib knew Vincentas was right. With the laser sights of countless rifles being aimed at him, he didn't have room to argue anyways. His chakrams clattered to the ground as he raised his hands, as well.

Khimera turned, knowing she'd be instantly recognized.

"Hey," on soldier nudged another, "Isn't that General Léon's daughter?"

"Treat her the same as anyone else. Direct orders from the General herself," the second soldier raised his gun, "Just don't get too trigger-happy. She'd kill us if she lost both of her kids tonight."

Khimera glared at the soldiers. She still wanted to help survivors, but as the soldiers and bots began cuffing the four of them and leading them away, she knew that she wasn't doing anything of the sort.

For her, Namib, and Lurida, the night was finally over. She would only find out later that Team ASHS had been captured by these same soldiers, but one member of their team, Set, was missing. This hellish night fell into a numb, defeated state of ruin. So many had been lost in less than a few hours.

She silently wept in the Atlesian spotlight.


	77. V3Ch24: Lament

A cloud of limestone dust began to settle around the fallen Pillars of Amity. Amity Colosseum was lying on its side, its shattered crystal base scattered about in large broken chunks between the collapsed marble columns. The superstructure sagged slightly on one side. Its perch was broken in half with the top portion just shy of reaching the broken Dust crystal. It was a disaster that all of Remnant had thought to be impossible for a century.

Cayenne's heart raced behind the confined cage of her chest. The crying scream she heard from inside still reverberated in her ears. Cracked columns formed ruined hallways within the rubble, and the roof had caved in around the center. Roland was still inside. He was somewhere within this maze of marble.

"Rol!" she called out while clambering onto a sky-blue-veined marble pillar, " _Roland!"_

"C-Cayenne?!" someone called from down the hill.

Cayenne looked back down the hill at the sound of a familiar blond's voice. As if answering a silent prayer, Arty, Timbre, and Alice were making their way up towards her, "Thank the gods!" she slid back down off the pillar, "Guys, Roland… Roland's somewhere in here. He's hurt. Bad," she stopped for a moment, "Where's Epa?"

"We… we were nearly taken by Victor McGouran… Lieutenant Koloss. Epazote got captured along with Turf an' Curie… I'm… sorry that we couldn't do more," Alice looked away from the dancer as she reached the top of the hill.

"He… he's been taken…?" Cayenne's hands shook as she approached, "Tell me he wasn't hurt. Please."

"He's alive…" Arty clarified, "McGouran didn't seem to want anyone dead. He had plenty of opportunity to kill us if he wanted to, so it's safe to assume they're all safe for now."

While he was answering Cayenne's worries, he said that to try to make himself and Timbre feel better about Curie and Turf. They had to have hope that they were okay.

"What happened to Roland?" Timbre's grip on Sonora tightened as she looked around the ruins.

"He…" Cayenne began heading towards the cracked pillars, "That guy, Gavin, took one of his eyes, and he's… in here somewhere. I heard him scream when the Pillars collapsed. He pushed me out to save me…"

"What?!" Arty shouted.

"Then what are we standin' around for?!" Alice looked around the immediate area, "Roland!"

"We have to be quiet." Timbre grabbed Alice's arm, "We've already made a ton of noise meeting back up. There's no telling how many Grimm Brotherhood and Grimm are still out here," Looking down the hill, she could see a battalion of Atlesian soldiers running through the streets, "Atlas is finally mobilizing. We don't have much time before they get to us… If Roland's going to get out of here, it has to be before they get to us. Who knows how long it'll take for them to even bother looking for survivors in all this rubble."

Alice nodded quickly, "Right…" she looked up towards the crumbling Perch of Amity, "and that thing isn't looking too stable… The faster we find 'im, the betta," she ran off to begin digging through the rubble.

Cayenne watched Arty closely. She had never seen him to frantic, "Arty… I'm sorry… Sepia and I tried to help him, but Gavin used that to his advantage. When we tried to circle around, both of them were already gone… and… Professor Maple…"

At the mention of Carmen's name, Timbre's heart sank, "W-what?"

"We need to find Roland first. I can explain what I know later…" Cayenne tried to avoid the question, but she feared that avoiding it would make what happened blatantly clear.

Timbre began to cry again. For what felt like the hundredth time that night, she was overcome with emotion, but she still had a friend in danger. She nodded and ran off to search the field of rubble with tears still streaming down her face.

Arty ran off with Cayenne. He began to shift some bricks and large stones, "How did you guys even survive Amity falling?... Not that I'm not grateful… that's just _insane_."

"We woke up next to each other," Cayenne used her hammer as leverage to push away chunks of marble, "I don't know what exactly happened… but I vaguely remember falling. Maybe my aura just held up through the fall… I'm not exactly sure."

"And Roland's…?" Arty grimaced and swallowed to hold back a gag, "You said he got his eye shot out…"

"I think his aura broke in his fight with Gavin. It didn't seem like Inkheart was working when I found him. There was ink on his face, but it was smeared and dripping…" she looked to him to catch his worried gaze. She had almost forgotten how close him and Roland had gotten over the last year, "I should have gotten in there sooner. I could have prevented it."

"No. It's not your fault." Arty shoved a large chunk of concrete out of his way, "That was a fight he was getting in either way. Everything's just too chaotic to know whether we're making the right moves anymore…" his gaze fell to the ground. He blamed himself for leading his friends into McGouran's trap.

"If only she was here… then she would have been able to keep him safe…" Cayenne stepped up onto a fallen pillar to look around the dilapidated field of what once served as a beacon of hope across Remnant, "Professor Oscura could have taken Gavin down in seconds…"

"You guys really think pretty highly of Roland's mom." Arty huffed, wishing he could move the debris faster, "She sounds like a miracle-worker, which… we kinda need right now."

"Yeah… she solved these kind of impossible problems all the time… She had a way of making things so much easier," Cayenne looked around helplessly. She would have thought that he would be right where he was when he pushed her, but it seemed like he made a break for cover once she was out of the way. Still, he couldn't have gotten far, "He's… he's got to be alive in here, right…? I heard him scream…"

"Don't even consider the alternative." Arty knew Roland was alive. He had to be.

The realization hit him immediately. He couldn't see Roland, but he knew exactly where he was.

"There!" Arty pointed to another large chunk of column. Bright blue streaks of light made it stand out in the wreckage.

They didn't have time to waste. If that's what Arty believed, then it was what they had to check. It was far better than nothing. Cayenne nodded in agreement and ran over boulders of concrete to get to the fallen chunk of marble. Arty was at her side with each step.

Both of them slid around to the other side of the column, and there he was. Roland laid shaking, grimacing, and limp with his left arm caught underneath the giant chunk of marble. Most of his arm, including Writer's Block, was completely covered up. Red had already begun to pool underneath his shoulder.

He slowly opened his eye to see Cayenne and Arty. The pain in his left arm and the trench where his left eye used to be had begun to numb. It still hurt, but it wasn't nearly as agonizing as it once was, "Arty… Cayenne… glad you're both okay…" he whispered up to them.

"Roland!" Timbre ran up, happy to hear Roland's voice. That happiness immediately vanished when she got close enough to see him.

"Bloody hell…" Alice came up to see as well. She couldn't stop herself from reacting to the sight before them.

"Roland…" At first, Arty was excited to find his friend alive, but seeing the broken components of Writer's Block lying at Roland's side and his arm crushed underneath the Mistrali pillar, he couldn't help but feel hopeless.

Cayenne stared at him for a few moments. Right when she thought his condition couldn't get any worse, here he was. It was all because he tried to save her, "Gods… you're just like your mother…" she whispered as she pressed her hands against the fallen pillar, "Arty, Timbre, Alice. Help me get this off of him."

Alice immediately pressed her back to the pillar. She stood near Roland's feet, and she threw on a sad smile as she began to push, "We're gonna get ya out. It'll be okay, alright? We've got ya now."

"Guys… you need to go… don't waste time on me. We don't all need to be in danger like this…" he watched as they all began to push, "Please… just go… I'll be fine…"

"After everything we've been through?!" Arty strained as he pushed against the marble block, "Nuh-uh. You're crazy if you think we're leaving you."

Roland couldn't help but smile a bit at that, "Huh… guess I'd say the same thing…"

Timbre pushed and pushed with all her might like the others, but it didn't seem like the pillar had moved an inch. It had to be at least a couple of tons, "Come on… Come _ON!"_ she shouted to herself and the others, " _Just move already!"_

Even once Timbre's Semblance took effect, the pillar still wouldn't move. All the pushing and straining was getting them nowhere.

Cayenne huffed as she backed away. She held up her hammer, "Guys, step back."

Arty, Timbre, and Alice obeyed without even a second of hesitation.

She spun around three times, and dug her heel into the ground on the third rotation. Her hammer was tucked in close, then whipped out into the side of the pillar. A jet of fire exploded out, but it only left scratches on the polished surface. The hammerhead bounced off the side harmlessly, sending her toppling over onto her knees.

"Damnit!" she spat as she got back up, "Alice, do you have any cards on hand that could do anything?"

"I… I can try…" Alice shuffled through what she had left, but it wasn't much. Everyone stepped away as she spaced herself a ways from the pillar. Card after card flew from her hand. A few small explosions and some hard thunderous impacts rocked the marble, but it still refused to budge.

"Why!"

Another explosion.

"Won't!"

Another thunderous boom of impact.

"You!"

A razor-sharp card glanced off of the polished white surface.

"Move?!"

Two entire handfuls of cards flew from her. Despite the force and power behind her remaining ammunition, Roland was still caught.

She huffed and stomped in a circle to collect herself, " _BLOODY 'ELL!"_ she pulled at her hair, "Gah… Arty? You're a good thinka. Ya have got ta have somethin'."

"Oh yeah! I…" Arty reached for the tubes at his belt. It was when he saw the lack of colored paintballs that he remembered telling his team he hadn't bothered restocking on Dust since he wasn't moving past the first round of the tournament, "I…"

"Nova Dust?! Magma Dust?! Force Dust?!" Cayenne listed off everything she knew Arty would have at his disposal that would have enough power to move the pillar. She'd seen what he could do with the raw Dust he lobbed around all the time.

Arty had Force Dust at the beginning of the day. Plenty of it, in fact.

He had given it all to Curie to defend herself from McGouran after he revealed himself to be Lieutenant Koloss.

He began rummaging through his backpack, praying he had a spare vial or two of anything useful. He threw his backpack away in frustration, "I… I don't have anything…"

"Someone go hail down some soldiers or something! Call a Huntsman! Anything!" Cayenne knelt down beside Roland, "We're gonna figure this out. I promise, Rol…"

"No…" his gaze passed up to the half crumbling Perch of Amity. He could make out chunks beginning to cascade from the side of the structure. It was about to come down, "You guys need to get out of here… now. If that thing falls, then we're all screwed…"

" _You're_ screwed if we don't do anything!" Arty shouted. He couldn't believe Roland was so willing to give up after everything he'd gone through in just a few hours. From fighting off psychopaths, preventing his own kidnapping, getting an eye shot out, and surviving a fall from the sky, Roland had defied the odds by staying alive, "I'm not leaving you here to get crushed!"

"I did this to myself. Don't get dragged into this because I was stupid…" Roland pleaded. Making sure his friends were safe was trumping any thought of vengeance in his mind. What would killing his mother's killer, or getting even with Gavin, matter if the people he cared about got caught in the crossfire? He couldn't let them sacrifice themselves for him, "Leave. I'm not worth a Huntsman and three Huntresses…"

As Arty, Cayenne, and Alice continued to bicker with Roland. Timbre stood back. She could see the rate of the rubble falling from the Perch of Amity speeding up. Her eyes widened as she saw a large crack shoot around the entire structure.

There wasn't any time left. Her whole body went numb as the fear and disbelief sank in. A trembling hand slowly reached for Sonora.

"For the last time, we can't just leave you! This isn't about worth! This is about you being our friend!" Cayenne looked up to see Timbre raising her sword, "T-Timbre, what are you doing?!"

Arty and Alice turned. They barely had time to process what was happening before Roland and Timbre both started screaming.

Timbre wanted to apologize. She wanted to explain why she was doing what she was doing, but there wasn't time to find the words.

 _I'm so sorry, Roland_.

The sickening crack of bone and the sound of metal slicing through flesh seemed to replace the crumbling sounds of the Perch collapsing a few hundred feet away.

 _I'm so sorry, Mom. Sonora should've never been used like this._

Timbre raised the bloodied blade again. Tears streamed down her face as she screamed in the horror of what she was doing.

 _But he'll die if I don't._

Roland's screams of pain began to get weaker and quieter as he rolled away, freed from the pillar. Blood was everywhere, scattered around just as far as the pieces of Writer's Block.

 _Or did I just kill him myself trying to save him?_

Timbre dropped her mom's weapon. She couldn't believe how much red there was. Looking down to her hands, she began to tremble before falling to her knees.

Cayenne grabbed Roland's right arm, and Arty hoisted him up from the left by his belt. They didn't have time to argue or process the shock. The Perch of Amity was collapsing. Once Alice had Timbre by her arm and Sonora in her other hand, they all began running as fast as they could away from the tower.

Timbre couldn't even scream anymore. All she could do was break down as the Perch collapsed, the tsunami of stone heading straight for them.

 _Happy birthday, sweetheart!_

* * *

A slow, sharp beep was all that he could hear as he came to. The morning light was stifled by the closed curtains of the dim white room. Roland finally opened his eye to get a look around. Plain white sheets, a pole with IV bags to his right, two of which were of a dark crimson red, monitors on the side table, and tons of little sticky pads on his chest beneath a white hospital gown. He vaguely felt the flow of fluid into the two IVs in his right arm, one on the back of his hand, and the other in the crease of his elbow.

"Weird…" he murmured to himself. He had read a few books on medicine, and knew that it wasn't very common practice to have two IV lines in the same arm, "Why would they…?" Looking to his left side gave him his answer immediately. The left side of his chest was wrapped in tape and gauze. His entire left arm was gone. Even his shoulder had been taken with it, "What… what the hell happened to…" he looked up.

Timbre was slumped over in the recliner in the corner of the hospital room, just across from the door. She was fast asleep and huddled up with her knees pulled up to her stomach. On the side of the bed, Arty slept with his arms folded over one another and his head on top of them. Both were covered in dust, dried mud, spots of blood, scratches, and bruises. They hadn't even had time to clean up.

"Falling asleep on me…? It looks like you're trying to play the part of my bodyguard, but sleeping on the job isn't going to help all that much, man…" Roland moved his leg as much as his exhausted body would allow, "Good to see you're okay, though…"

Arty jumped awake. "Roland!" he stood at his friend's side, "Oh my god. I'm glad to see you awake and still..."

"Alive?"

Arty nodded, "Yeah… that."

"Yeah… I'm pretty surprised, too… I guess…" Roland leaned his head back against the pillow propped up between him and the inclined mattress. He reached up and felt the gauze wrapping around where his eye once was. That part wasn't his imagination, either, "I'm almost disappointed that I didn't get to visit Mom…" he mustered a chuckle, "Man… the lecture she would've given me… how I shouldn't have been so reckless back there. That was… kinda dumb, huh?"

Arty didn't respond. Roland was talking so calmly, yet he had almost died the night before. As a leader, Arty felt like he had failed. The fact that his partner was lying in a hospital bed with half the number of eyes and arms a normal person should have only reinforced that idea. He hung his head low and gripped the metal rail of the bed in his hands.

Roland looked him over for a second. After a year, he had gotten to know Arty pretty well. He at least knew a thing or two about the guy, and how he reacted to stress. If he could remain calm, it would help Arty more, "Hey, I did this to myself, Arty. I stayed behind to hold Gavin off. I knew what the consequences could be. I shoved Cayenne away knowing what could happen to me. None of my injuries are your fault…" he looked down at his lap as he remembered what him taking on Gavin had done, "If anything, all of this is my fault… Carmen… what happened to her was my fault. If I had just taken Gavin out when I had the chance, then she wouldn't have… passed…"

"If I had been more aware and made better decisions…" Arty gripped the rail tighter, "maybe we could've avoided so much. If I had restocked on Dust… If I had seen what Tox and Gavin were doing during the ceremony. If I had made you keep your promise. I believed you when you said you'd be behind us. I just got… too comfortable. In the end it was my poor choices that got our friends kidnapped… and got you hurt. Epazote… Turf… Curie… even Sepia." Arty's voice began to quiver lightly, "It's all my fault and there's nothing I can do about it."

"Sepia?" Roland jolted upright, ignoring the pain coursing through him as he did so, "No, no, no… She's… she's just out looking for survivors, right? Cayenne… Cayenne said that they just got separated. She's probably just out there. You know her. Sometime she doesn't check in. She's okay. She's still out there, Arty. They couldn't have captured her. You know her."

"She hasn't turned up, Roland. We can't figure out what happened to her before Amity fell."

"Arty… no… she…" Roland fell back against the hospital bed. Sepia would be okay, he believed, but that didn't eat at him as much as the fact that he was far less capable of tracking her down with his injuries. It wasn't impossible, though, "Did the doctor tell you how long I'm looking at before I can get back there to find her?" he asked with that same stern firmness despite his condition. Losing an arm and an eye paled in comparison to losing someone else so important to him.

Arty shook his head. He couldn't believe what he was hearing, "Roland… _half_ of your body is gone. You lost a _lot_ of blood last night. You're not moving on your own for a while. Besides... " He gestured to the window, "Atlas has pretty much taken over the island. They're doing intensive checks on _everyone_ before they're allowed to leave. Even if you weren't hurt… they wouldn't let you."

He turned his head to get a look at where his left arm once was. There was nothing. At least the cut that Timbre had to make was clean. Maybe there were still enough nerves left semi intact to get a working prosthetic, but even a lack thereof wasn't going to stop him. His sight, however, would likely be the biggest hindrance, "Arty, it doesn't matter if I lose my _legs_. You, the Atlesian military, my body… nothing, and I do mean that there is _nothing_ that will stop me from finding her. Once I do…" he felt the familiar burn of hate burning in the back of his brain. It was as if the gates holding it all back burst open. Finding Sepia was only the first of his plans, "I'm making Gavin pay for what he did… then whoever killed Mom… and then every single one of those monsters," he looked back over at Arty, his single violet eye threatening to actually bring him harm if he got in the way of those goals.

It had been a little over half a year since Arty had seen that cold, malevolent hate come out in his partner. He thought, or at least hoped, that he would never have to see him like that again. Back then, he couldn't do anything because he didn't know what was going through Roland's head the whole time, but now was different. Now, Arty knew exactly what his partner was thinking. This wasn't hate of the sad, miserable variety. This was solid and unwavering malice. This hate was of rage on a level that he didn't think was possible.

Arty didn't want to argue with him. In reality, he wanted the Grimm Brotherhood to face justice as well, but he also wished that all the damage, pain, and misery caused the night before could be undone. He wanted the same ends, he just didn't know how to without making more enemies.

"Okay then," he stood and held out his hand across Roland's body to the arm he still had, "Whatever it takes. We take them down together."

Roland looked at him, shocked.

"I'm not letting them get away with this. The attacks over the past year, the multiple attempts at kidnapping us, attacking Vytal… It can't keep going. They're not done yet and they're not going to stop until they have total control. You need someone there to keep you from destroying yourself. You can't take them on alone, so let's try to figure this out first. For the time being, we're all stuck on this island, so let's get a game-plan together before we do anything rash, okay?"

"What Gavin did doesn't involve you, and the person that killed Mom doesn't either," Roland kept his hand in his lap. He wasn't willing to drag someone else into what he planned on doing. Carmen already took the fall from that, "And, honestly, I don't care too much about what happens to me as long as I do what I need to. I'll lose my other arm. I'll lose my legs. My tail. I do not care about whatever cost there is to kill Gavin Quasar and my mother's murderer. I don't care, Arty. I. Really. Don't. Care."

Arty hesitantly retracted his hand, the offer obviously rejected. Their goals may have been the same, but their methods and reasonings conflicted.

"Roland… I can't become a murderer over this…" he avoided his partner's venomous gaze at all costs, "I don't want to stoop to that."

"Then you don't have to. I do not care if I have to kill people who are no better than Grimm," Roland pulled his eye away from Arty. Yeah, he wanted his message to ring clear, but he didn't want to make Arty feel like he was helpless, "They lost their right to live last night…"

While Roland refusing his help hurt him, it wasn't going to stop him from carrying out his own plan. What could stand in his way were the two women and handful of soldiers coming into the room after loudly throwing the door open.

General Khidna Léon walked with unfounded poise into the room, each step rigid and rehearsed. Her black hair was slicked back into a bun, her uniform was neatly pressed, and her lion tail hung stiff from the back of her slacks. The displeasure in her weary eyes was clear, "Burne Umber, Timbre Forté, I believe your time to wait is..." she turned her head ever so slightly to see Roland wide awake, "Oh, Wells, you're awake."

Roland eyed her for a moment. This woman had lost her only son the night before, and now here she was acting so… strangely typical of herself, "Yeah, I am. Does that come as a surprise?"

The second woman rushed past the general, her red armor clanking with each quick step. She fell down onto her knees to Roland's left side, her matted red bangs pressing against her forehead as she rested it against the bed, "Roland… I…" her tears began to wet the sheets, "I'm just so happy you're still alive."

And there Shirley went, also acting just as typical. He couldn't stand that either, "What do you two want?"

"Well," General Léon cleared her throat, "Burne, Timbre, I'm going to have to ask you both to leave. You will be escorted to your suite at the hotel that we are keeping those students that we see as liabilities during the investigation to come. I would ask for your full cooperation."

"Visitation hours aren't over, yet." Arty snapped back. He wasn't done talking to Roland about the night before and what they were both going to do moving forward, "Our team's a little…" he looked between Roland and Timbre, who was still somehow sleeping, "broken up after last night. We don't necessarily want to be too far away from one another."

"Oh, Mr. Umber…" Shirley cast her downtrodden gaze away from him and Roland, "I'm sorry, but my family and I cannot simply endure such a tragedy in the midst of it. I do hope that you understand why Henry and I feel that it is best that Roland, as well as my own son and daughter, be together at home in Mistral. I have duties to perform, Henry has a company to run, and Roland has healing to do."

Roland turned his furious scowl over to her, "I am _NOT_ going back to Mistral now," he snapped, "Don't you dare think for a second that-"

Shirley stood up with her arms crossed, her back straight as a rod, and her eyes settled into an affirmative, yet sympathetic, stare, "This is no longer your team, Roland. I don't believe that you are in good enough shape to be a Huntsman anymore. The General has already cleared our family to leave. I merely need to speak with your headmaster about the matter, now."

His right hand closed into a fist, and the sensation of his left was there just the same. However, upon looking down, his left was still gone. She was wrong. He wasn't done fighting. He couldn't just stop because of a few injuries, "I didn't say that I was done, Shirley."

"No, but I did. Missing an eye, you might have been able to carry on, but not missing an arm in addition to that," she instinctively passed a glare over at Timbre, "I know that it is a hard reality to face, but it is the one that you have been handed. I'm sure that you will understand one day."

"Prosthetics!" Arty cut in suddenly, "Atlas has some of the best prosthetics on the market. I've know a few Huntsmen who have some. They're just as combat-ready as a regular limb, if not more."

"Do you honestly think that Wells is the only one in need of a prosthetic after last night, Burne? We have Huntsmen and soldiers that are much higher on our priority list than a student who likely will not even be able to complete their training," General Léon sighed, clearly not pleased with having to deliver this kind of news, "Making something like that for an individual takes a lot of time and manpower that we simply do not have at this point. There are much more important matters to attend to than giving a child an arm."

Arty's eyes widened as he watched Khidna Léon gesture to a pair of soldiers that had appeared behind her in the hallway. They raised their guns, aiming right for Timbre and himself. His arms flew in the air as he let out a shout, "Woah! Hey! What the hell?!"

Timbre began to stir. Still groggy after a restless night of fitful sleep, her blurry vision was still able to make out the unfortunately familiar sight of rifles being pointed at her. Without a sound, her arms flew up, too. It was only then she realized who was standing in the room with them. She looked to Arty, confused, but still not speaking a word.

Shirley made a quick bow to the three of them before following Khidna past the soldiers, "I do hope that you both come to visit after you're free to leave Vytal. I am sure that Roland would really benefit from it by then."

Roland watched helplessly as soldiers led Arty and Timbre out of his room. He pushed with all his might to swing his legs off the side of the bed, "No! Stop!" he shouted as he tried to stand. He quickly found that he was in far worse condition than even he thought when his legs collapsed underneath him. Even his tail couldn't keep him balanced, " _YOU'RE NOT TAKING ME AWAY FROM MY TEAM, DAMNIT! GET BACK HERE, SHIRLEY! GET_ _ **BACK HERE!"**_

"Why are we doing this with _guns_?!" he could hear Arty shouting as they moved further and further away.

" _ **I'M NOT DONE!"**_ Roland screamed at the top of his lungs. He could hear monitors beeping behind him. The door slammed shut. His efforts to crawl were made in vain as his arm was caught by the IVs locking him to this room. Already, he could hear nurses scrambling outside, " _ **ARTY! TIMBRE!"**_ he continued to scream helplessly from his spot on the floor. Even though he didn't want them involved in what he had to do, the thought of being separated from them was unbearable. How, after all this time, could he just let them walk away?

* * *

Arty and Timbre had been led through the Vale quadrant of Vytal away from the hospital Roland was in. The once bright and lively streets were now empty, quiet, and full of debris from the night before. The encroaching sense of dread and longing lingered on both of them, wishing dearly they could return to the festivities that had been cut short by bloodshed and panic. They wanted to go back to the sense of near-innocence they had grown accustomed to feeling.

They walked side-by-side, guns trained on their backs as they held their hands behind their heads. Every so often on the march, Arty would look to Timbre as if looking for some sort of reassurance or explanation.

Timbre's thousand-yard-stare gave him neither, her eyes refusing to meet his.

 _What the hell is going on?!_ Arty shouted inside his head. He wanted to scream it at the soldiers, but knowing his reputation back in Atlas, there was no way it would end well.

The doors to the hotel lobby opened, leading them into a giant mess. Grimm claw marks were everywhere and furniture was torn to shreds. It was obvious that some of the Beacon students still in the hotel during the attack had fought with everything they had against the monsters that managed to make their way in.

"Keep moving." One soldier batted Arty on the back with the butt of his rifle, pushing him to move towards the elevators. Once inside, Arty was surprised to see the other soldier press the button for their floor.

"We still staying in the same room?" Arty asked calmly, only to receive another hit to his back.

"Shut up, kid."

The elevator ride up felt like it was taking years.

"You and your friends in the other kingdoms are going to be staying here until you're all cleared to go," the other soldier explained tersely, "It's about the only place with enough space to hold all of you until then."

"What about the other hotels?" Arty snapped back, "They held everyone just fine for the entire festival."

"Having you all in one place makes all of this go a lot smoother," said the first soldier, "All of the injured are being flown back to Beacon for treatment. We can question them once they're in good enough shape."

"Question? What is there to question the survivors about?!" Arty was losing his patience. The Grimm Brotherhood was out in the open now. Why use so much force with civilians?

"Stop with all the questions, kid," he rolled his eyes behind his visor, "It's not for you to know."

The elevator came to a stop. The doors opened, and they were led towards their suite with guns still at their backs.

"I think since we were on the Grimm Brotherhood's list, we have a right to know! We've been targets in every single one of their attacks!"

"Then there's plenty for all of us to talk about later, isn't there?" the second soldier mocked, "We'd love to hear all about those attacks from your perspective."

Timbre grit her teeth as tears began to fall. She didn't want to tell these strangers about the things she saw, the things she felt, or the things she had to do.

One soldier reached out and opened the door to their suite, "Get in."

Timbre immediately stepped in.

Arty stood in place, "I want to know what's going on." he spun around, "My dad's the General's third in command. I want to talk to hi-"

The butt of the second soldier's rifle slammed into Arty's nose. He kept it raised to strike again if needed, "Do not disobey a direct order, kid. You're under Atlas now. You play by our rules."

Timbre ran to Arty's side, but found a gun pointed at her again.

"No more sudden moves. Don't want to accidentally pop the pop star now." The first soldier said before turning to his comrade, "Search the suite. Find anything these two could use as weapons or manipulate with their Semblances. We don't want them causing any trouble until the General can talk to them one-on-one."

The other soldier nodded before turning to the two students, his gun still raised, "Come on now. Fess up. What can you two do? Don't think about lying. I can check later, and you don't want me coming back and playing a bit more rough."

Arty wiped his nose on his sleeve, "I… I can make drawings come alive for a short time… make things real."

"And you?" he nodded to Timbre.

She didn't respond.

The soldier stepped closer, "Now's not the time to play quiet."

She hugged her arms around herself, trembling as she tried to hold everything in.

Arty looked to her. Siren's Song was a touchy subject, but now wasn't exactly the time. "Timbre…"

The soldier raised his gun, but Timbre still didn't move. She just stood there with her eyes looking down the barrel of his gun.

He sneered, "Fess up!"

"She can manipulate people with her voice!" Arty finally shouted to save her from being struck down right then and there, "She can make people do what she says. It's harder for her to do it when you know about it. That's it. That's all."

The soldier pulled back, gun still aimed at them, but no longer close enough to be entirely threatening. He pointed towards the bedrooms, "Find anything and everything that can be used as a weapon. Confiscate any Dust, ammunition, and anything that can be used to draw. Take the paintings off the wall, too." he glared down at Timbre, "Maybe we should get a muzzle for her."

"We have the bots coming. Shouldn't work on them." The other soldier said as he stuffed mounds of colored pencils and paints into a garbage bag. He reached for an orange sketchbook on the coffee table.

" _Hey!_ " Arty lunged for it. He wasn't letting his gift for Timbre get in these guys' hands, much less in the trash, " _Put that down!_ "

A gun was leveled at his head again. The first soldier sighed, "Stand. Down."

"That was her birthday present!" he shouted back.

"I am not going to say it again. Stand down!"

Arty hated to see all of his materials, sketches, and work being discarded as if it were nothing. In his mind, all he could think of was the occasional meltdown his father would have that would eventually lead to the same thing.

He remembered Palette being burned in the dumpster the summer before he started at Beacon, almost a full year before.

"I'm not going to let you ta-" he felt a hand on his shoulder, this one much gentler than the ones that had pushed him all the way from the hospital. He turned to find Timbre staring at the ground and shaking her head, silently pleading for him to let it go.

Hesitantly, his fingers released the sketchbook. If he kept fighting back, then their situation was only going to get worse. There was no point in resisting the Atlesian military. He couldn't do anything against them, nor could Timbre.

His shoulders slumped in defeat. After the night that they had, with half of his team lost, some of those close to him either dead, missing, or taken, and the revelation that none of them could trust any one of their friends, what was there left for him to do? Even if he fought back, how could he trust those fighting with them… if anyone did to begin with.

"Finally," the soldier gestured to the wall with his gun, "Hands against the wall. We'll leave once the search is done. Just sit tight, and this will all go over smoothly."

Timbre obeyed without a single word.

Arty obeyed with a few profane ones daring to spill out.

* * *

The aircraft carrier that the Grimm Brotherhood had commandeered from the Atlesian military had served well for attacking Vytal. Having a spot just out of sight from the island made transporting Grimm and their agents even easier, but they were stuck stationing it to the southwest to avoid the watchful eyes of Atlas and the Huntsmen Academies. It was far easier to work in these warmer waters, anyway.

At the edge of the runway sat a girl wrapped in a brown striped fur coat. Her hazel eyes were blank as the rippling morning light reflected into them off of the water. It wasn't the failure to perform her duty that hurt her so bad. In fact, that failure was keeping her from simply throwing herself off the edge to atone for the sins that she commited. She still, even after all of the horrid things that she had done over the past handful of years, was not a murderer.

"Let none forget thy sins of the past," Dante whispered to herself the lines that she always did after a mission that left her feeling particularly terrible, "Lest we find ourselves trapped under those committed that cannot be forgiven..."

"Reciting poetry at a time like this? Does that mean you're finally coming around?"

Dante reached for the Dust infused book that was normally on her belt, but it had been confiscated when she was deemed 'a danger to those in the Brotherhood'. Maybe she was if she was going for it at the sound of Pohela's voice, "Leave me alone… Sanguwalker…"

The other young woman reached up with her uninjured hand and removed her bird-like mask, revealing the dark-complected girl's face hidden beneath, "I'm just trying to understand what happened. As I suspected, Samhain was a traitor, and Team TCSC went completely against our plan. I tried to tell you there were traitors among us, but you didn't listen to me. I don't know what to think anymore. I follow orders to a tee, but I can't seem to weed out those right beneath me. I needed you there to help me. We could've done something to prevent all the snafus and problems that befell us last night, but the traitors became too coordinated while you were off at a stupid festival!"

"Perhaps I still am a little girl, then," Dante pulled Robin's coat tighter around herself, "I'm immature. I cannot control my emotions. I. Have. Problems. But at least that means I haven't become what you have. At least I still care about the people that I swore to protect as…"

"As what?!" Pohela snapped.

"As a Huntress!" Dante let go of the coat. Her mind began to hone in on what was eating at her so bad. She couldn't stop caring. She couldn't believe in a necessary sacrifice, "I am _not_ a murderer. I am _not_ a terrorist. I am _not_ a thief. I am _not_ what you became. I am _still_ the little girl that you grew up with."

"You were raised to help rule the kingdoms and make the academies obsolete, not join them in their ideologies! With them gone, no Huntsmen to oppose us, and with the Grimm under our command we can take over the world and undo this pain! Why don't you understand that there are sacrifices that _have_ to be made?!"

Dante stood from her spot on the edge, "I don't understand why we must make millions bear so much pain when we could do better by bearing it _ourselves_ ," the Faunus girl with antenna from that night at the festival came back to her for a moment, "I will not stand by while innocent people take what I can. I can't let them suffer so that I don't have to."

" _We've_ already had things taken from us. Most of us were born into this world just to have everything change before were were old enough to realize how good we had it." Pohela looked off towards the island in the distance. Trails of smoke and orange glows still dotted the mound, its iconic silhouette forever changed, "But I guess you wouldn't know about everything our other brothers and I have lost, would you? You never have…"

"You think that because you've been hurt means that you're justified in _killing_ people?" Dante could only watch as the girl that she had known for her entire life continued plunging into the self-justified notion of necessary sacrifices. She knew that her words wouldn't change a thing, but she couldn't let them go unsaid. Through the tightness in her chest, she spoke every word with seething pity, "My sins may be atoned for one day, but I doubt that ones that you'll commit under some corrupted sense of right and wrong can be. The people that died tonight, the hundreds of citizens and students from around Remnant, do not have blood that rests on my hands. It is horrifying that you're okay with having your hands sullied like that."

"Have you never heard of the phrase 'the ends justify the means'?" Pohela clenched her bandaged hand, the one that Dante had stabbed hours earlier, "The world we create will be well worth everything we've done to this one."

"Don't you think she's been berated enough tonight, Sanguwalker?" Damascus Brown carried his Trex mask underneath his right arm as he came up behind Pohela. Even in the trenchcoat of his Grimm Brotherhood uniform, he still had the tender smile that they had known for years, "She's always hurt when it comes to field work. Don't make her want to jump ship because she has feelings… figuratively, that is," he glanced over the edge of the aircraft carrier, "or literally…"

"Everything would have gone 100% to plan had everyone actually done their part. Any 'friendships' we've made were not meant to hinder us. In reality, they should've let us catch anyone and _everyone_ off-guard. You used yours to capture our targets from your team. Gavin used his position to disorient his classmates and Beacon's faculty. Our friend, Dante, let hers get in the way, and that prevented her from doing her job of taking out a few Nexus operatives and returning to help retrieve Team ARTS." Pohela turned and glared at Damascus, "Not to mention that my suspicions of there being traitors within our organization went completely unheard by not only her, but other Captains such as yourself that could have helped prevent some of the issues we ended up having to deal with."

"Relax. We got what we could done, and we've got everyone that we still need to get in the perfect position. Don't you think that Dante's been through enough so far?" he pushed past her and put an arm around Dante's shoulders, "It's not fair to blame you for freaking out, D. You care for the people around you, and there's nothing wrong with that. You didn't hurt the plan much at all. Don't let Pohela get to you."

Dante shoved his arm away and stepped back away from them both. Even Damascus being so supportive made her feel uncomfortable, "I… I did what I thought was right. Robin and Eden didn't deserve to die… and I wasn't letting someone kill my teammates, especially my own brother," she flashed a venomous stare at Pohela, "I did what I could to minimize casualties. A hole in a murderer's hand is a small price to pay to keep them safe…"

Pohela stomped forward, but Damascus kept her back.

"Put yourself in her shoes, P." he looked down at her, "Really. She might still have a family, but she's still got inner demons like the rest of us. Did you never think it was weird that she's been having multiple panic attacks a day? Cut her some slack for once. Act like a friend."

Pohela glared at Dante. She sneered as she noticed Dante still clinging to that damn coat. Deep down, she wanted to snatch it and throw it into the ocean, but Damascus had a point. "Yeah." she held up her hand, showing Damascus the bloodied bandage wrapped around it. "Friends." she turned on her heel and began to march towards the control tower before she was grabbed by the shoulders by another Brother.

"Hold on there, Sangu," Gavin nearly fell as he tried to stop her. His balance was severely thrown off by his own injuries, "What's going on here? Why are you so ticked off?" his voice held none of the malice and sick glee he had used against everyone he'd tricked into trusting him only hours before. It was, however, the same he used when he was acting as a mentor. "Everything went as good as it could have. We had to expect a few bumps here and there."

"Get out of my way, Echo." she snapped. At this point, she just wanted to be alone to get her thoughts together, "I have reports to do."

"Why is it so hard to understand that she feels guilt for all of this, P? Don't get me wrong, it was a necessary evil. We recovered Virtues and hosts for the Guardian Geists just as planned. We did what we had to," Damascus held a hand out to keep Dante from going anywhere. He had grown up with all three of them, so he thought that he could at least lighten the load. It certainly wouldn't have been the first time that Dante and Pohela's conflicting ideals clashed, "Yeah. She stabbed you through the hand. That's what happens when you give a girl access to fiery claws that can bypass aura while she's having a panic attack. She never wanted to do field work in the first place. You remember how she was after the attack on Vale, but I'm sure you also remember telling her to suck it up. We're terrorists, but that doesn't mean we've gotta be assholes, dude."

Pohela couldn't tolerate anymore of this. She looked back to Gavin, "Do you see what I'm having to put up with? _Nobody's_ acting professional after not only our biggest mission, but some of our most glaring failures as well. Our mistakes could have been _prevented_ , but Damascus acts like an attention-deficient child, Dante didn't want to hear it, and you hate working with the other branches on jobs for the Brotherhood for whatever trivial reason," she took a breath, "What I'm saying is, we could have gotten _all_ our targets had we gotten rid of loose ends beforehand. Team TCSC acted outside orders and Samhain is an obvious traitor and there's no telling how many more are with him." she tried to leave again, but Gavin kept her from moving, "I'm sorry, but I want to go be a part of Tox Hazmatte's interrogation. I'd like to have my reports done before then."

"That all can wait." Gavin held her in place, despite her protests, "You talk so big about the family and world you lost, but you're turning your back on the new one you have now," he nodded to Dante, "The new world's gonna suck if you lose the only friends you're making along the way."

"Friends…" Dante cast her gaze away from them, "It'd hurt a lot if you lost Damascus and Gavin like I lost my friends, wouldn't it, Sanguwalker? But you wouldn't know how it feels to lose friends, would you? You never have…"

"According to your brother, your 'friends' were Nexus agents that weren't listed in the files we retrieved from Onyx Alabaster's personal system," Pohela broke free from Gavin's grasp, but instead of storming off to her original destination, she returned to face Dante, "In case you forgot, _they are our enemies!_ If they had been average students, then maybe, _maybe,_ I'd understand more of what you're going through, but because they're with Alabaster and his group I can't have any sympathy for them!" she clenched her fists, reigniting the pain in the vertical slit in her palm, "Or for you by extension. They were relations you _had_ to cut off. You lost those 'friends' because they weren't on _our_ side."

"I don't regret the things that I did or said… and I don't regret hurting you and Ahab for it…" Dante felt her blood boiling for what seemed like the first time in her life. She had never been quick to anger, but now was different. Now was the moment of clarity that she needed, "It won't be a problem, though. I don't plan on doing any field work for a long time. My real brother has a long recovery ahead of him when we get home. I need to be there for my family, after all…"

" _We_ are your family as well, Dante." Pohela pointed a finger at her lifelong comrade, "From now on, you're staying _out_ of the field because it's obvious you can't put your emotions aside long enough to handle it."

The wind whipped around them, making the waves crash loudly against the hull of the boat.

"You keep talking like that, you're going to end up saying something the Lieutenants and Commander aren't going to like…" Pohela's anger slacked up a little, "I don't want you lumped in with those traitors, because as soon as they're identified…" For a rare moment, her voice wavered, losing the clear and clean annunciation it usually did, "I don't want you on the hit-list."

"If only I cared about protecting myself as much as you. Maybe then it'd be easier to hide behind a mask…" Dante would have said more had Damascus not put a hand on her shoulder to keep her in check. The looks that he was passing to Gavin were making her uncomfortable, but it unsettled her more simply to look at Gavin after what he did, "Damascus is the only one of you that didn't change…" she said anyway.

Pohela and Gavin stood in silence.

Damascus scratched his temple for a moment, "Thanks?... I guess?"

"We didn't change, Dante…" Pohela shook her head, trying to reason with her so she didn't wind up an enemy of the Grimm Brotherhood, or worse, dead, "We grew up."

"Is that what you call it…?" Dante realized something vital, and it wasn't that she was angry. She was completely, utterly disgusted with who she was facing, "I guess I'll always be a little girl then, won't I? That sounds like a much better fate…"

"They'll _kill_ you if you defy what we fight for!" Pohela shook her head, fighting back the surge of emotion, "You're too much a part of this! Why can't you just sit back and take a smaller role instead of questioning it all?!"

"What does any of that matter to you?" Dante's back straightened. Even as her ribs buckled in panic, she tried to give off some sense of authority if only authority of herself.

"Because the last friend I want to lose is you!" Pohela snapped back, not caring that Damascus and Gavin were watching.

Dante stood silently as she watched the tears flow down Pohela's cheeks. The panic in her own chest began to fizzle out with the moment of vulnerability between them, "Then…" she turned and eased herself back down onto the edge of the aircraft carrier, "I'm sorry if you have to watch that happen, Pohela… I really am…"

Pohela couldn't believe what she was hearing, and neither could Gavin or Damascus.

"Dont. You. Dare." Pohela was shaking, "You can't turn your back on us, Dante!"

"Consider it taking a mental health leave…" Dante looked out at the solemn island far out in the distance, "Roland's going to need me… and I'm his sister before I'm Agent Venice. If I end up sacrificing one or the other, then it'll be the mask. I doubt the Lieutenants will mind my taking time away from this to ensure that I'm still… effective."

Pohela wanted to scream. She wanted to make Dante to just play along. _She's too thick headed to listen._ Without another word, she turned and left.

"Pohela!" Gavin reached out to stop her again.

"Don't." she pushed his arm away and kept walking, "Just don't."

* * *

A few hours later, the heavy metal bulkhead slammed shut as Pohela entered the lower levels of the ship. She briskly walked past the plexiglass cells, each containing one of those captured during the attack. Some wore Geist masks and watched her silently as she passed them, others were fast asleep. Each face was familiar to her as she had done her research unlike her lazy 'friends'.

She continued until she made it to the final cell, kept far away from the others, empty cells spacing it away from the priorities. This one wasn't for a target, it was for a potential traitor that went outside their orders. Incompetence was something Pohela couldn't stand. Blatant disregard for direct orders from the Commander was unacceptable.

Three chairs were set up in front of the last cell. Damascus sat in one, a woman wearing a rainbow octopus mask and a white cloak was in the other.

"I'm so terribly sorry for being late, Commander. I had my reports to finish and… I'm not usually this unpunctual for-"

The masked woman held up a hand, "It's quite alright, Captain. We waited for you since you seemed so adamant about being here. I appreciate your enthusiasm when it comes to keeping the Brotherhood in working order. I would've hated it if you had missed the opportunity to take part in this. Please, take a seat."

Pohela nodded and sat down in the chair to Commander Maelstrom's left.

"So…" Commander Maelstrom crossed one leg over the other and clicked a pen, ready to take notes on the clipboard in her lap, "Trex… er… Damascus," she turned her mask towards him, "Do you mind if I refer to you by your real name? I don't see a reason for such formalities."

"Nah, it's cool, Commander. I think the only one that needs to be worried about respect right now is Agent Tuu, here."

"Wonderful," Commander Maelstrom put a hand gently on his arm. Her warm touch was one that they all had grown fond of over the years. It was the only feeling that came close to being motherly that most of them knew, "I trust you, dear. I truly do. You've got an interesting way of conducting yourself, but you're certainly good at what you do. I am just concerned to hear that these possible traitors were under your watchful eye. Knowing you, there is a reason that makes sense, but I am having a mildly difficult time coming up with an explanation myself. I trust that there is a good one."

Damascus nodded, "Captain Raach, Scorpio Valeno was apparently experiencing a bit of mutiny within Team TCSC. Tox Hazmatte and the Azure twins seemed to be unhappy following orders so closely so they used force to keep him quiet." he held up a busted scroll, "Recovered this after their doubles match with Team GLXY. It's also suspicious how Scorpio hasn't gotten back in touch with us since we made our move during the ceremony. In my opinion… I'd say that they aren't necessarily traitors in the same way as Agent Geist… but it is pretty odd that they rose up against their team leader, who is now… well, potentially dead."

"We had to expect casualties on all sides going into this. It is entirely possible that he was just in the wrong place at the wrong time…" Pohela pondered, "But you're right, that is a bit too… coincidental." she turned to the Commander, "Is there a reason we don't have the Azures in cells for questioning as well?"

"They did not directly attack one of the targets, so I cannot do that in good faith," Commander Maelstrom leaned towards the holding cell for Tox. However, his face was far less familiar than she would have expected.

Inside the cell was not the yellow raincoat clad, gas mask wearing, green-haired ruffian that she had gotten to know in passing. Agent Tuu, Tox Hazmatte, whatever their actual name was, was certainly not whomever they once portrayed themselves to be. They were a raven haired, dark amber eyed, sickly pale woman in nothing more than a black turtleneck and pair of faded red cargo shorts that none of them had ever seen before. Her soft, gentle features were that of delicate Mistrali noble woman. Those long eyelashes were too pretty to belong to a cold-blooded killer.

"I would start by asking for your real name, Ms. Hazmatte," Commander Maelstrom leaned closer to the glass, "If you would be so kind."

The girl leaned back and sneered at the woman before answering, "Celeste."

"Celeste… I see…" Commander Maelstrom leaned back, "You look like a Huntress that I once knew. She had a daughter by the same name. Your given name wouldn't happen to be Ferren, would it?"

"And what if it is? That change the reason I'm in here or why I'm listening to you three state the obvious?"

Damascus sat forward, "I'm pretty sure you're in no position to be copping an attitude, buddy… girl… whatever. _Especially_ with the Commander after that stunt you pulled."  
"We just want to know whether or not you'll cooperate with the Brotherhood from now on. If not…" Pohela clenched her injured fist, "then there's a few loose ends we need to cut. But the fact that you hid your identity from not only Shade Academy but from those generous enough to take you in. If you want the same things we do, why vie for more power?"

"Pohela…" Commander Maelstrom raised a hand to keep the Atlesian Captain from going on, "You mustn't be so brash. This is a delicate situation. We must treat Ms. Celeste with respect if we are to clarify what happened."

"Yeah, keep your trap shut, Birdbrain," Celeste spat. She brushed her shoulder length hair back behind her back. It felt good to finally get that wig off, "I've got my reasons to conceal who I am."

"I know how that feels all too well, dear," Commander Maelstrom smiled softly underneath her mask, "Are you alright as you are? I wouldn't mind having someone get you some water or something to snack on."

A dark, scratchy cackle rang out from the cell, "That's rich. I've seen the slop you've been feeding the 'priorities' from our mission. If that's what they're getting, I'd hate to see what you'd bring me. For all I know, you'd probably poison it to make an example out of me, huh?"

For a rare moment, Commander Maelstrom let out the loudest outburst any of them had heard from her. Her laugh reverberated across the plexiglass. She even had to plant her hands against Celeste's cell, "Oh! Oh my! Poison you?!" her laughing grew even more hysterical at the preposterous thought, "My, my… oh my…" she shook her head and pat the back of her mask, "Damascus, dear, please… I need some air, and I don't-" she let out another uncontrolled burst of laughter, "I-I can't quite… get it together!"

"Y-yes, ma'am," Damascus jumped up and helped detach the back half of their leader's mask so she could pull the whole thing off.

Commander Maelstrom reached up and pulled the mask the rest of the way off. Her dull brown hair fell down around her face, the twin grey streaks in her bangs falling to either side to frame her face. Her violet eyes were wet with tears from her laughing fit. She leaned back up and waved air into her face to calm down, "I…" she giggled while pulling out a pair of black, bottom rimmed glasses, "I am sorry for that. It's just that… to think that I would do such a treacherous thing is absolutely ridiculous… especially on such a vital asset to me!"

Celeste cocked her eyebrow at the woman, "Vital asset? Me? You're joking, right?"

"You see, you've opened up the path for us to make Khimera into what we need. She will be much more valuable to us over someone as uncooperative as Ray. I thank you not for his murder, but for creating an opportunity to make our mission much more effective," Commander Maelstrom combed her fingers through her hair to straighten it, "You have so much potential, and you clearly have a sharp wit. If anything, it was a mistake to put you at such a low rank. I should have made you a Captain at least."

Damascus and Pohela both swiveled to look at her.

"C-Commander?!" Pohela exclaimed, "Surely you can't be serious!"

"She still went _directly_ against your orders!" Damascus added. "We still don't even know who _she_ is!"

"And that shows that she's very talented at infiltrating just about anything. Be it us, or be it a Huntsmen Academy. That is not something that I wish to pass up," Commander Maelstrom waved them both off while smiling at Celeste, "It will take some time, but I think that you and I can see eye to eye."

Celeste chuckled, "You're definitely starting to catch on, but what exactly makes you think that?"

"Because I'm no fool. I know a good agent when I see one," she tapped her lips, "I have quite a bit of experience as a teacher. You could say that I just have a good intuition when it comes to people."

"Are you trying to strike a deal with me then, ' _Professor_?'"

"I am trying to come to an understanding," Commander Maelstrom tapped the plexiglass, "I would hardly call it a deal. I would very much like to work with you, but that will be rather difficult as we stand. I don't even know your real name for certain."

Celeste rolled her eyes, "You had it right earlier, lady."

"That's Commander, to you!" Pohela shouted.

"Young lady," Commander Maelstrom slowly turned to Pohela, "must I reiterate how I would like you to be _respectful_ towards Ms. Ferren?"

"But-"

"Must. I. Reiterate?" Commander Maelstrom narrowed her eyes at Pohela, "I was under the impression that you trusted my judgement."

"I do but…" Pohela looked to Celeste, who smirked back, "She killed one of our priorities. If there was real reason to suspect that she actually _planned_ to get a more malleable Virtue of Pride, then maybe I'd be completely on-board with this, but so far all I've heard is disrespect and malice. We have traitors. How are you so sure she's just a little eager and not one of them? She went against your orders as we've said before."

"Where you see danger, I see potential," Commander Maelstrom looked back over at Celeste, "I am thankful to make your acquaintance, Miss Celeste Ferren. I very much look forward to getting to know you."

Celeste stood up and approached the glass, but a shackle connected to her ankle kept her from getting right up to it. "I guess I'd say the same if I wasn't in this box and I knew you as anything other than 'Commander Maelstrom'."

"I cannot do much about the cell at the moment, but I may be able to in time," Commander Maelstrom adjusted her glasses, "You may call me by name, though. Chiara Oscura, but I much prefer CiCi."

Celeste shrugged. "So, what now, CiCi?"

"I would say…" CiCi lifted up her clipboard with pen in her left hand, "That it's time to get started."


End file.
